New camera review

I’d been putting back the purchase of a new photographic equipment since the discovery of my Canon’s breakdown in early autumn this year. My first preference towards the new device was Canon Powershot SX130, which I found in Euro RTV AGD in late October. The camera could be picked up only in one of their shops in Warsaw, but due to busy and stressful period at work in the last days of October I postponed the visit to the shop for 2 November to find out owing to my procrastination they’d run out of stock. Then in November I was focusing on sitting for the exam and gave up on looking for the new camera. Last Saturday, while browsing Media Markt leaflet I found Olympus D-760. The camera took my fancy, so I checked its technical specification in the web, settled for the purchase, rushed to the car and drove to the nearest shop (Warszawa Krakowska).

The camera offers a decent trade-off between price and quality. For a device offering 12.5-fold optical zoom, 15 mpx matrix, optical picture stabiliser, HD filming and tens of useless gadgets I paid 419 PLN. Enough to have my needs met, as I wouldn’t have probably made use of a better equipment and this one is small enough to fit into inner pocket of a jacket and stay invisible. On the other hand, as any newly produced device it appears fragile and gives an impression of being designed to endure 2-year warranty period and some two days beyond it before breaking down.

I regret not taking it with me on Wednesday, when Ursynów witnessed the biggest blackout in last 15 years. I drove to P&R Stokłosy shortly after 7 a.m., it was still dark and the only lights emitters were vehicles. Reminded me of North Korean power outages and was worth documenting, but would I have taken decent-quality photos with a new camera I’d not been familiar with?

I took the camera last Friday to capture beauty of a frosty, sunny morning (-12C). To the right - having parked the car, I roam around Metro Stokłosy bus terminus. I use ‘snow’ theme to take shot of the intersection of ul. Ciszewskiego and al. KEN, it’s shortly before sunrise...

To the right – I walk out of Świętokrzyska underground station. It’s slowly getting light. Camera’s settings remain unchanged. Machines in the background belong to second underground line builders. As I’m familiarising with the new device, I’m focusing more on the quality of the photo rather than its content.

To the right – ten before eight, sauntering towards my office I turn aside to make a picture of ul. Towarowa towards Plac Zawiszy. If you enlarge, you might come to the same conclusion I’ve reached – I’d focused on the wrong object, hence key parts of the picture are not as sharp as I’d want.

To the right – another try, night-time shooting. No tripod, flashlight turned off, camera held in slightly quivering (in attempt to do my best to prevent any motion) hands. Could it have been done better?

Today I ventured to Piaseczno to play with the camera again. To the right – I focused on the Christmas tree on the town square and even forgot to cover it all and ‘cut off’ the star at the top. My old Canon used to put out more ‘granular’ photos, while shots from Olympus seem still kind of blurred…

Around half past two magnificent fog, which I’d been lingering over the whole day, began to descend and grow thicker. To the right – intersection of ul. Okulickiego, ul. Powstańców Warszawy, ul. Nowa and ul. Mleczarska. I’m standing some 100 metres from it and use optical zoom to the limits. I focused on the tree in the background, but given the acuity of other objects on the photo relative to the tree, there was some fail.

I walk homewards and cross the single-track coal line. Similar shots have been taken by me here in June 2009. I somehow adore the theme of lines converging onto the horizon. Here they disappear, swathed in the fog. I focus on the horizon.

Then I turn around and capture the view eastwards. I took several other photos today, but for sake of practising how to handle the new camera rather than to document something. Gave me much joy on this gloomy and short day.

I was used to my old camera, so using a new one means picking up new habits. The Olympus has a few features that wind me up, e.g. when it turns on it’s always in photo-taking mode and I think it can’t be set to go into photo-watching mode after switching on. The other thing is that it runs on its internal battery, rather than on AA batteries, which is good, except for the fact its battery begins to charge up every time I plug the camera to the computer to transfer photos or to the TV set to watch it. This will diminish durability of the battery, due to ‘memory effect’.

The new camera has more settings, many gadget-like, this translates into opportunities to tweak with something and more chances to screw something up = take an unsatisfactory photo due to choosing wrong settings. Unlike with my old Canon, I wouldn’t fall back on ‘automatic’ mode, which fails to properly adjust setting to the scenery. The best choice is to desist from using themes and use a ‘P-mode’, where you can change key setting manually.

The biggest challenge is sharpness adjustment. I seem to be mastering how to control it, although I’m more skilful in it in shots taken outdoor rather than indoor, some progress is made since first snap, albeit there’s still a way to go. Again I’m proven the more complex camera, the worse the photo taken by a skill-deficient photographer will likely be. To make a good use of this camera, you’d rather not just press the button…

I haven’t tried out its filming capacity. Due to much higher resolution, my new Olympus will offer much better quality than the Canon, but at the expense of film size. At the moment I have a 1GB memory card taken from my old camera and the new one says it can save up to 3 minutes 56 seconds of decent-quality footage on it, so I should consider upgrade to 8GB card.

To recap, the camera fully meets my needs of occasional documenting reality for pleasure. It has now almost 100 snaps on the counter and, as I notice, just like a brand-new car, needs running in before its capacity can be fully utilised; this process is under way. Am I right?

In the meantime, my old, defective was put up for sale on Allegro. 12 minutes before the end of the auction the highest bid is 10.28 PLN. If a new user knows how to fix it on his own, after buying a shutter flex for another 10 PLN on Allegro, they will have a decent, slightly obsolete compact for a dirt-cheap price.

