Well, God bless Sears. Went out today to try to get a camera to use for the blog: it wasn't that I don't appreciate the generosity of the people who have volunteered their photos, because of course I do, but I didn't think I was going to be able to handle it, emotionally, if I couldn't post about any plants until I tracked down a public domain photo. When I'm in the mood to talk about a plant, I'm in the mood to talk about that plant, and I don't want to spend six hours trying to find a picture before I come up with something to say. By the time I find illustrations, the mood is gone.
So the husband and I went out to get a camera, and the first couple places wanted more than I wanted to spend for even their lowest-end cameras, which was depressing. Then we went to Sears, and they were working on pricing last years' floor models when we got there, which, long story short, means I got a newish 6.0 megapixel camera for $30. It's not perfect: I have trouble holding the camera still enough to get sharp pictures, because of the way it's designed, and the pictures I get are still only 640 x 480 px, but it's a vast improvement over the previous camera.
So, to (literally) illustrate my point --
This is a picture of Spathiphyllum x 'Golden Glow,' taken with the new camera:
So perhaps you can see what I meant about the color taking some getting used to.
Is it the best picture imaginable? Well no. But for $32.79, I'm not sure I care.
The camera in question here is an Olympus FE-170, if anybody cares. Sears wanted, I think, $129.99 or better for the newer Olympus FE-210, so I figure I did well.
Some of the borrowed photos from public domain or volunteer sources will still be used from time to time, but I think most of them from here out will be my own original photos, of my own personal plants. It should be clear from the photo credits which is which.
Sunday, October 21, 2007
Camera
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3 comments:
you can change the resolution of the pictures you take by accessing the image quality menu and choosing a higher-quality setting.
Also, use your macro setting, a little flower sign normally, and it really helps with the quality of the the pics. I have an even older olympus and I still love it.
Thanks for the tip about the macro setting (now if I could just get that to be the default every time I turned the camera on, we'd be all set).
The image quality thing wasn't a complaint exactly: I know I could get better pictures out of it if I were willing to upload them to my computer two at a time, but that takes more time to do than I want to put into it.
I'm also noticing that having the flash on never improves the picture, but maybe that just means I'm not doing it right.
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