Cameras & Lenses Useful for Photographing Art
This page is a work in progress.



Artist Unknown  -  wood flower -  daylight from window
Photographed a Canon sd780 IS on a tripod

If I were starting out photographing art, I'd get an inexpensive Point & Shoot camera (P+S) that has excellent image quality (which you learn about from reading reviews on Credible Review Sites [linked below]), a zoom lens, a self-timer, manual exposure controls, [cameras with, below] so you can make the image look as much as possible like the art. And an articulating LCD, so if you ever have to shoot up or down or around at your subject, it'll be easy.

Read The Advantages of an Articulating LCD on DigitalShotsGuide.com.

You'll also need some software to improve your digital images and correct your mistake. Probably the best, comparatively easy program is Adobe Photoshop Elements. The full-blown version of Photoshop is very expensive — $700, and more difficult to learn and work well, but you'll need it if you get into image tweaking full-time. I got my first copy free with a long-ago scanner and update it every other major number version.

Elements and a P+S is an ideal beginning for photographing your work for archival purposes (so you remember what you did and how you did it for every piece you ever made), entering competitions, submitting work for exhibitions and keeping track of what you've done, and how you named them.

 

Beware, megapixel ratings are a fool's game. More is not necessarily better. More important is how big the sensor is. The camera I use [below] at my gallery job is fine at 8 megapixels. It's been plenty good enough to consistently create images for magazine ads. Putting more than 10 megapixels on sensors small as P+Ss have, actually reduces quality, which is why the latest model of Canon's top of the line compacts, the G11 [below] and S90 [also discussed below] reverted from 14.7 to 10 megapixels — and uses a slightly larger sensor (2nd from the left below).
 

1/2.5 Point+Shoot sensor vs. m4/3rds sensor — Olympus image
 

 

The chart comparing sensor sizes near the bottom of my How to Photograph Art may be a more replete comparison of digital camera sensor sizes, but this one from Imaging-Resource.com makes the difference more obvious. P+S cameras have tiny sensors [left in the blue diagram]. Other sensor formats, including Micro Four Thirds [middle above] and especially, full frame (FX) dSLRs, have larger sensors [right].

All things being equal — and of course they never are, the larger the sensor, the better the Image Quality (IQ).

A new rating compares how many pixels are crammed into a square centimeter of a camera's sensor. Usually expressed like this: 32 MP/cm² pixel density. These ratings [taken from Digital Photography Review's (DPR) Camera Database [accessible from the the upper left menu on all their pages] are noted in bold gray in the listings below. Lower numbers are generally better. When a lot of pixels are squeezed together, IQ (image quality) suffers, and image noise tends to creep into even the lower ISO settings.

The ISO (International Organization for Standardization) rates the relative sensitivity of sensors — Wikipedia explains digital ISO speeds better than I ever could, and Joshua Lehrer explains how to deal with it (although his article is badly proofread) — like the American Standards Association (ASA) used to rate the sensitivity of film.
 

This image of bottles in the window from How to Photograph Art page shows how low (left) and high (right) ISO affects image quality. Skeleton/Spider/Safety-pin art by my friend, Tre Roberts.
 

Something else that makes images noisy is raising the ISO, shown here with a tiny piece of art leaning on milky glass in my front window. Almost always, it's better to photograph art at your camera's standard ISO (80 on my Canon compact S5; 200 on my Nikon dSLRs).

Add an inexpensive tripod and a light stand kit and you're ready. Point+Shoots don't weigh much, so you don't have to buy an expensive tripod, although you need to pay attention to how tall it gets (it should extend taller than you are) and whether it will actually support your camera. (Make the tripod as tall as it gets, attach the camera, stand it up, then jiggle it. It it keeps jiggling you need a more secure tripod.)

P+Ss usually range from under a hundred dollars to about five hundred. It makes a difference which camera you get, but let your budget be your guide, because that's the most important criterion. Even some of the least expensive ones have plenty good IQ. We'll go through some good ones a little down the page, and I'll link you to information about others I haven't had personal experience with.
 

Basic costs
P+S camera	$200+
Memory Card	$11 and up
Photoshop Elements	$75-85
Tripod	$20-50
Stands, reflectors and bulbs Three stands - KT750 Photoflood Kit at Amazon $137 Two stands - PBL Pro Light Kit at Amazon $137 Camera stores sometimes do lighting demonstrations and offer the Smith Victor 3-stnad, bulbs and umbrellas kit for a little over $100	$137
All prices are from Amazon and will probably change.

You can do without the lights and stands — and tripod, too, if you take your art outside and photograph it under the a bright sun. My How to Photograph Art page tells you how, but if you're ever faced with days of no sun and a deadline coming, you may want a light stand or two around, just in case.

You will need a camera and probably a memory card, although a few cameras have a small internal memories. Card prices are so low now, it makes sense to get one as large as you can afford.
 

Digital Single Lens Reflex cameras (dSLRs) are at the other end of the spectrum from Point+Shoots. Their sensor sizes are on the right of blue diagram [above]. dSLR cameras are bigger, heavier and cost more, though the size and weight difference is not necessarily proportional to the improvement of image quality (IQ). dSLRs are also much more versatile and controllable and many aspects of their workings can be individually customized.

Often, one lens (called the "kit" lens) comes free with a camera. More lenses — and we always want/need more — and better lenses will cost. Kit lenses are very often lenses with many compromises and slow (dark) maximum apertures. They're generally optically adequate but rarely wide or tele enough for real shooting, although luck is with us if we only want to photograph art, because those lenses are often very good for that task.

And dSLRs are good for almost any kind of photography, and they excel in art reproduction, but you probably don't need one just for art unless your budget is high or your art-photographing volume is.

P+Ss usually have built-in zoom lenses. The trick is to get a camera with a usable zoom and focus range with a practical maximum aperture (f/stop), minimal distortion and decent close-up (called macro) focusing distance. Lenses refract light outside (field) to focus it on the sensor. The adjustable opening where light comes in is called aperture. Wide aperture lenses usually cost more but let in more light, so you can use higher shutter speeds to not blur your art.

As lenses zoom, the maximum apertures usually get smaller. Smaller apertures let in less light, so you have to leave the shutter open longer to gather more light to adjust for the smaller apertures, which makes for blurrier images. More images are destroyed by camera movement than any other cause. More telephoto than wide-angle images are blurred, because they are magnified.

Read f/stops are fractions on How to Photograph Art down through Shutter Speeds Are, Too.
 

Visit Tim Hunkin.com for much more information, including How to Cheat at Art.
See also Cabinet of Wonders - How Life Like: The Camera Obscura.
And Snarkout, the Archives and Andres Burbano - Camera Obscura,
 

The Reflex Saga

Single Lens Reflexes (SLRs) are archaic devices that have been around since the late 17th Century — though the earliest ones were room-sized, slow (dark) and did not involve film. Camera Lucidas, which Wikipedia says, is "an optical device used as a drawing aid by artists." was a very early example of a single-lens reflex camera, although there wasn't a lens as we now think we understand it, just a hole in the far wall. Mirrors — the reflex part — came later.

Camera (room) Obscura (dark).

Wikipedia's History of the single-lens reflex camera tells that the first 35mm SLR was made in Russia in 1934. The first interchangeable lens SLR was made in Japan in 1940, and the then-new, small, 35mm film format was widely popularized during the Vietnam War (1954-75). The Miranda was the first Japanese-made 35mm SLR with a pentaprism (to correct the image — optics project an image that is inside out and upside down). My first SLR was a Miranda I bought at the Base Exchange in Tuy Hoa, Vietnam. I switched to Nikon when I was a staff photographer for the Dallas Times Herald in the early 1970s.

I still use Nikons, because all their cameras since then, including the digital ones, still use all my older lenses, although most of them are manual focus, which is more difficult to accomplish on dSLRs.

Single Lens Reflex cameras project image-forming light back through the lens into a light-proof box, reflects it up from a mirror to a five (penta)-surfaced prism which reflects the image around until it is correct left and right and right-side up, so we can see what we are shooting and easily follow moving subjects. See image below.
 

American White Pelican Landing - from the December 09 Amateur Birder's Journal
Nikon D300 with Sigma 150~500mm zoom
 

When we press the shutter button, the mirror flips up out of the way, so the (hopefully) focused image shines on the sensor (or film) to make the exposure. Then the mirror flips back into place, so we can see what what happens next.

