I’ve finally joined the 21st Century photographic revolution, and gotten a digital camera…
My first and only camera to date has been a lovely all-manual film SLR, the Minolta XE-5. It’s really the world’s simplest camera – no automatic functions at all, all it does is what I tell it to do. I got it second hand but in perfect condition, built up a decent selection of lenses, and I’ve used it a lot.
According to what the site I linked to above said, my XE-5 might actually be older than I am – it’s a mid-to-late-1970s model camera, and I’m a late-1970s model h. sapien, but it’ll go until they stop making film for it.
It also weighs almost 3Kg, even with a short 28mm wide angle lens on it… something more portable was on my mind.
So this evening via EBay I went right to the other extreme, an ultra-compact Canon SD1000 Digital Elph digital camera. I’ve handled this little critter at a couple of the local camera stores, and it feels about the size of a business card – a real pocket camera. It gets good reviews on DPReview and elsewhere, and I know a number of friends and family members with Canon digicams who’re very pleased with them.
I also picked up a pair of SD cards in seperate transactions – one 2GB & one 4GB – to replace the rather undersized 32MB SD cards most cameras ship with.
Eventually I’d love to get a new SLR – a digital one this time – but that’ll have to wait a few years. DSLRs are not cheap beasts. (Wonder if I could put a digital backplate onto my old XE-5 and give it a new lease on life? I seem to recall reading about replacement CCD backs for film SLRs a while ago; not sure if that was just for one specific model or a more general thing…)
Last part of joining the modern era of photography – I’ve gotten a Flickr account too…