Camera breakdown

Once Scatts (mate, are you with us?) outlined a clear distinction between photography andsnapping. He identifies the former with high-flying art of documenting the surrounding world and the latter as thoughtless, quantity-oriented pressing buttons of cameras. For months I’d been trying to assign myself to one of the two categories and probably should wind up as one of those who Scatts scornfully calls ‘snappers’. On one hand I adore and can appreciate good quality photography, take pleasure in watching magnificent photos and like taking photos, but on the other I have too many features of an ordinary snapper. I’m slightly fond of photography, but it would be an understatement if I told photography is my hobby. Firstly, because I spend too far little time and money for it and secondly because I don’t possess professional equipment a photography freak must have*.

My equipment is typical for an amateur who needs to take shots on holiday, during social events and in other odd occasions that need to be documented. I have a compact Canon (PowerShot A460), bought in July 2007. The camera had served me quite well for over five years and despite its age and low-end characteristics, it generally would meet my needs. It could have done with a better optical zoom (4 times often doesn’t magnify as much as I would like to), picture stabiliser and could shoot films in higher resolution, but all in all I was satisfied with what my small (a big advantage, especially when you can slip it into an inside pocket of your jacket) Canon offered me. When describing my camera I had to switch to the past forms, because the camera doesn’t serve me any more…

I took the last normal snap with it on 23 August at 18:21, just upon leaving the office, to document heavy, as for holiday period and late rush hour, traffic on ul. Towarowa, jammed in both ways (to the right).

Two days later I drove to Łódź for a friend’s wedding ceremony. Before arriving at southern part of Łódź I stopped over near the centre to walk and photograph some of the buildings in town. For no apparent reason all photos were overexposed. On my way back home I took a shot of A2 motorway at night (to the right). The quality of the picture is more than satisfactory, given poor lighting, lack of picture stabilising function and the fact I drove 130 kmph and focused more on driving than on photographing. I actually deserve being reproached over using camera behind wheel when the car was in motion… If you enlarge the picture you should notice horizontal stripes on it…

Over the next weeks there were very few moments when I needed to use the camera. In September I didn’t bother to turn it on at all, despite carrying it around. I do keep it in my briefcase, but usually when I run across something worth documenting I don’t bother to take it out. And even if I take the trouble, the resulting photos land on my hard disk and then end up archived on a CD.

In early October I wanted to immortalise thick morning fog, took out the camera, took photos, but all were overexposed. I tried out the camera in daylight, in the darker environment, tapped symptoms of the breakdown into google and soon had the diagnosis – shutter flex ribbon packed up…

Two weeks ago I left it in one of Warsaw’s best known camera repair centres to get the repair cost estimation and, if the cost was acceptable (below 100 PLN), to have it fixed. After a week a technician from the centre sent a valuation report, with costs totalling to 220 PLN (therein 40 PLN for the flex ribbon and 180 PLN for labour charges), so more than a working camera’s market value. Tomorrow I’m picking it up from the centre (one positive thing is that cost estimations free of charge are standard on the market) and my plan is to contact four other repair centres in Warsaw. If each offers to fix it for 100 PLN or more, the camera will be put up in Allegro and sold for as much as the most willing bidder will be ready to pay. Oddly enough, I found in the internet such repairs in provincial Poland cost around 70 PLN, but if I don’t go by chance there in business and don’t stay at least three days, a journey Tomaszów Lubelski only to have the camera mended doesn’t seem cost-effective.

The other option is to buy a new camera. It will be again a compact one, from the upper band of the low end, with all functions and enhancements my old Canon lacks. My candidate is currently Canon PowerShot SX 130, which given my needs offers an excellent trade-off between price (mere 399 PLN) and quality (12 times optical zoom, optical picture stabiliser, HD filming), but I’m holding off on the purchase until the issue of the old camera is sorted out.

I must say over the last days I did miss the possibility to take out the camera to immortalise the beauty of sunny and warm Polish autumn. On Friday I cycled to Las Kabacki and I could only use my out-of-ark (almost five years old, but always reliable – has never let me down) Nokia 3110 Classic, whose built-in camera is crappy (example to the right, snapped while moving at some 20 kmph) and I wished I could use a decent equipment. Yesterday morning I walked to the swimming pool in Piaseczno and back and again could not immortalise magnificently beautiful, sun-lit morning thick fog. Today I drove to the countryside to visit my great grandparents’ grave and again missed a camera which could document golden Polish autumn in full charm.

Over the last days I needed a camera to document the beauty of the nature, which shows after many weeks I am again sensitive to it. And I began to discern it again, I’m on the mend!

A propos my musings from before two weeks. What’s been happening with me is not just the example of defence mechanisms turning on. These have been also coping strategies harnessed to tackle adversities. How I changed over last months might also be the illustration of the process of psychological resilience taking place. Worth reading about this. Theory of economics says markets have self-stabilising mechanisms that bring them into equilibrium. It is fascinating to observe how psychology resembles economics. Both sciences explain mechanisms of self-regulation and both take note of their imperfections. Just as not all markets allocate resources in the most productive way, not all humans’ psyches find ways to cope with stress and to emerge stronger after facing adversities…

Before deciding to study at SGH I wanted to get in to faculty of psychology. I changed my mind in September 2005, eight months before leaving high school and don’t regret, but now it’s a great time to foster my interest in psychology.

* There is an alternative approach, saying quality of photography depends mostly on the photographer’s skills, as expressed by the Polish adage Na nic sprzętu kupa, jak fotograf d*pa.