digital camera question

I was wondering what type of cameras seem to work out the best for everyone. I have been looking at a SONY CD500, does anyone have one of these? If so how do you like it? I would imagine that being able to burn the pic's to a CD or CD/RW would make it so much easier than getting a big memory card and always trying to remember your USB cord. Rich, what do you use? your pic's are always very sharp and very clear, plus you seem to have excelent close ups! Anyway I just wanted to know if there was a "common" camera. And rants and raves about all the others...


thanks

I thought about getting one that burned to CD as well, BUT then I thought about not being able to toss the crappy ones, and having to REBURN a CD later of all the 'good' pics.

I have an Olympus C-4000, and really like it. I have it mainly to take pics of my son, since I don't have any family nearby, that way they can watch him grow.

Charles Escoffery, a boa guy has a Nikon Coolpix, 2500 or 4500, not sure of which, and has a LOT of neat toys for his (light, magnifier and so on) that lets him take some AMAZING shots of his animals. Go to the boa forum on KS and do a search for CE.

http://forums.kingsnake.com/view.php?id=101698,101698

http://forums.kingsnake.com/view.php?id=101649,101649

http://forums.kingsnake.com/view.php?id=97394,97394

Those are just a few of his more recent posts.

The one other feature I like about my camera is I can take short videos with it, 30 second low quality clips, but it gives family a chance to see my son, who's now 6 months, in action...

Here's a pic of my boa, just to show you a pic from this camera.

Hope I've helped some!

I'm running the Kodak DX4900 w/ their set of add on lens for close ups.



I also have a 128 MB memory card for it. When on the road you can take pics all day and have a hard time filling the card up.

Oh my thought that was Godzilla for a second there Very nice detail and great close up. I'll have to go chek out the price range for that camera and see what the difference is between them...

Thanks guys....

Dang it Dan! You've got this thread scrolling off the end of my desk with that big photo you posted!

BTW, this thread will probably eventually get moved to the photography forum.

Anyway, to answer your question, I use a Fuji Finepix S1 Pro camera body with my Nikon lenses for my photo work. The lens I use the most is the 105mm micro lens. The max size of the images produced are 3040x2016x16million colors. Each photo is a TIF file that is 17.60 megabytes. The camera has a 1 gig micro hard drive in it that can hold up to 58 of those images.

And wouldn't you know it? Fuji has recently come out with the S2 model...... Rats.... Higher resolution and more bells and whistles... I may have to put up another special sale on some corn snakes....

Anyway, the glass makes a lot of difference in the photos. Nikon lenses are world renown, but a bit on the pricey side. I already had a bunch of them for my 35mm N90S that I had accumulated over the years, but it wasn't until rather recently that an almost affordable digital camera body became available that I could use those lenses with. The only reason I got my Fuji when I did was because someone just happened to put a barely used one up on Ebay with an excellent price on it about 5 minutes before I found it. I hit the "Buy It Now" button without even thinking about it much!

Anyway, one term you will need to become very familiar with for closeup work is "depth of field". A thorough understanding of this term and how to apply it correctly will make all the difference in the world in how your photos turn out for you. Of course, I am not really sure how many models of digital cameras emulate this if they have a fixed aperture lens on them.

Hey, I converted an image to regular JPG and it is ONLY 3 megabytes in size ...

LMAO. Like you have room to talk, at least mine was a picture of a lizard. What a waste, all the bandwidth for a snake

LOL!! Photo fight!!!

Rich, sorry I missed the photo section. That is a great close up. Although I just searched that camera and it is a bit out of my price range though. The camera I am looking at has a macro setting of 1.6" I would imagine that would give me nice close ups. Although I am sure it will take time to get things to look as good as I would like them to be. That Sony I am looking at has a Zeiss lens, Rich you being the gun guru, I know you have heard of Zeiss scopes and binoculars! You guys have been big helps and keep those pics coming!


Now if I could only find someone who has the camera I am looking at....hmmmm

1.6 inches I assume is the working distance from the lens?

That makes it pretty impractical to use a camera mounted flash unit. The target would probably be in the shadow of the camera lens. And for closeups, you do NEED to use flash. Don't forget to look up and understand about depth of field. Generally the closer you get to the subject, the narrower the depth of field will be. The way you compensate for that is by using the smallest aperture your lens has available. The smaller the aperture, the wider the depth of field. The drawback to this is that the smaller the aperture, the less light that gets in, so consequently exposure times go up. That can introduce blurred images. The way to compensate for this problem is MORE LIGHT, and lots of it!

I've attached a pic of my Fuji S1 camera and the flash bracket I use. Having the flashes arranged in this manner allows me to put the flashes directly on the subject, no matter how close I get to it. Having that much light available at my beck and call also allows me to use the smallest aperture the camera lens has to offer.

In many instances, I will also have a third flash mounted directly above the subject that fires when the other two fire. In most of the photos where I utilize my blue backdrop, you will be able to see three separate shadows made by those flashes. The problem with using a single flash is that you can have very stark shadows that detract from the image.

It's a lot to learn, for sure and there is NO substitute for experience.

Good luck!

Yeah I would asume that 1.6" would be as close you could get to your "target" and still focus. I went over and looked at the specs and got this info on the apeture.
• Aperture Range: f2.0 – 8.0 13-step
Is that good, decent? I know nothing about taking pic's. As I am sure you have noticed on the cornsnake site


But whats the worse that could happen, i get it and burn through a bunch of CD's before I figure out how to make things look good...Looks like about $25 for 10 156MB CD's and who said learning was free??