Sunday, October 25, 2009

Camera buying skill

The whole yesterday morning, I did on-line research on current digital SLRs, thinking to buy one. I also bought a couple of photo magazines to get some idea. I know many amateur photographers are crazy to buy Nikon D90 for some reason, even though it is one of the entry level cameras. It would be a copycat phenomenon among a group of people. To be honest, I am not the one who is keen to try a relatively expensive development, at the expense of my monthly investment.

I found out that Nikon D-3000 has acceptable specifications with a reasonable price to me. So I decided to get that one, which was introduced in July 2009 in Britain. I drove to the town centre. When I got to Jessops, I changed my mind to take Sony alfa 230 instead. Sony is rather new in digital camera world, I think. My friends normally prefer Nikon and Cannon. But I think Sony is attractive, extremely compact with a light weight. Moreover, the quality of image of Sony camera is excellent, according to several independent reviews. Next thing is that it is cheap. So I took it. I did also purchase 70-300mm zoom lens. It was nice to take test photos instantly at beach once I came out of the shop.

But I found out that there was no "live view" mode. The LCD screen was only for setting and viewing the photos taken. I must admit that I have a poor knowledge in Digital SLR camera although I used Nikon and Cannon SLRs since I was 18. I wrongly assumed that all dSLR had got a live view as its compact counterparts. In fact, my friend Vista mentioned about "live view" yesterday morning that Nikon 3000 had no such mode, but in Nikon 5000. I neglected her statement which was my mistake. The whole evening, I tried to take photos using view finder, leaving me with some eye ache.

This morning, I went back to Jessops and I did exchange with Sony A330. Now I am happy with new camera. It has got quick AF live view. That means that A330 can provide rapid camera performance without any delay for capture. Hopefully, photos will be available on my picasa web album shortly.



Updated 26.10.09

Please click : Some sample photos I took today

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10 comments:

khin oo may said...

awaiting...........nice to read. happy to see/

P.Ti said...

I prefer taking photo with view finder to live view. Juz my personal preference... Enjoy photography!

ksanchaung said...

What you share is what we get, Steve. You don't need any professional camera for sharing your experience with us.

Steve Evergreen said...

:)Why don't I need to share? You cant restrict someone else's words. I am not in army controlled nation. har harr.

some of my colleagues have been using DSLR. So I can show my post at work, sharing experience including best place for photography nearby. Obviously this post is not for you :)

Bino said...

the A330 can provide rapid camera performance without any delay for capture and it has an impressive resolution.
Thanks for your guide line to choose the good camera.
Actually, I'm crazy in camera and laptop.
I bought a sony Cyber-shot (DSC-T77,10.1 mega pixels with 4Xoptical zoom)last Feb.09.
BINO

Anonymous said...

I am using A350 and A 700 now and i like both of them for different reasons. I love A 700 because its take better picture ( i usually dont understand much of what's going on, i am a casual photographer who only does shots for my shoes and bags) and its heavier ( i love the weight, it makes me feel more powerful). For A350 i love the live view just because sometime i like taking pictures in impossible position and also for self portraits, it helps. So what i was going to say is that, have u try the A 550 or A 500? I think u might like the 5 series better because its the combination of 3 series' casualness, 7 series's serious look and quality. Moreover it has functions that are only included in point and shoots so u might have fun with it. In case if u can still exchange give 5 series a try, i am doing a test run now and love it but i think my dad and DF would kill me if i get another one even though its Alpha. Btw u made a great choice choosing Alpha, just not because its Sony but i think it will cater the best for you, since u are probably the best example for the Alpha target market

Anonymous said...

Bino, try TX1 or WX series with party shot, you will have a lot of fun with it.

khin oo may said...

လက္မႀကည္႕ခ်င္တယ္။ လက္မကုိ မတ္လုိက္ရင္ တည္႕တည္႕ေနရင္ ေခါင္းမာမယ္တဲ႕။ ေပ်ာ႕ရက္ စိတ္ေပ်ာ႕သတဲ႕ ဘယ္လုိေနသလဲ။

khin oo may said...

ဝင္ရွဳပ္သြားတယ္။
ေဆာရီး။

Steve Evergreen said...

လက္ေၾကာ္ညာေနတာမဟုတ္ရပါ