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Pictures by Camera Lomo Fisheye Minolta X500 Nikon F3 T Nisis DV5 Pentax Optio 50 QTEK 9100 Rollie 35b Sony Ericsson K700i TYTN II |
Equipment
For the purposes of completeness here's a list of what equipment may be used when taking pictures on this site. Most of it will be the k700i because this is by far the easiest of all of the cameras to take, transfer and throw the picture up on-line, but as time goes on, other cameras may be used. For instance the pictures in the About section were taken with the Minolta X500.So in no particular order
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Pentax Optio 50
Ah yes it Christmas time so I get another camera. After a few false starts this seems to be a good camera. Lightweight and small so better than the DV5 which I don't seem to use so much, perhaps -my film making days are behind me. I can't differentiate between the different and numerous modes, and the manual is rubbish. So if you like exploring a bit of kit then this will be for you. After a bit of messing it seems a quite good camera. Using the flash kills the battery so if you have too many indoor very low light shots then you'll be very unhappy or you'll be changing batteries every 20 shots if it's that good. However after more playing with it the exposure lock seems to work quite well for an automatic camera. |
TYTN II
A replacement for the QTEK 9100 the TYTN II is the Windows Mobile 6 version with extra bits. With an added GPS that I have yet to get working and a VPN that I cannot get to work as I had with Windows Mobile 5 I am wondering why I have bothered. However this is a photo site so there's no point in me wasting your time with mere nerdy technical details. Strangely enough they have not put a flash with this but then again since most mobile phone flashes are balls then it's not too surprising. The camera seems to talk big but after my experience of the Pentax I'm left unimpressed, the exposure lock is rubbish but hey it's a phone. However if you compare the QTEK to the TYTN then you have to say that the TYTN is excellent with my best picture of all I think being from the Macdonald Hotel. Mind you have been calling it a T.Y.N.T 2 until someone corrected me (well they never said that's wrong, when I mentioned the phone they said "Oh the Titan" back to me), now do I feel stupid. |
Nikon F3 T
Very similar to the Minolta X500 in that it's an SLR it's in a different league, however I have inherited this camera and have not fully got around the camera. That's not to say that it's a big camera just like any SLR it's all about understanding how it works so I can't confirm how well it works, partially because I'm getting used to it and mainly because I have not got a film back from it. I would have sold it but my Wife got a Zoom lens for it for my birthday. It is a basic F3 with Titanium top, bottom and back making it tough as old boots. It's a classic camera but like anything if it works for you then it's fantastic. I still prefer the Minolta at the moment. |
Nisis DV5
Primarily a video camera I have been known to take pictures with it other than the moving ones. The pictures aren't great, but better than the k700i. Not much experience of stills with this one, but since it's digital and it's going to be easier to upload these onto the site, might get a bit of action. Bought because of it's 30fps frame rate, the only one at the time that had that frame rate that didn't break the bank. At under ?100 it was a bargain, thought the price of two 1Gb cards come to just over the price of the camera. It's a really good intro to video and digital stills, though I'm sure anyone who's serious about it and needs an introduction might out grow it very quickly, so it's lucky that all I want to do is film family outings and the like. Also like the k700i, it's not great in low light conditions for video though the stills part of it does have a reasonable flash. |
Rollie 35b
A truly great camera. The lens is outstanding, some great pictures have been taken with this one, mainly landscapes though because of the fact that it's a compact and everything's all on guesswork, and I'm not that good a photographer. Still, some of my best guesswork photography has been taken on this camera, two examples are of a sunset and one of Prague castle at night, bearing in mind I didn't have a tripod and there's no timer function and it's not automatic, I basically clamped the camera to a solid object with my hands and nothing else and selected the B setting and held the shutter open for as long as I though was required. Surprisingly enough the picture was very good, no camera shake and exposed just enough. Small enough to fit in your pocket and has some rather interesting features. The flash fits onto the bottom of the camera, and the lense (to save space when packed) recedes into the body of the camera and is pulled out and locked to take a picture, so it used to be known by other people as my spy camera. |
Minolta X500
Good dependable camera though I don't seem to be able to get outstanding pictures with it like I can with the low tech Rollie 35b, though what with it being an SLR and all the semi-automatic stuff, it's harder to take a really rubbish picture. It's sort of become the mainstay with me since we had a daughter because of the fact that it's an SLR and the fact that I now have a zoom lens to go with it. Also I suspect I now take the camera bag places where in the past I'd have just slipped the Rollie in my pocket and left everything else behind. Having said that I can't take outstanding pictures is probably a lie as I've become more used to the camera and used it more. There are some classic pictures of my Wife and Daughter, some with great light and movement, some with a tight focus and more moody that you'd have problems getting with the Rollie. |
QTEK 9100
Don't let the clinical name put you off this is branded (as far as I am aware) as an MDA and an I-Jam I think, so I suspect the phone (if you can call it that) can be called many things, the codename for this device is a Wizard from what I know. No great knowledge of the picture taking qualities yet because I have only had the device for a few days, but it is definately a Pocket PC with a phone and a camera attached. I like the fact that it allows me to be 100% mobile as this photoblog entry suggests. It's quite complicated and there are some bad points but the fact that it enables me to continue this blog mobile is for me the biggest plus point. So far the pictures appear good, the camera seems as good or as bad as your usual low budget digital camera (an when I say low budget I don't mean things that you get out of crackers). No frills, but you get a Pocket PC, phone and a keyboard bundled in. This could mean that the DV5 gets replaced for pictures. Let's see. |
Sony Ericsson K700i
A basic camera phone with very bad low light qualities, but then again you get what you pay for. It was free and it's pretty old as far as phones go. Its replacement the k750i has already been launched. It's a reasonable phone and it has a camera which is quite good, despite not really wanting it for a camera, it is now always in my pocket, I don't have to think about whether I'm going to take a picture when I leave the house and then cart a camera bag around with me. |
Lomo Fisheye
There's not much to say about this camera. Bought on a on the spur of the moment so I didn't really check what it was and also pressured by my darling wife who believes that buying another camera will make me happy (in fact I think I would get a camera from her for birthday and Christmas if she thought that I would accept it) it turned out to be something other than I thought. However I have always fancied a fisheye lense for my X500, just never been able to justify the expense. This little (expensive) compact has a wide angle lense of 170 degrees (which is termed a fisheye) constructed of only the cheapest plastic I hope the money was put into the lense, I fear that some of the money was more about image. Not having much time to play with it I have little to report, but I'm pretty sure there are some interesting things to be snapped with it, mainly large, long items that dissapear into the distance. The flash is probably worthless if you want to get a decent picture because the range of the flash is probably a matter of meters yet due to the fact that you have 170 degrees of stuff to take in, some of the more interesting details will be further away. Because of this I have a vague idea to hook in my rather excellent Cobra slave flash that will illuminate other items where this flash fails. Only time will tell.
Nice People The Obscurer Manchizzle |