Lost in all that flipping of mirrors and reflexing of light is the exact moment of exposure. When I'm photographing fast-moving action, like birds flying, I never know exactly what I got till I check the images on the LCD. For the fraction of a second exposure when the shutter opens to let the image light focus on the sensor, the mirror is flipped up, while the uncorrected image focuses on the sensor, the viewfinder goes dark for a fraction of a second. So I can't see what I am shooting exactly when I am shooting it — only what happened just before and after.

If I use the flash, I only see its light from around the camera, if at all — very disconcerting, but integral to the way an SLR works.

At slower shutter speeds, you can sometimes hear up to four distinct sounds: the mirror flipping up, the shutter opening,then closing, and the mirror flipping back down. Usually the mirror up and shutter opening sounds coincide, as do the shutter closing and mirror flipping down. Ker-plunk!

Until they go all-electronic, SLRs are stuck with loud shutter mechanisms. It's a large mirror and a lot of mechanical things to bang around quickly, and all that mechanical stuff takes up a lot of room and weighs the camera down.

Rolleiflex Twin Lens Reflex Camera

They're called Reflex because of the mirror and pentaprism reflecting the image around in there till it comes out right. It's called Single Lens, because during the middle of the 20th Century before single lens reflexes became popular, there were mostly twin-lens reflexes (TLRs) — with a permanent mirror behind the top lens that reflected the viewing image up to focus on a piece of ground glass the photographer looked into to see the right-side-up image that was still left-right wrong. Meanwhile, the photo-making image projected from the bottom lens records the picture.

The upper lens optically matches the lower one, except it does not stop down via an adjustable aperture, and there was no shutter mechanism built into it. It just showed you what mostly the other lens was seeing.

Wikipedia explains Single-lens reflex with most of its complications,
but Hyper-Physics illustrates it simpler and better.

The difference between what the photographer sees through the top lens and what was captured on film is called parallax. Like what happens when we put our hands in front of one eye then the other while looking at something, seeing out of each of our two eyes, one eye at a time. The difference doesn't matter much far away, but up close it can be a problem.

It was always a problem with twin-lens reflexes. I remember struggling with them back in the 1960s, when 35mm film cameras were still being popularized and Twin Lens Reflexes offered much larger film (sensor) sizes. Now that all that reflexing and left-right and up-down correcting can be done electronically, we really haven't needed reflex cameras for at least a decade.

But camera companies keep making them, because they are used to making them and have got pretty good at it. And many photographers got stuck thinking of them as the right way for professional cameras to be, because they have been that way for decades.

But now that all that mechanical silliness is no longer necessary, we can have smaller, lighter, faster, better, maybe even cheaper (but the camera companies will always find a way to make better cameras more expensive) non-reflex cameras with smaller, lighter and better lenses.

top

Angle of View of Standard Lens Focal Lengths for 35mm Cameras.

Sensor Size Differences:

FX vs. DX

Since 1954, full-frame 35mm film size (now called FX) has been 24 x 36mm (on the far right of the blue chart [above]). For Nikon's first dSLR in 1999, they used a smaller, less expensive to-make-and-sell, 15.8 x 23.6mm sensor (DX) size whose dimensions were 2/3 of the full-frame 35mm format.

According to WikiPedia:

"The 1/3 smaller diagonal size of the DX format amounts to a 1/3 narrower angle of view than would be achieved with the 135 (35mm) film format, using a lens of the same focal length. Strictly in angle-of-view terms, the effect is equivalent to increasing focal length by 50% on a I35 film camera, and so is often described as a 1.5× focal length multiplier."

That focal length multiplier is more commonly called a Crop Factor, which means a 200mm lens used on a DX camera captures the same angle of view as a 300mm lens on an FX camera. This is usually called its 35mm equivalence. That's how I can claim that the relatively cheap, Sigma 150~500mm zoom I call my "Rocket Launcher" (because it looks and carries like one) becomes a 225~750mm equivalent lens.

Actually, of course, it's still a 150~500mm lens by all calculations, just that used on the smaller sensor, it shows the same angles of view at the same distance away as a 225~750mm lens. The image magnifications are identical, but the size of the projected image is not. If my Rocket Launcher could shine an image that covered the full size of the larger FX sensor, they'd truly be equivalent. But it can only project a bright image circle with dark corners on that larger size.

I speak of Nikons, because I know and use Nikons. Canon introduced their first FX dSLR in 2002 while Nikon was still dithering about what to do next. Canon's DX-like lenses come in two varieties and include lenses with both 1.3x and 1.6x Crop Factors. The best illustration I've seen of the differences among crop factors is on top of Ken Rockwell's "Nikon DX Format Cameras" page.

The DX sensor size, in the center of the blue chart, has become a standard in the dSLR industry, although different companies use slightly different sizes, resulting in differing Crop Factors. In general, non-Nikon sensors of this size range are called APS-C, although they are very close to Nikon's DX size.

For more information, see Ken Rockwell's Future of FX and DX Formats.

top

Micro Four-Thirds Cameras

A new format of digital camera sensors, called Micro Four-Thirds are smaller, lighter and offer nearly the same image quality and size as FX and APS-sized dSLRs. Full-frame dSLRs have sensors that are 1 x 1.5 inches wide, at least twice the area of APS sensors and a little more than twice the size of Four Thirds sensors.

Micro Four-Thirds is differentiated from Four-Thirds cameras by the fact that the newer, Micro version has no mirror or pentaprism, so they are much smaller and lighter and mechanically less complicated. According to Wikipedia, The common inch-based sizing (4/3) system is derived from vacuum image-sensing video camera tubes, which are now obsolete. The imaging area of a Four Thirds sensor is equal to that of a video camera tube of 4/3" diameter.

Micro Four-Thirds is also expressed as m43, MFT, m4/3, m4/3rds and mcroft.

This graphic shows the difference in structure and volume (glass and metal) required for an image going through a bigger lens and its mechanical mirror/pentaprism and a same-size image going through the smaller space to a same size image sensor in a Micro Four-Thirds camera.
 

In Micro Four-Thirds cameras, the lens focuses light directly onto the sensor, which changes the image into electrons we can view either in the live-view eye-level Electronic Viewfinder (EVF) or the live-view LCD on the back of cameras. P+Ss have long had live view. In a ridiculous twist of history, the supposedly much more technically advanced dSLRs are only very recently catching up.

Traditional Single Lens Reflex photographers are prejudiced in favor of bright, optical viewfinders, even though Electronic View-Finders (EVFs) can be just as bright or brighter and offer much more direct information, showing us the precise exposure, motion blur or image-stopping, light color (daylight/tungsten/fluorescent/etc.), approximate depth-of-field and exposure. SLR photographers seem to believe that figuring all that stuff out is preferable to seeing it directly in a EVF. They are wrong.

Unwired, visual read-outs could as easily be tucked into the lenses of a pair of dark or other glasses or other device (under the bill of a hat), so we could see what the camera is seeing without having to raise our cameras to our eyes or hold it unsteadily out in front of our faces, continuing our long history of blurring images by shaking our cameras or making articulating LCDs directly attached to cameras yet another relic of photography's colorful past.

Our history of looking through a camera — just as we looked through peep-holes, telescopes, binoculars, microscopes and other devices till we think we always have to — may be on the verge of changing, although the tried and true often wins out over more practical innovation. Camera companies will fight it, claiming buyers won't buy it, and there'll be little battles in all the photography forums on all those websites for years. Until it just happens. Then everyone will wonder why it didn't happen sooner.

Although that's sure an easy way to do it most of the time, what might future cameras look like, if we didn't have to physically look through them to see what we're photographing?
 

Meanwhile, Canon and Nikon will likely stick to their old-style mirrored and pentaprismed enthusiast's dSLR format as long as they can, though they each will also produce mirror- and pentaprism-free, m4/3-like cameras that instead use their standard APS-C/DX sensor sizes, which are significantly but not hugely, larger than the 4/3's. They've been using those sensors for a long time now, and they're getting good at it. So theirs are already better than the new 4/3 crop, and their larger sensors will produce higher quality images.

Their mirror-box-less hybrids will probably be very good, and they will offer both less expensive, amateur (CoolPix) and more expensive, semi-Professional (D-something) versions. But the bigger companies are stodgily slow to try new things, so they might get left behind in this early stage of the m4/3 revolution.

New lenses, designed specifically for cameras without mirrors and prisms, will get smaller and less expensive, and their old lenses may still work with some sort of kludgy adapter. At least Nikons probably still will.

Their first models will likely suffer, but by the second or third attempts, they'll get it right, and they'll end up on top of the marketplace again. Meanwhile, although Panasonic (with its fast focusing) and Olympus (with its in-camera image-stabilization) have serious legs up on the competition, there's not one of them I'd want to buy in on yet, because of the several serious deficiencies noted in the 4/3 section of the Small Cameras with Manual Exposure Modes box below, as in all those reviews I've been reading.

