September | 2010 | John Greathouse's Photo Blog

Archive for September 2010

My new camera and what I have shot thus far

The camera I am using for my beginning photography class (PHTC 1311 at TSTC) is the Canon PowerShot SX120 IS. One thing that I really like about my camera is the price. I bought it at WalMart in Abilene, Texas and it was the last one they had (display model) so I got an additional 30% off. Very nice. I knew I wanted a Canon because of the quality but since I am a beginning photographer, I wanted to spend as little as possible since I will definitely be moving to a digital SLR body in the future. Another thing that I like about this camera (and this is even more important than price) is that the optical zoom is 10X. Most compact cameras, according to the video, run about 3 to 5X so I feel fortunate to have landed this one. What I don’t like about this camera is that you cannot interchange lenses since it is a compact camera. I have also discovered that what shows up on the LCD screen is not necessarily what you will get on the picture. Thus the LCD screen is really there just for framing the shot and making manual adjustments.

The process for switching to manual is simple. The main selector button on top of the camera has an M on it that indicates the manual position. Then, on the back of the camera, is a set of buttons and a selector wheel that allows you to make your manual adjustments. I have only used it a little so far but I have found it to be quite fun and creative. I like shooting manually and plan on leaving the camera in manual mode. Once in manual mode, the selector wheel has a macro selection (on the left side of the wheel) that lets you shoot extreme close-ups. That is the setting I used to shoot the small lizard shown in the picture below. For the future, when I get my next camera, I plan on investing in a much more serious set of equipment that will allow me to do panoramic outdoor shoots and maybe even some sky/astronomy pictures using a camera/telescope setup. I will probably stick with the Canon brand because their lenses have a great reputation.

For this assignment, we were required to shoot a close-up, a landscape and a portrait. For the close-up, I shot a small (approx. one inch long) lizard in a glass stuffed with a red sock. For the landscape, I took a nice picture of the lake next to the Abilene Zoo. For the portrait, my stepdad agreed to let me take a picture of him on his back porch wearing his cowboy hat. I decided to shoot his picture in black and white. Tell me what you think.