Digital Single Lense Reflex (SLR) vs Consumer Point & Shoot Cameras

Beach Art

Scattered along Sunset beach and English Bay Beach in Vancouver is a funky and eclectic mix of metal sculpture. Each work adds a nice moment of incongruity for new visitors to the Seawall. To old fans like me though, over time, they've become cooler and cooler.

Funny how that works. With inanimate objects familiarity breeds affection. Tune in for details as well as photos of the various scupltures along the path.

And, while the weather here has returned to its winter norm (rain) we have not had "The Big One" (earthquake wise) and have not descended into nose hair freezing temperatures of -40 'C like the rest of Canada. Brrrr. There's something about being so low on the thermometer scale that Fahrenheit and Celsius match that just chills my spine. No pun intended.


Pink Sunset

On my walk a few days ago I brought along my video camera and mono-pod to capture some vibration free stock footage of the Seawall. I was quite happy with the results and for those not familiar with a mono-pod it's basically a device that serves the same purpose as a tripod only with one leg rather than three. It might seem like a useless concept but given that you can use your two legs as the second and third pods you and the mono-pod, in effect, can get nearly all of the benefits of a tripod.

The big advantage is that there's no cumbersome set-up involved with a mono pod. You park yourself, plant the mono pod and take a picture or film a slice of video.

This setup worked great with the video filming and most of the shots were solid as a rock. The more I upload to DivX's Stage6 or YouTube the fussier I'm getting with my video. Even though the digital video camera I use has tons of electronic smarts engineered to reduce the effects of vibration it's not good enough for me or the viewers. My 10,000+ viewed videos are rock solid. My shakey pictures of waterfalls get 200 hits. Do the math.

Anyway, ... I've digressed myself.

The video was great (rock solid) and the stills from a few days earlier with my Nikon were also great. However I've realized that I was starting to turn my daily exercise routine into a video or still photo shoot. Vancouver is such a cute city, rain or shine, that I hate walking past a great photo moment and thinking "Ack!! A great photo moment and I can't capture it!" Same with the great video moments. However slick feeder material for cool blog content is not the number one reason I go for a daily power walk. Burning 300 calories and eventually loosing this gut fat is.


Welcome to Vancouver

So, in a flash of brilliance as well as techno-rationalization, I was able to convince myself that it was time to take the plunge and pick up a cool little consumer point and shoot digital camera. A pocket friendly something that would take decent resolution photos, decent video and would not kill my budget. Something that, unlike my current Digital Video camcorder and hi resolution still camera, I'd have no problem taking on walks rain or shine.

What you see in this blog entry are the results of going from a nicely configured Nikon D80 10.2 Mpixel camera to a tiny little Canon PowerShot A530 camera. The Nikon can't do video (the Canon can) and while my digital video camera can shoot stills the 2 Mpixel images it produces just won't cut it. The 5 Mpixel images from the Canon however will, half the time, do just fine.

This might sound like ego talking but it's not the tool it's the brain behind it that really counts.

Today, as the rain trickled down, I had few concerns in exposing the Canon to the elements to snap a few choice shots. It was small and light enough to be there when I needed it but not THERE (so to put it).