Okay now, back to that other reality:  

If you are buying a camera to shoot art, you can get away with pretty cheap.

The Panasonic Lumix LZ8 [See below.] is still available for $109, although
it's being replaced by the LZ10 [belower] that costs $70 more.
Both have 33 MP/cm² pixel density.
 

P+Ss are comparatively inexpensive, usually costing less than $600 — sometimes a lot less. dSLRs and Four-Thirds cameras cost from six hundred to thousands of dollars — and falling — and offer significantly better IQ (Image Quality). dSLRs and m4/3s cameras are also great for photographing moving subjects and just about everything else. But they're usually bigger and heavier than P+Ss, though the differences are diminishing.

There are many "recommended camera pages" online. Some of them are linked below.

Most P+Ss are useless for things that move — kids, pets, birds, sports, etc. Luckily, most art just sits there waiting for you to take its picture. Now, most places that need photographs of your art — you, publishers, exhibition curators, competitions and job opportunities — insist on digital images. Without film, you can do almost everything by yourself.

For making lots of slides, film is quicker and cheaper.
 

Some Good Point & Shoot Cameras I Have Known and Lusted After

The following discussions point out useful features and annoying drawbacks that even very good cameras have. No camera is perfect, but the best camera in any situation is the one you have with you. The smaller that is, the more likely you are to have it along. Choosing a camera for just one feature is usually a bad idea. Reading and understanding camera and lens reviews is the best way to understand what a mix of positive and negative characteristics you are getting into. If you don't know what they're talking about, read more. It will sink in.

Canon S5 IS P+S

The camera I use at Joel Cooner Gallery is an elderly Canon S5 IS with 8 megapixels at 32 MP/cm² pixel density (high density, meaning comparatively lousy high ISO performance), introduced in May 2007. I like it, because it has an articulating LCD with 100% coverage — it shows the same image the sensor records (making precise composition simple), and full manual exposure mode. Most EVFs (electronic viewfinders) and LCDs show less, sometimes much less, and manual mode is rare. Some cameras advertise manual controls but they are not manual exposure controls, so beware of the hype. Read reviews carefully.

The Canon S5 IS weighs one pound.

Few Point+Shoots have manual exposure modes. Manual mode allows me to see what what I'm getting when I change focus, distance, shutter speed, light type or aperture. I usually use this camera on a tripod, with the 2.5-inch LCD twisted so I can look directly into it, no matter where the camera/lens is pointed — high up, down low or around a corner. For careful work, it's more convenient than any camera/lens combination I have ever used, but there are likely more expensive solutions.

I almost never use an ISO higher than 80 on this camera, unless I'm shooting for the web or just goofing. The articulating LCD is also useful for shooting surreptitiously. The flash works, but I only use it, if I have to.

For art, I put the S5 on a tripod, set the mode to Manual, the ISO to 80 (the lowest possible ISO setting), position the camera and zoom the lens for composition, close the aperture down to at least f/4 or all the way to f/8 for 3D work, then adjust the shutter speed till the image on the LCD looks its best. The wide-angle end of the zoom focuses very close. The tele zoom — like most zooms — does not.  

If your camera does not offer Manual exposure settings, it will be more difficult to precisely control all aspects of exposure. Good camera reviews will describe and rate a camera's manual capabilities. When I open a review, I command f (control f on PCs) the page to find the word "manual," though that doesn't always mean exposure. Some cameras allow manual focusing.

I paid $350 new for my Canon S5 in mid-2007. Then, for awhile it was only $250. Now, suddenly, it is being offered for just under $800 new — probably because it's finally been discontinued. It's not worth $800. Much as I like mine, these are old cameras with old technology and a comparatively short (!), 10x zoom, although that zoom is convenient for photographing a variety of object sizes and shapes and can still focus very close at the wide end of the zoom.

It is not a perfect camera. It took me awhile to realize that, under tungsten lighting, the LCD's colors aren't as good as they were when it was new. The resulting image is fine, just the viewfinder shows a colorlessness when only set for tungsten (incandescent or light bulb) lighting, and it's getting worse.not worth buying a new one just for this discrepancy, but it is annoying.
 

Another nuisance is when I tap the shutter button to show the view on the LCD or in the viewfinder (or I press the Display button). The LCD used to stay on for about a minute. Now, it's more just a few seconds. Never long enough to do anything with the info I gain from looking through it, so I have to keep tapping it. I hope Canon has fixed these problems in later versions of the S5 — the Canon Powershot SX10-IS and the SX20-IS below, but I won't know till I buy another one, and I've never seen it mentioned in a review.

I'm probably going to have to replace this camera in the next six months. Most digicams have to be replaced after three to five years, if they last that long. Mine is past due. It'll probably still work, but not dependably.

My Nikon D300 dSLR is a significantly more versatile camera with better IQ, but it does not have either image stabilization or that wonderfully useful, articulating LCD that's so helpful when the camera is on a tripod at any height lower or higher than my eyes. With lens, the Nikon weighs 3.5 times as much as the S5, but it's much more versatile.

The day I wrote about my S5, I posted a 2.5-inch long Eskimo Ivory Toggle and a 19th Century Japanese Temple Carving, both shot with it and illuminated by one light bulb in a reflector and a large piece of white cardboard to fill some of the shadows the light cast. The S5's video is good, old-fashioned 640 x 480, not HD. The maximum video it will record is 4 gigs. Then it just stops.

DPR reviews the S5-IS

  

Canon SD 780 IS Pocketable P+S

Almost everywhere else, I use my less than $180 (although I paid more than that last summer) Canon SD780 IS with 12 megapixels at 43 MP/cm² pixel density (too high) and a meager 3x, painfully slow ("dark") f/3.5~5.8 ("darker") zoom. The price is falling now that Canon is selling its replacement, the SD 940, which I hope is a better camera.

The SD780 is the same height and width as a credit card — and only about a half-inch thick, and it's greatest strengths are its light weight and pocket-ability, not its optical quality — although according to me and Consumer's Reports that's way better than most sub-compact P+S cameras. The dancer, the orange flower and the Perplexus on this page were shot with this camera, just to show you that art (and toys) don't need fancy, expensive cameras and lenses.

The SD780 weighs 4.2 ounces with battery.
The SD940 weighs 5 ounces with battery and SD card.

Because it's always there, I shoot with it — even art — more often than any other camera. It's excellent for web work, but optically not as good, or as versatile, as the S5 and has nowhere near the I Q (image quality) of the Nikons. When I'm using it, however, I really miss having a manual exposure mode, so I can control every aspect — aperture to get more (or less) in focus or shutter speed to stop or blur action.

Something else this camera has that most point & shoots do not (and the replacement SD949 does not), is an actual optical viewfinder that zooms. It's tiny — that's it in the picture above, just left of the white circle near the top — and difficult to see into. But with it, I can hold the camera firmly against my forehead (like photographers who wanted unblurry shots did before LCDs) when I shoot in low-light circumstances. It's very handy to use after I turn off the LCD when the battery is running low — or says it is, but I'll admit I don't use it very often.

The SD780 has HD video that, like all other images it makes, look better with more light.

Recent SD780 discovery

After my first perusal of the manual I learned that the SD 780 has a Custom White adjustment. Fill the LCD with the white of a white object, push the DISP. button, and watch the color on the LCD adjust to pure white. It may not show up immediately in the LCD — and that's very confusing — but it works when the shot is taken. Shoot the object in that exact lighting and be assured that its color will be correct.

I bet there's a couple other wonders yet to be discovered if I read the whole book, unlikely as that is.

 

You'd think somebody could explain depth of field quickly and succinctly in video, but the best explanation of I found is on Wikipedia, where this visual display of an image with shallow depth of field was. The Wiki page contains scads more information on this sometimes very complicated topic.

 

SD780 drawbacks

Even though lenses usually render better IQ stopped down a couple stops (using smaller apertures), this camera almost always shoots with the lens wide open (at maximum aperture) in low light and other situations, and I suspect many inexpensive P+S cameras do this, too.

Stopped down lenses render a deeper range of objects in front of and behind what is in sharp focus, in nearly acceptable sharpness. This is called Depth of Field.

Wide angle — or zoom lenses at the wide end of their zoom — render more close and far objects sharper than telephotos or lenses zoomed to telephoto do. I rarely use this camera at telephoto zoom in any but the brightest light, because even at its maximum aperture, it is so dark at telephoto, that I'd have to use slower shutter speeds that tend to blur everything.
 

