Not Quite Late Enough

Posted by Ken McCoy (Orlando-Daytona Beach, FL, United States) on 31 August 2007 in Lifestyle & Culture.

The stage is set for the late night crowd: happy time with Lotsa Java.

My first post with a new camera, given to me by my wife for a combo birthday-anniversary gift. At ISO 400 the image was quite noisy and required lots of post-processing to bring down.

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Comments (2)

Viewfinder from Bradenton, United States

Great capture of an interior people-place. What a nice spot to hang out. Is this yours, or were you the only one there?

I checked out your new camera via google; looks like a nice point and shoot, with attitude. I carry my little Pentax around for quickies; sometimes it shocks me how good the pix come out when the lighting is perfect. Lots of noise most times, when lighting is a bit dicey. And markedly slower on the trigger than my DSLR. Ah well... the price of quickie convenience. Yours is off to a very good start.

31 Aug 2007 12:24pm

@Viewfinder: It was a late night for me, just not late enough for the rest of the town - we were nearly the only ones there.

A lesson in camera marketing: although the camera is marketed to go to ISO 1600, anything past ISO 200 is too noisy for my tastes; and shooting at full resolution (8mpix) creates lots of artifacts/noise. My solution will be to shoot below ISO200, go one size smaller than full res (about 6mpix, the "real" limit for the sensor size), at "superfine" compression (alas! no RAW), then decrease EV by 1.0 to speed up the shutter a bit for handheld work. Photoshop can fix the exposure if necessary - I have noticed that the camera tends to let a little too much light in for other than portraits anyway. Then the handy size is an acceptable trade for the Nikon DSLR for noncritical shooting.

Viewfinder from Bradenton, United States

Your situation with the Canon is a lot like mine with the Pentax. I guess the real problem is the DSLR is so far superior that it's frustrating to have to mess with all the things these little cameras require. I really liked my Konica-Minolta Dimage Z2 and took a lot of pretty good pix, although low in the megapixel dept (3.1). But then I up and gave it to my daughter when I got my Nikon. Looking back, it was light years ahead of my little Pentax in everything but the megapixels. I truly love my D50, but at 6 megapixels compared to what's out there now, I am already feeling some mp envy... This could go on forever, as these cagey camera mfrs. release new models incrementally, with larger and larger mps and features to tempt us suckers to buy. And buy again. Just about the same way they market computers.

1 Sep 2007 2:03am

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Canon PowerShot SD850 IS
1/15 second
F/3.2
ISO 400
8 mm