Digital Cameras: Do you Take Pictures?

[Curious3141]

I hate taking pictures. I bought my first digital camera only after the birth of my kid, and that was after my wife and parents pestered me no end. And I've got nothing but baby pics.

I'm not the most sentimental person. The way I see it, I have a perfectly good set of eyes and visual cortex. Why would I need a camera?

 

[Astronuc]

I'm not the most sentimental person. The way I see it, I have a perfectly good set of eyes and visual cortex. Why would I need a camera?

So you can share them with your parents. Baby pictures of course.

I enjoy taking pictures of nature and sharing it with people. I find nature very interesting, and sometimes it's just simply beautiful.

I like taking pictures of colorful sunsets and scenery, or colorful flowers, birds and insects. I post some of these in order for people who might be interested.

I also appreciate the effort and skill of others who take pictures.

 

[Astronuc]

Land of Oz - After seeing this, I am ready to go home and raise milk wallabies.
http://www.gardenbuddies.com/articles/may06/jeanne/jeanne.php


This is pretty cool too!
http://www.gardenbuddies.com/articles/march06/pom/birdseyeview.php

 

[SimplySolitary_]

I'm not the most sentimental person. The way I see it, I have a perfectly good set of eyes and visual cortex. Why would I need a camera?

To capture a certain beauty in something that someone might not find beautiful. To realize that everything can be simply wonderful. To see a sunset over the ocean, blue waves upon the sand, is truly a beautiful thing, but to capture it in a frame in such a way that someone else might find it as stunning as you did... well, that's just an amazing thing.

 

[turbo]

What kind of digital camera do you use?? I've been looking into digital cameras, and I do have one, but I don't want to get one that'll take extremely bad shots, or will die out quicky...
:)

I have an Olympus Camedia C-3040. It does a real good job most of the time (I am more a manual 35mm guy) but the biggest gripe that I have is the time-lapse between when I press the shutter button and the time when the actual exposure is made. I love action photography and nature photography, and sometimes you just have to have an image of "NOW", not 1/2 second from now. That is a small thing if you are doing family portraits, landscapes, etc, but if you want to capture a hummingbird "dogfight", or a sport-biker doing a "stoppie", or a kayaker doing a perfect pirouette in an eddy, "NOW" is the standard that I want the camera to perform to. "Wait for it..." is not acceptible. In this one regard, the C-3040 comes up short. It is very conservative in power consumption, and I power it with Nickel-metal-hydride batteries that are available anywhere and recharge to much better strength than NiCads, without the memory problems (at least to date). The camera is small and unobtrusive. It takes a few seconds for the lens to extend to the using position on power-up, so it is not as handy as a film camera for spur of the moment shots. It is nice, though, to come back home, dump all the shots to the PC's hard drive, and later delete the clunkers and save the keepers. As with film cameras, the great shots often come unexpectedly, thus the admonition to just "keep shooting". The up-side of digital is that you don't have to keep buying film, processing the film (even if you do it yourself it gets expensive!) and printing the good prospects. Digital photography entails two real costs - the cost of the camera/lens(es)/batteries/memory cards, and the cost of the paper and ink to print out the images you want to keep. Photo-quality printers are a dead give-away compared to the cost of the paper and inks, believe me - that's where your hard-copy costs reside. I hope this helps.

 

[Astronuc]

Slow response is the one complaint I have with a digital that uses autofocus, especially as the battery ages.

I much prefer SLR, with manual settings and a relatively large f-stop for depth of field.

 

[turbo]

Slow response is the one complaint I have with a digital that uses autofocus, especially as the battery ages.

I much prefer SLR, with manual settings and a relatively large f-stop for depth of field.

Yep. The digital cameras have taken away that "gut feel" certainty that I can get the shot I want, NOW. I used to set out with one or two of my OM-1s, fitted with great lenses and loaded with film that I could trust, and could shoot all day long and get lots of nice (not just usable) images. The sunny 16 rule and a feel for dispersion/attenuation by clouds/low sun angle could keep me pretty much in the zone most of the time.

I had a chance to buy a Leica M-6 with a Noctilux lens for $2000 quite a few years ago, and just didn't have the ready cash to pull it off, and lost the deal. Why, why, why? I should have sold my truck and hitchhiked to work until I could get another vehicle!

Oh, well.

 

[peejake]

i bought my cam about 2 years ago but i think i have only taken about hardly ummmm...300Mb worth...that seems to little compared to the amount some of u people have taken... :lol:

-jake

 

[Curious3141]

To capture a certain beauty in something that someone might not find beautiful. To realize that everything can be simply wonderful. To see a sunset over the ocean, blue waves upon the sand, is truly a beautiful thing, but to capture it in a frame in such a way that someone else might find it as stunning as you did... well, that's just an amazing thing.

To my mind, the beauty of a scene is mostly an internal construct based on external cues. In other words, it's my own mind that makes a scene beautiful. How can I convey that to anyone else? Not that I'd have the least interest in doing so, the only people I would be interested in sharing that sort of experience with are immediate family, and they'd probably be with me anyway. I'm exceedingly introverted, almost to the point of social apathy.

Also, I find that taking pictures seems to detract from my immediate enjoyment of a scene.

 

[Astronuc]

Volcanos!

http://volcano.und.edu/vwintl/vwintl.html

I imagine there is quite a risk in taking those photographs, but then it must be awesome to see eruptions in person.