SD 780 ravaged by being in a pocket without a protector
 

This is an actual photo of my SD780 after it'd been rattling around in my pocket with keys and coins for a couple months. This marred body was replaced for free by Canon (under warranty) after the LCD quit working in shooting mode (which luckily was not caused by rattling around in my pocket with keys and coins). Clearly the body is not very sturdy, but the fix was quick, they paid postage, and now I keep it in a bag.

Both the unprotected LCD and the camera's body are too delicate for a pocket camera, which is why I use cushioned bags. It's so small I forget it's in my pocket sometimes, but I can usually feel the bulk of the bag. Unfortunately, the bag has not prevented the fragile LCD from getting scratched again, although both the new body and the new LCD have benefited greatly from being bagged most of the time.

Worse, very often this camera will indicate it is out of power, even when I've just recharged it. Or it will warn me to "Charge the battery pack," when I know it has plenty charge left. When that happens, I have to turn it off, and back on again. Except it doesn't always want to be turned off. The buttons are recessed and difficult enough to find in bright light and nearly impossible in low or no light.

But even with light and after repeatedly pushing the power button, it often won't turn off. The best way I've found to quickly get it to turn off is to slide the battery/memory card compartment's lid — which normally slides out, then hinges away from the camera — to the out position.
 

In bright light, the Canon SD780 is amazing. In low light, however. It is not. I can't
show you what it usually does in low-light, because those don't look this good.
 

Until that's done, it wants to hang on to its fake low-charge warning. I turn it on, see the recharge notice at the bottom of the black LCD, slip off the cover, click it back into place and turn it on, see the warning again, slip it off, etc. as often as a dozen times, before it remembers that it's still got a charge. This is very annoying, but it's not really a very 'smart' camera. My other Canon does this though more rarely, so it may be a Canon thing.

Some cameras have a reset button, so we can end-around what it thinks it knows. For this camera, that's sliding the cover off and trying again till the LCD lights up. If you're lucky, it might show a full battery charge, which it clearly does not have, either. No camera is perfect. But the SD780 is more imperfect than many, which may be why it has been replaced.

Another problem is that, like many automatic Canon cameras, it chooses where to focus, and that choice is often not useful. This is definitely a Canon thing. It shows one or more rectangles to indicate the area(s) of focus. Once it decides, there's nothing the photographer can do, except point it differently or shoot from a different angle. Some cameras focus on what's in the middle of the view. This one chooses arbitrarily.

It is not a a low-light camera — not for low-light parties, low-light family events, low-light pets. I've tried them all. Even at high ISO, it's slow-to-shoot and slow to focus in low light. Often it will not focus. Even at its widest angle, it has a slow, dark lens. At telephoto, it's slower and darker. I relearn that every time I zoom in to compose in low light.

I am being particularly picky in this review to let you know what sorts of things otherwise "perfect" cameras can do to annoy us.

Ken Rockwell said it was the best pocket camera available (so I bought it), but we were both wrong. Now, he says the Canon S90 [below] is, and he may be closer to right with that recommendation. In plenty of light or when the subject either doesn't move or doesn't move fast, my Canon SD780 can be amazing. Two-dimensional art that fills the screen almost always catches one or all of the focus boxes, although sculpture often does not.
 

Tiana Wages - Was It Here or Was It There?   2009
gouache and acrylic on paper   30 x 23 inches
Photographed handheld in a gallery with the Canon sd780 IS
 

I showed two SD780 photographs as 13 x 19-inch prints in a recent art exhibition. It's a useful, fun camera, always right where I need it. Soon as I can figure out what pocketable camera but with manual exposure modes should replace it, I will.

780 reviews: Ken Rockwell, Imaging Resource,   Digital Camera Review
 

The updated version of the 780 is the Canon SD940 also with 43 MP/cm² pixel density, which means it has the same sensor. The new camera costs $225, has a wider 28mm equivalent wide-angle (instead of 35mm — meaning you are much more likely to experience linear distortion when photographing paintings, drawings and other rectangular images. This is a drawback for shooting art. The unzoomed SD780's angle is less wide and less likely to distort. For purposes other than photographing flat art, however, the wider angle is very beneficial.) the 940 also has a slightly longer 112mm telephoto.

The replacement's wide-angle is a half stop faster (brighter), but it's slightly darker at the telephoto end — compared with the 100mm equivalent telephoto on the 780, although the new camera is the same size and comes in black, brown, silver or blue, but no red. It does not have an optical viewfinder, just a slightly larger LCD.

I won't get one, because I need a more versatile pocket camera, preferably with a full, interactive manual mode, a brighter maximum aperture and significantly less than 43 MP/cm² pixel density (which so far means the Canon S90 [below], a Panaxonic LX3 [below] or a similar camera).

Despite all that, however, I find I use my 780 more than any other camera — except when I go birding.

780 story by Ken Rockwell. Mixed owner opinions at DPR.
940 story by Ken Rockwell.
 

I have been reading up on these cameras:

Canon PowerShot SX20 IS P+S

The latest extension of the Canon S, for Super Zoom, series from my S5-IS [above] — is the PowerShot SX20 IS, which has a 20x zoom, the latest Canon tech, an articulating LCD, 12.1 megapixels at 43 MP/cm² pixel density, and it costs $370. It's newer, better and faster than my aging S5, but I'm hoping for a bigger, less dense sensor for my main art camera next time. (See the next camera down and especially the one after that.)

In addition to the White Balance presets the S5 has, the SX20 adds a Custom mode, which will be useful in mixed light-source lighting. It also offers ISO 1600, though at 43 MP/cm² pixel density, it's not likely to be pretty. Steve's (link below) reports that higher than ISO 400, it gets dicey. My advice is to keep the ISO low on such high pixel density cameras.
 



The SX20 IS weighs 1.23 pounds.

Like my cars, I usually keep cameras until they stop working, fall apart or both, and I do a lot of research before I buy a new one‚ although I always buy new cameras and used cars. When I got the S5, I thought it was the best for shooting art, although it's always been less-than for other uses. It does have nice (non HD) video that's been useful for family events, although the zoom has only one speed, that I always find to be too fast.

Steve's, DigitalCameraReview, PC World and CameraLab (including an HD video tour) reviews the SX20-IS. 


 



Canon G11 "Compact" camera


The late 2009 10-megapixel and comparatively lower, 23 MP/cm² pixel density Canon G11 with its slightly larger sensor (than most P+Ss), articulating LCD, on-camera dials that allow directly changing important settings without spelunking through menus, a good quality lens and fairly unspectacular 5x zoom (slight wide-angle to slight telephoto) and RAW shooting capability (a big plus. See Wikipedia's article on Raw image format.). For about $470, the G11 is a sweet, though expensive and not-at-all pocketable, camera.
 




Canon G11 with articulating LCD

The Canon G11 weighs 12.5 ounces.

Its probably cheaper (replaced cameras are generally cheaper) predecessor, the G10 did not have an articulating LCD, which, along with the slightly larger sensor and attention to quality results the G series offers, is why I chose the G11 to show here. The G10 had 14.7 megapixels.

My favorite G11 review is Ken Rockwell's although Steve's is good and, as usual, DPR's goes deeper — and likes the G11 less.
 
 




Canon Powershot S90 P+S

The compact camera I've been lusting after most (perhaps illogically) is this close cousin of the Canon G11. It's got the same 10-megapixel sensor at 23 MP/cm² pixel density (less than half most of its competitors but only 1 less than Panasonic's LX3), but outwardly different everything else, although many of its innards are probably the same. It might be almost perfect if it had an articulating LCD, but that would make it too big to fit in a pocket, which it does now — or almost.

It's expensive at $407, but until the next version of the Panasonic LX3 [below] camera that uh ... inspired ... the S90 is announced (was rumored for mid-March, now pushed back to September 2010.), this is the camera I spend the most time reading and daydreaming about.

It's not perfect. Read CameraLab's thorough review of the S90, especially the verdict page comparing it to the LX3.

The S90 has a full manual mode and a remarkably fast f/2~4.9  3.8x zoom (28~105 equivalent) lens [Well, the wide-angle end of the zoom is bright. The telephoto end is very dark.] on a 3.9 x 2.3 x 1.9 inch body. It appears to be a fine little camera for general shooting and art as well, but before I buy in, I want to see Panasonic's LX3 update and whatever pops out of the m4/3rds [above] competition between Panasonic (that has IS in some lenses) and Olympus (that has Images Stabilization built into the camera).

The Canon S90 has movies but not HD. It does have lots of dials outside that allow quick, easy changes without dealing with menus, including one that moves too easily even when nobody touches it, and a better-than-average menu system. It shoots RAW, and has a 3-inch, high-res (461,000 pixels) LCD, but no optical viewfinder (so one must always hold the LCD out at arm's length, which makes the image-stabilization work harder and not always succeed).

