And we accidently bought ourselves new toys.
That is to say, we had intended to get Stu a video camera. I hadn't quite intended to buy a camera for myself. That is, I'd been thinking about it, but hadn't fully decided what to get. So it wasn't as fully researched as I'd have liked it to have been.
So the new toy. A Canon 500D with an 18-135mm lens (28-200mm equivalent) - which is pretty much what I had with the Sony. The idea of having to continually change lenses while travelling still puts me right off - one of the big reasons I went with the Sony last time. So this lens is a decent compromise.
If anything the focus is a little soft, but still possibly clearer than the Sony. Certainly the colours are better and less chromatic aberration. I gave it a bit of a workout today at the Lego Brick Expo at Woden. Generally did fairly well.
One disadvantage of using a real viewfinder is that it doesn't give you a guestimate of the exposure. With the Sony you could get a pretty good idea of how the photo would turn out even before you took it. No such luxury with the Canon (except maybe with the live view thingie).. gonna be a bit of trial and error methinks.
The image stablising is pretty nifty though and seems to work fairly well.
So this is the fifth real camera I have owned.
My first was a Ricoh film camera I got for Christmas in 1991. It was a great little camera and took quite decent pictures. Unfortunately it was stolen along with my bag in 1996, along with half a roll of undeveloped film that included such events as my birthday outing to Phantom of the Opera.
My second camera was a Hyundai. Yes I know. I was in an altered mental state the day I bought it, having been told off by someone previously. So I wasn't thinking clearly and was sucked in by the sales guy on the day. Stoopid stoopid stoopid. This camera was very average, but I used it up until I got my first digital camera. Pretty sure the first photo on it was of my brand new second hand (and first) car. Ended up giving it away on Freecycle some years ago.
My third camera was my first digital camera - an Olympus C-900 zoom. My Uncle Graham bought it for me in Singapore for ~$1500. This was a fantastic camera. 1.3 megapix, 3x optical zoom. I used it for five years and was totally happy with it. The main problem with it was not having any control over exposure settings, so it didn't do well with the colouring in sunsets etc. Loved this camera, still have it stored away.
My fourth camera was my Sony DSC-F828. OK I really *really* loved this camera. ~58500 photos taken on it. Three overseas holidays. 8 megapix, which was ahead of its time (I got it in 2004 and it was several years before 8mp camera became the norm). One of the best features of this camera was its ability to bend the camera body, which made taking photos from waist height, and over the head, extremelly easy. I am going to miss that sorely. Really the only reason I'm upgrading at all is for better photos in low light.
Technically "random camera" is Stu's camera. I bought it for him for Christmas in 2005. It's also a great little camera, that's pretty easy to hold onto and take photos of "random" stuff when just walking around - it was used in Japan a lot this way.
Not sure if the iPhone counts as a camera, but I do take quite a lot of photos on it (it somehow seems more socially acceptable to pull out a phone than a thumping big black camera).
And finally the 500D. Still only about a third of the way through reading the manual. Still have a lot to figure out how it actually works and how I can get the best results out of it....