The more I read about this camera, the more I suspect it would make a great art camera, although with its articulating LCD, the Canon G11 is better, if chunkier and less likely I'd carry it around. I've had a Canon S90 is my pocket, but it was a much tighter fit than my SD780 [above].

The second biggest drawback for the S90 is that its Exposure Compensation dial on the back can be moved by any movement of finger, face or other accidental force. I keep thinking if I had one, I'd use a little strategic tape. The first biggest drawback is that tiny little sensor.

The Canon S90 only weighs 6.9 ounces, including battery.

Reviews: Ken Rockwell calls it "the world's best pocket camera", although he called the Canon SD789 that before, and it definitely is not;" Steve's, CameraLabs, Wired.com, ImageResource, Luminous Landscape, Enticing the Light, and probably many other sites have tested it by now, though not yet DPR.


 

A little digicam history



Sony F707 "Prosumer" camera

The camera I had before my S5 was a 5 megapixel Sony F707, whose whole camera section (including the smallish 1.8-inch color LCD) swiveled up and down from the lens section. That was so convenient working on a tripod, I only looked at articulating LCD cameras to replace it.

My Sony also had an amazing Carl Zeiss 5x f/2~2.4  zoom, and it's still available new for $170 from Amazon. Its biggest drawback was its maximum 128-megabyte Memory Stick card that compares very unfavorably with cards up to 32 gigs for other, newer P+Ss. Don't do it.

It was amazing that the zoom, though only about 5x, maintained such wide (bright) maximum aperture, even at full telephoto zoom. No affordable, contemporary lens does the same. New in 2001, the F707 cost $1,000 and was called a Prosumer camera — a cross between a Pro-fessional and con-sumer.

DPR reviewed it favorably in September 2001.
  
 

dSLRs & Lenses I've Used



Nikon D40 dSLR

For the same price as a Canon G11, you could (see the D5000 below) get a 6-megapixel, 1.6 MP/cm² pixel density Nikon D40 single-lens reflex, which has the Nikon APS-C sensor — about twice the size of the diminutive G11's [More info about comparative sensor sizes below]. With the excellent Nikon 18~55mm zoom lens (zero distortion at 55mm) in the box, if you buy in the USA. Its LCD is 2.5 inches.

The Nikon D40 with its excellent 3x zoom lens and battery weighs 1.15 pounds.

The D40 is lighter and quieter than most dSLRs, but offers RAW, which makes it an excellent choice for photographing art or almost anything else, since it is so much faster shooting and focusing than any Point & Shoot camera. It does not, however, have an articulating LCD, so it may not be quite as easy to work with on a tripod. It also does not have image stabilization, although some of the lenses that it can use do.

There may be no camera better for art and everything else for the price. Adorama now offers a D40 and lens kit, refurbished by Nikon USA for $374. Nikon refurbishings are considered to be almost like brand new and probably have the same warranty.

Ken Rockwell highly recommends this camera, reviews both the camera and the lens and offers instructions for its use that, like others of his, are better and more immediately useful than the tiny-print manuals that come with cameras.

CameraLab's video tour of the Nikon D40 will give you a great look at this camera that, despite its name, is newer than the Nikon D50.

 



Nikkor 18~55mm zoom
 

The 18~55 f/3.5~5.6 non-VR lens is a very different animal from my large, ungainly yet awkwardly amazing 17~55mm f/2.8 [See it below]. The 18~55 without VR is a fine little lens that focuses very close, especially at the wide-angle end. But adding VR will help, because at any zoom toward telephoto these lenses close down considerably (as inexpensive and especially "kit" zooms tend to.).

I tried to use it, briefly, without a tripod in a gallery photographing art, which it did very well at — excellent resolution, color, etc, but at full tele zoom where its field is flat (that is, the lens does not distort the image), it required disappointingly long shutter speeds. As I got into the darker reaches of that gallery, the shutter speeds got so slow the images blurred.

Without a lot of practice, most photographers cannot hand-hold (as opposed to putting it on a tripod) a camera at slower than 1/30th of a second. Many cannot hand-hold it that slow. The general rule is not to even try to hand-hold longer than 1/125th of a second.

With good IS (Image Stabilization; also called VR — Vibration Reduction; OS — Optical Stabilization and probably some other acronyms), one can usually hand-hold a camera at longer (slower) shutter speeds, if one knows how to do it.
 

Christmas Card Flower Close-up shot with Nikon's non-VR 18~55mm
f/3.5~5.6 lens at 1/40th at f/5.6 with the Nikon D40 held against the
coffee table. At 100% original size, I could count fibers in the paper.
This image is three times larger than on the original Papyrus Holiday
card copyrighted by Chrisina Ladas. Nice card, Dottie. Thanks.
 

On a tripod or outdoors, or at wide-angle, it works great, although the D40 (like all other older dSLRs) does not have the 'live view' that almost every new point & shoot does, so you can't judge exposure, color, etc. till you make a shot.

Shoot, check the resulting image on the LCD, adjust exposure — either aperture or shutter speed, then shoot again is normal procedure for dSLRs without 'live view.' It takes longer and seems stupid, but that's the way it is.

The 18~55 f/3.5~5.6 non-VR lens weighs just under 8 ounces.
The 18~55 f/3.5~5.6 VR lens weighs 9.3 ounces.

Photozone tests the non-VR, 18~55 that comes with the D40 (and that I used) and finds its resolution remarkable but the build-quality lacking. They say "if you use its apertures from f/6.7~f/11, you'll be a happy camper in most situations." Which means it'll do better on bright days or on a tripod, where you can use those smallish apertures and a slow shutter speed.

DPR tests the new VR version that comes with the D5000 and recommends it, citing its "decent optical quality, effective Vibration Reduction [what Nikon calls Image Stabilization] system and very good macro performance," although it has some distinct drawbacks, too. Don't point it anywhere near the sun.
 

Nikkor 50mm f/1.8 lens

Another lens, that I recommend below, is the Nikon 50mm f/1.8, which I Anna gave me for Christmas 2008. Photozone tested it and found that, "at medium aperture settings the resolution figures are exceptionally high and [it] is surely a benchmark to beat. Ken Rockwell lists it first in his Nikon's 10 Best Lenses.

"Distortions are negligible and vignetting is very well controlled." They also liked the build quality and Auto Focus speed. It's $125 at Amazon, which is an amazing bargain for this good a lens, although for awhile it sold closer to $100.

Turns out it's a great lens to shoot art with, and since its maximum aperture is so big — especially compared with most compact camera lenses, I didn't need a tripod, so my back didn't hurt later from bending and stretching in all the wrong directions. And it's tiny.

 

Nikon D5000 dSLR

Ken Rockwell still loves the D40, and Anna loves hers, but the newer Nikon D5000 with 3.3 MP/cm² pixel density may now be easier to find new. I had no trouble finding a D40 for Anna from Amazon at Christmas 2009 for $450, but they don't have any more at that price, though they'd be happy to sell you one for $650-something new from one of their squirrely "safe shopper" options. Or $450 used, plus postage.

The D5000 weighs 1.3 pounds with battery.

Amazon charges $700 for a new D5000. Wait a while and it could drop another couple hundred dollars. Nikon was offering Christmas discounts, and will likely extend them if they don't sell out the ones they have left.

There's a darned decent Nikon refurbished D5000 kit with the VR version of the 18~55mm zoom for $525 at Adorama, and I saw special Christmas prices even lower, so its price is falling. Every bump down makes it a better camera for poor starving artists who need to document their work in the best possible quality.

Nikon D5000 with articulating LCD

With its kit lens, the D5000 has image stabilization and a partially articulating LCD, though the silly thing is hinged at the bottom, making its use sometimes awkward. Better articulating LCDs hinge at the left, so they can swing as well as tilt, although the D5000's will twist.

DPR reviews and highly recommends the camera. Image Resource also reviews the Nikon D5000, which is sold with the 18~55mm f/3.5~5.6 VR lens. As does PopPhoto.com.

 

Nikon D300

My first choice camera is always my main dSLR, the Nikon D300 with 12 megapixels at a mere 3.3 MP/cm² pixel density [See notes below.], with a 3-inch LCD, because it has the largest sensor, the best pixel density, the most features, the best overall quality, the widest choice of interchangeable lenses, and it's the most versatile of all the cameras I own.

It's also big and so heavy it tilts my puny tripod at any setting but pure horizontal. It has no image stabilization unless the lens does, and its LCD does not articulate. Other than those drawbacks, it's pretty good.

Ideally, I would use a single focal length, so-called prime lens, perhaps my 50mm f/1.8 lens that's one of Nikon's best-ever, sharp as a tack, nearly distortion-free, small and only cost about $132.

I recently borrowed the Nikon 18~55mm f/3.5~5.6 zoom lens that comes with the Nikon D40, which is a great, inexpensive dSLR, but it is rapidly fading from distribution channels.

Nikon 17~55 f/2.8

What I usually use for both three-dimensional and flat art and people is my 17~55mm f/2.8 Nikon zoom, set somewhere in the middle of the zoom, so there's less obvious distortion in flat art. Three-dimensional art makes far fewer demands on rectilinearity. So I feel safe using any wide, tele or in-between zoom on sculpture, which is my favorite art form to photograph.

Together, my 17~55 and D300 weigh 3.5 pounds.
Just the lens weights 26 ounces

The 17~55 is sharp with a constant f/2.8 aperture (Reviewers now call it "bright.") throughout its zoom range. Most, cheaper lenses — especially on Point & Shoot cameras have smaller and smaller apertures ("dark") as you zoom to telephoto, requiring longer shutter speeds at full zoom, where you most need shorter shutter speeds. It shows the least linear distortion at 24 and 55mm, but I have often wished it had image stabilization, because my hands tend to shake.

The 17~55 zoom is ten times the price of the wonderful little 50mm f/1.8 lens, which is a great lens for shooting art, especially or without a tripod. For flat art — drawings, paintings and prints — the fifty is great, especially with its bright f/1.8 maximum aperture. Sculpture, too.

Documenting an exhibition I'd curated — and especially wanted good documentation, I brought both the 50mm and the borrowed 18~55mm zoom kit lens that came with the Nikon D40. I was experimenting and didn't want to lug that huge 17~55mm zoom around.

The 50 acquitted itself well, but I kept trying to make it zoom closer. I ended up using the 18~55 zoom for most of the afternoon. One shot from the 50mm turned out so well it's now on my How to Photograph Art page illustrating the rule about photographing translucent materials with light coming through them.

Prime lenses (non zooming ones) almost always have better IQ (image quality) than zoom lenses.

The 50mm f/1.8 weighs 5.5 ounces.

With zooms, you can set up the tripod and camera, then zoom to the desired composition. With a single focal length lens, you have to move you, your camera and your tripod. Every choice brings a trade-off.

Shooting small and medium-sized sculpture — like Kathy Boortz', whose work always tops the How to Photograph Art page, a zoom lens is handy to hone in on details like tiny faces and feet and hands, without seriously adjusting the tripod.

Because the Nikon's sensor is so large, I can use its comparatively high, base ISO of 200 or the next bump up to 320, and even hand-hold it in a gallery or artist's studio under a variety of lights.

My Nikon also shoots RAW, a format that saves more information than JPEG, making resulting files significantly larger. JPEG is a compression format, and we have to be careful never to save it at less than 100%, because once it is compressed any, you can never get that quality back.

With RAW, I don't have to worry what kind of light I'm shooting in (daylight, tungsten, fluorescent...), because I can adjust that later in PP (Post Production — in Photoshop), where I can usually save over- or under-exposed images. Regular, old, JPEG format is less forgiving. The Nikon also does TIFF, but I don't, although many people insist upon it.

DPR has the best review of the D300, but Ken Rockwell's is good.
Ken also has an extensive, step-by-step guide for it, and other popular cameras.

DPR reviews the Nikon (officially "Nikkor" for optics) 50mm f/1.8 lens and Photozone gives much more detail. Ken Rockwell also reviews it.
Photozone also reviews my Nikon 17~55mm zoom, which is not as sharp, nor as distortion free.

If I had to replace my Nikon D300 today, I'd either get the newer, technologically improved, lighter and less expensive 12.3 megapixels at 3.3 MP/cm² pixel density, Nikon D90, Nikon's rumored micro 43 camera that has not yet been announced, or one of the real m43rds cameras with built-in image stabilization and an articulated LCD.

Meanwhile, I have a Nikon D200 that I thought I'd used up till I loaned it out for a year. It still works great. Working with that older camera seemed convoluted after the comparative ease of my D300, but if my D300 goes down, I can relearn till I figure out what camera to get next. I'm always online researching the possibilities.

DPR's review of the Nikon D90 and Ken Rockwell's.

 

 

Four-Thirds Cameras with Manual Exposure Modes
See the Small Cameras with Manual Exposure Modes chart below.

Panasonic G1 and G2

For about $640, you can still get a new 4/3rds G1, but it is about to be replaced with the new G2. The nearly two-year-old Panasonic Lumix DMC-G1 has 12.1 megapixels at 5 MP/cm² pixel density, Digital SLR with Lumix G Vario 14~45mm f/3.5~5.6 ASPH Mega OIS (Optical Image Stabilization) "kit" Lens and a fully articulating LCD. Same as the G2, whose price apparently has not yet been set.

According to m43 forum talk on DPR, there's not a heckuva lot of difference between the G1 and the G1, except you can touch the LCD to show it where to focus (then it will follow that object) or when to shoot, although regular focus and shutter buttons and operations still work, too. And there's a G2 on the front instead of a G1. But few have actually seen or used the new camera, so many are the possibilities.

Either the G1 or G2 would be an excellent camera, albeit without built-in Image Stabilization, and only three of the ten Panaonic lenses available for it include it.

The G1 with its kit lens weighs 28 ounces.
With the kit lens, the G2 weighs a hair under 21 ounces (the kit lens, though with the same zoom range, has changed.)
My Nikon kit [above]'s lens with a similar zoom and constant f/2.8 aperture, weighs 56 ounces.

The G1 was the first Micro Four Thirds camera. Panasonic calls it a system, but there's not much in that system yet, including lenses — it comes with a 14~42mm zoom lens. Some other lenses can be attached with an adapter, which usually loses you important feature(s), like auto focus. With Micro Four Thirds cameras, the mm ratings of lenses double for 35mm equivalence. I.e., a 14~42 lens is equivalent to a 28~84mm lens on a 35mm film or FX (full frame) digital camera.

An excellent comparison of two recent micro 4/3s cameras is on Neutralday.

Panasonic G1 with articulating LCD

Lenses available for Micro Four Thirds cameras are limited, but in a few years, there will be many, including, perhaps, some innovative possibilities. Read Andy Westlake's "On Lenses for Small Cameras," complete with reader feedback, in DPR January 2010 for an overview of lenses now available and lenses that should be available.

Panasonic Lumix DMC-G1 tests include DPR's in-depth review, Imaging Resource with its comparative Still Life and Multi-Target examples, and PopPhoto tests it too. CameraLabs has a helpful video tour.
 

Nobody's reviewed the G2 yet, because it won't arrive till this June — although it's much discussed on DPR's m4/3rds forum. You only have to register if you want to join in the conversation; I generally just lurk, because they sometimes get snotty with newbies or oldies who haven't posted much and are often very contentious. I learn a lot by lurking.

Panasonic has a page of PR with lots of pix and several tabs and links to other info links, for their big new G2 — and the little new one (G10) — except they are nearly the same size, and DPR has a hype-filled preview with darned few pictures of it and no images shot with the camera after having one around the office for a couple weeks, which seems very odd. I mean, what did they do with it?

 

My hands shake, so I need IS in the camera, like Olympus — although Nikon's IS policy echoes Panasonic's, and I've lived with that for decades. Panasonic's biggest competitor in the m4/3rds business so far, Olympus' latest m4/3rds cam is older and goofier, since their chunky high-res live-view viewfinder has to be shoved on — and reportedly sometimes shoves itself off again, and their EP series focuses slowly. So I don't know yet.

In February Olympus introduced the E-PL1, a dumbed-down micro 43 camera that allows a lot of exposure and other adjustments via menus, so you can change image aspects without knowing about apertures or depth of field or shutter speeds or the colors of available light. But only with menus, so by the time you get it all set up, whatever you were going to photograph has left the building. It costs more than $600.

I'd tell you about other cameras, but I don't keep up with many. During the first few days of the January 2010 International CES (Consumer Electronics Show) in Las Vegas [as I first wrote this], 45 new compact cameras were introduced. There's no way anybody will ever catch up with them all, but the better ones might eventually be reviewed on one of the more credible review sites [below].

Olympus EP2 with Electronic View Finder Attached

Olympus EP3 & Beyond

No, that's not a typo. I know there's no E-P3 yet. Besides, it might take till the E-P4 of E-P5.The EP-2 just came out in November 2009. But it's not the one I want. Except for plugs for a new, very high-resolution electronic live-view viewfinder (in which I am utterly fascinated) and a port for their stereo mic for video, the E-P2 is mostly like the E-P1, except it now comes in macho black. It's still slow to focus, but fascinating in its potential future directions.

Olympus m4/3rds cameras have image stabilization built into the bodies and, near as I can figure, they can use some of the same lenses Panasonic is making for their 4/3rds cameras — including the 100~300mm (200~600mm equivalent) zoom and other possibilities. Which is too bad, because both companies seem stuck with the same very few zoom ranges and mostly dark maximum apertured lenses, with only one medium wide-angle lens with a large aperture, each. So far.

It's a start. There's an excellent comparison of the Olympus EP-1, the newer Olympus EP-2, the newest, dumbed-down, all-menu-driven Olympus EPL 1 and the Panasonic Lumix DMC-GF1 on the verdict page for CameraLabs' review of the Olympus 'Pen' E-P2, and there's a thoroughly intelligent review of the EP-2 on Luminous Landscape,

That page also mentions Olympus' stunning 1440k dot resolution VF-2 live viewfinder, about which CameraLabs says, "In short it looks fantastic and is a huge step-up in quality over the optional LVF-1 for the Panasonic GF1, while also avoiding the rainbow tearing artifacts we experienced with the G1 and GH1."

If I could, I'd take the marvelous EVF and in-camera stabilization from the Olympus EP2 and the quick focus and articulating LCD from the Panasonic G series. But, of course, I can't, which is why I'm waiting for the Oly EP3, 4 or 5, which I hope hope hope will continue to have manual exposure controls and add a built-in EVF, although I doubt they'll bother with an articulating LCD. But I can dream.

Since I don't absolutely have to have a new medium-sized camera right now, I'm nervously waiting and keeping a look out. Sooner or later Nikon and Canon will come bombing into the m4/3rds fray — or at least dump the mirror/pentaprism box and use their already amazing DX and APC sensors in new, smaller cameras. And they or someone else will put their own half-size sensors together with manual exposure modes, a fully articulating LCD, in-camera stabilization, a tall-enough-to-be red–eye–resistant built-in flash, and a beautiful built-in hi-res, eye-level EVF.
 

Cameras with articulating LCDs

Canon PowerShot SX20  above  $360 G11  above  $440 A650 IS  $543 A640  $685 A630  $500 S5-IS  limited availability  $400 new (but it's old technology) A95 Panasonic FZ50   $1,000 LC2 (not yet announced) Lumix DMC-GH1  m4/3rds  dpreview  $1,250 DMC-G1 m4/3rds DMC-G2 m4/3rds Fujifilm Olympus E-620  live-view LCD  $550  dpreview E-30  live-view LCD  $880  dpreview Evolt E3  $1300 E-330 - discontinued - tilt only Fuji S100fs S9100 Konica-Minolta A200  $375   elderly Samsung EX1  f/1.8 lens, RAW TL350 - 10.2 mp, 5x zoom from 24mm, Sony A300   tilt up and down only A350  " H9  limited articulation to 90 degrees up or down  $520  introduced in 2007  dpreview  cameralabs video Nikon Coolpix 5700  $1,000 Coolpix 8700  $900 Coolpix P90 - 24x zoom - the only review I've seen by a visual artist seriously disses the IQ of this camera, although an artist I know loves its long battery life. 4500 Coolpix 990

This list will probably always be incomplete.

There is no one camera perfect for all jobs, but even one of the really imperfect ones can photograph art well, if you're careful. I believe that the camera you use to photograph art does matter, but it probably doesn't matter as much as you might think.

If you want to learn photography — and not just take ordinary pictures, buy a camera with manual exposure modes and use them to take as many photographs as you possibly can, even if you don't know what you're doing. You'll learn directly and quickly.

Read Ken Rockwell's impassioned Your Camera Doesn't Matter and check out my discussion of my Canon SD780-IS above.

Small Cameras with Manual Exposure Options Listed by price, cheaper first - Unless otherwise noted, all have Image Stabilization (I think). This list grows. • = one of the best. Point+Shoots
camera	notes	Reviews (link code below)	Cost
Samsung L210	not the bargain the next one is	DPR	86
Panasonic LZ8	5x optical zoom, 8 mp, oldish, grab it now — won't last at this price. Amazon's wrong: The FP8's not the upgrade, but the $180 LZ10 [below] is.	DPR - read the whole review, including comparison pages and conclusion/ratings page. S, IR,	$109
Pentax Optio SV	slow with long shutter lag, short battery life	A,	149
Canon A590 IS	35~140mm zoom,	IR, DPR, DCR, S,	160
Pentax LZ10	30-150mm zoom, 10mp,	IR, DCRP, DMC,	180
Samsung TL320	24~120mm, 3"LCD	A,	200
Panasonic Lumix DMC-ZS3	minimal manual	A,	235
Canon PowerShot SX200 IS	Don't use Auto or Easy modes	CL,	280
Fujifilm Finepix E900	discontinued		290
Canon PowerShot A570		S,	300
Panasonic Lumix DMC-FX580		IR	300
Sony Cyber-shot DSC-H	minimal manual modes	DPR conclusion	370
Canon PowerShot A590 IS		DPR,	375
• Panasonic Lumix LX3	tiny sensor	DRR and their group test	400
• Canon s90	very small sensor	LL,	400
Nikon P5000	largish DX Sensor, slow		400
Panasonic Lumix FZ35	18x zoom,	IR,	400
• Canon G-11		DPR, S,	470
Canon Powershot SX20-IS [above]		DPR, S,	470
Canon Powershot SX10-IS		DPR, S,	486
Ricoh GX200		S, NL, pB,	500
Canon PowerShot S5-IS [above]	great cam for its time, not worth $800	DPR	400-800
Micro 4/3rds Cameras
Panasonic G1	not so good for low light, articulating LCD	CL, DPR, LL,	640
Olympus Pen E-P1	no eye-level EVF, slow focus,	DPR, CL,	800
Panasonic GF1	either 20/1.7 or 14-45/3.5~5.6 kit lenses, fast AF,	CL, DPR, IR,	900
Olympus Pen E-P2	great EVF attachment, in-body image stabilization, confusing menus, slow focus, no built-in flash,	LL, CL,	1,070
Panasonic GH1	articulating LCD, not for action or low light still, pro quality video,	CL, DPR,	1,190
Panasonic G2	due June 2010, articulating LCD,
There's probably more I haven't discovered yet. This stack will grow. A - Amazon, CL - CameraLabs, DPR - Digital Photography Review, IR - Imaging Resource, LL - Luminous Landscape, pB - Photo Blog, S - Steve's,

Some Digital Photography Terms

More seems inevitable.

Angle of View - the maximum angle a lens can see, usually measured horizontally — See DPR's glossary page for Picture Angle.

Depth of Field - Wikipedia has my favorite definition: "In optics, particularly as it relates to film and photography, the depth of field (DOF) is the portion of a scene that appears acceptably sharp in the image. Although a lens can precisely focus at only one distance, the decrease in sharpness is gradual on each side of the focused distance, so that within the DOF, the unsharpness is imperceptible under normal viewing conditions."

After that succinct definition, Wikipedia goes on and on and on with more information.
 

EVIL - Electronic Viewfinder and Interchangeable Lenses
ILC - Interchangeable Lens Compacts
SLD - Single-Lens Direct-view cameras

Exposure Compensation - allows exposure to be brighter or darker by a fraction or EV number. Usually accomplished digitally without changing the aperture or shutter speed. I've always thought of it as magic.

It's better to slightly underexpose than to overexpose. Especially outdoors in bright light, where many pro photographers use a standard exposure compensation of –2/3 stop = EV–.7 to give images richer colors and more density.
 

Focal Length - the distance, usually expressed in millimeters, between the Nodal Point of a multi-element lens or the center of a single-element lens and the sharp image it projects on a flat object, when the lens is focused on infinity. (Wow. I keep being amazed at all the stuff I remember from the middle of the last century.) A 500mm lens is considered to have a focal length of 500 millimeters. This is not necessarily a direct physical distance, because many lenses fold or bend their focal lengths. It is almost never the physical length of a lens.

IBIS - In Body Image Stabilization

Image Stabilization (also called OS, VR, OSI and probably some other things) - More photographs are ruined by camera movement than any other cause. Image Stabilization holds the image on the sensor still while you shake the camera around — to a point.

Manual Mode - Cameras with manual modes allow photographers to change the shutter speed, aperture, exposure compensation or color balance independent of other settings. I don't include manual focus in this set.

Pixel Density Rating is one of the more recent additions to the cameras on this page. Essentially, comparatively, the fewer pixels per square centimeter, the better the low-light / high ISO capability and overall image quality that sensor renders. The smaller the sensor and higher the density, the worse the visual noise.

Digital Photography Review has a cogent explanation of Pixel Density Rating, and there's further discussion on one of their forums that provides additional information, although as usual on forums, not everyone agrees.

If you like graphs, DPR has a page about Pixel Density.
 

Red-eye - when a flash a — especially a built in flash — is too close to the lens axis (imagine a line coming out of the center of the lens) human and animal eyes tend to show annoying red spots in them. Red-eye is easy enough to get rid of. Some cameras even do it at the touch of a button, but it's better to avoid it altogether by rasing the flash unit a couple inches, which is why many professional photographers have flash units on a bracket attached to the camera.

Shutter Lag - time between pushing the button and the camera actually making the image — P+S cameras are notorious for having long shutter lags, so photographers miss decisive moments. It's something else to pay attention for in camera reviews.
 

Crown Speed Graphic shown in a size that is not yet
nearly proportional to the other cameras on this page.

Probably the best thing about hauling one of these monsters around in the 1960s when I got mine, was that no one would ever need to check if I had a press pass. They'd look at this behemoth, then let me in — to a concert, public event, airplane wreck or almost anything else. It marked me as a serious photographer. Which, of course, I have always been since.
 

For historic perspective, my late-1940s Crown Speed Graphic 4x5-inch camera rendered images so superbly at its adapted 2 1/4 x 3 1/4-inch roll-film size, that a painter friend once borrowed that heavy, ungainly, wholly mechanical, bellows camera for three years, because it rendered gorgeous, long tonal ranges that were nearly as good as original scenes — especially of human skin tones — to paint from. That format had about five times the area of a 35mm full-frame sensor.

Full four by five-inch cut film had to be loaded into film holders (one piece of film on each side) in a darkroom. Prior to being exposed, a slide was pulled out. Shutters were generally in the lenses, although some Crowns had focal-plane (the area of the film) shutters that supposedly got up to 1/1000th of a second, although with that adjustable-sized slit traveling across the film plane, flash synch was much slower. After exposure, the slide was pushed back to protect the film from further exposure.

Full-sized 4x5 film was 13 times the area of a full-frame 35mm exposure (24mm x 36mm). Only a very large digital sensor would come close to the amazing tonal range of a 4x5.

Though a tripod was generally more secure, it was possible to hand-hold this brute. I used it that way many times, but the roll-film adapter was much more practical.

In general, the bigger the sensor — as was true with the bigger the film size, the better the detail, dynamic range and overall photographic quality for any set of lighting, color and depth circumstances. But not always.

My Dream Camera would have or be:

• nearly as light as my Canon SD780 IS — nearly as small and as pocketable.
• be black (although silver would be more practical under the Texas sun).
• at least a 8x optical zoom (from 24mm wide angle) with a maximum aperture (zooming wide to tele) of f/2~f/4
• 8~12 megapixels with 3~6 MP/cm² pixel density
• an Electronic Viewfinder — so the effect of changing the color balance, exposure , shutter speed and apertures would show immediately
• at least a 3-inch, high-resolution, fully-articulating, live-view LCD — one of the new ones where I could point on the LCD where I want it to focus when it's on a tripod
• full manual everything — focus, aperture, shutter speed as well as full automatic everything, A and S modes, too.
• easy-access physical dials for aperture, shutter speed, ISO, exposure compensation, flash compensation, ISO, color balance and mode, so I don't have to go spelunking through menus to adjust basic controls
• manual pop-up flash that only pops up when I want it to and pops up high enough to avoid red-eye
• HD video with full zooming and auto-focusing while shooting video
• integrated lens cover that activates when the camera is turned off
• grommets for either a wrist or shoulder strap — my choice
• SDHC or SDX card capable
   

Some REALITIES

• Panasonic's new cameras about the size of my Canon SD780 have 8x zoom lenses.
• My defunct Sony F707 had a 5x — 38~190mm equivalent zoom f/2 ~ 2.4 (!) Carl Zeiss Vario-Sonnar lens with a 2/3" sensor in 2001. It cost #1,000 then. Now it's available for less than $170, but I wouldn't recommend it; the maximum capacity Memory Stick useful on it only held 128 megabytes of images, although its file size was comparatively small, too.
• New cameras have touch-sensitive LCDs that focus where you touch the screen.

 

Credible LINKs

Recommended Camera pages

Ken Rockwell's Recommended Cameras page
Steve's Cameras 2009 Holiday Gift Guide
Dave's Picks under the best sellers list
Digital Photography Review's Group Tests: Prosumer, Super Zooms, Waterproof Cameras, Premium Compact, Ultra Compact (some of these are from Christmas '08 — ancient), Compact, Budget Compact
Camera Labs' Buyer Guides

Camera review sites include:

Digital Photography Review - select Camera Database from nav bar in upper left
Imaging Resource's reviews are more easily found
Steve's Digicams . More are linked on his Today's Updates page.
Camera Labs has video tours of cameras and lenses they test
Photo Review, seems intelligent.

There are many others. New ones start all the time. Some are good; some just want to sell you something and others waste your time. Here, bold ones are the best that I know of. Many sites claim to be photography review sites, but they don't review anything. Reader reviews, like the first-timers who review stuff on Amazon, are useless.

Camera review sites come and go at an alarming rate. Keeping up is absurd, but there's a list at the bottom of this page of Steve's Digicams that looks promising.

My Cameras

I used to read too many magazines, now I read many more sites than I ever read magazines — it only seems fair since I publish online, but I don't have direct lines into the camera companies like some sites do. That's probably a good thing. I've been using cameras more or less professionally since 1963.

I like talking photography, and I love teaching it. I've taught it in the Air Force and at El Centro College in downtown Dallas. In 1991 I got my first digital camera, a Logitech Fotoman Plus with a 65mm-equivalent f/4.5 lens. It had a third of a megapixel before that was a word, and it shot grayscale only.

Right now I have four working cameras. The Canon SD780 stays in my pocket, until I need it. It's there now. I use the Nikon D300 every day, for art and especially for birds. I rarely use the Canon S5 IS other than at Joel Cooner Gallery. My Nikon D200 is for around the house and those rare occasions when I need two cameras.

The lenses I use most — the giant Sigma 150-500 I for birds; the 50mm that is great for photographing art; and the 17~55 that I bought to shoot a wedding but is great for art, events and people — are new since this century. Others I sometime use are left over from my film days in the 60s, 70 and 80s. I still have a couple old Nikon film cameras, but I only use the one that still works when I need to produce slides quickly

I don't buy and sell cameras like many people seem to. I keep them forever, often taking them apart when they don't work anymore. Here's a story about my my history of digital cameras before the Canon S5. Then came the Nikon D200, the D300 and the SD780. I don't buy in a frenzy. I wait.
 

Lens review sites

photozone,
followed closely by DPR
Bjørn Rørslett's Lens Survey and Subjective Evaluations (links at the bottom of that busy page) for mostly Nikon lenses — his camera and other reviews
PopPhoto
Lens Reviews
photodo
Camera Labs
SLR Gear
Shutterbug: Lenses - good magazine, but their site really wants to sell you a subscription;
 

Camera Test Sites

Rob Galbraith's Memory Card Speed tests is the web standard — choose camera from upper right drop-down
Thom's Tests - photo writer with opinions
Steve's DigiCams' Image & Film Scanners
Digital Arts Photography's Color Balancing Digital Images with a Grey Card
Gordy's Camera Straps
Gizmodo
Enticing the Light;
ClearView;
4/3rumors;
photo-i web links;
The Luminous Landscape is an oddly ugly site full of beautiful ideas;
Really Right Stuff - your camera support experts, includes the superb Tripod 101;
National Geographic - Photograph contest winners - Your Best Shot and others
j2k
Version Tracker: Photoshop Filters
and there's always my How to Photograph Art.
 

The Author's Photographs

DallasArtsRevue
Amateur Birders Journal
JoelCooner.com.
The Austin Sun in 1976
some recent photos
my personal site
somebody's house
ThEdblog for the pictures (Note cameras used for individual shots are marked in light gray.)

 

My latest email address is always on the Contact us page.

Support this site. Become a Supporting Member of DallasArtsRevue to get your own
web page, entry in DARts shows & other benefits

DARts Index
Art Calendar

top

=

since early January 2010 (except my web host often screws up hit counts.)

This page is updated often. Lately I've upgraded and upsized the camera and lens images.