Helpful hints

Here are a collection of helpful hints. They are mainly things which I've found by experimenting with things I own, and I couldn't find somewhere on the web.
Please take this as advice from someone you don't know, my liability stops at the price I charge you for this information (ie. nothing!).

I've been an avid photographer since I left school, shooting around 1000 pictures a year to film!
I work in technology, and I bought my first digital camera (a Casio QV-10) back in 1997. I've upgraded about every 18months since then !
My main digital cameras at the moment are a Canon EOS 10D, and a Konica Minolta X50, the Canon makes a great top end camera, and the Minolta is a great little point and shoot... See also my Digital camera links

Canon EOS 10D

I opted for the Canon EOS system over the alternatives because the system has been around for years so there are loads of second hand lenses available at very reasonable prices. My current kit bag contains:-
Note: With 4G cards on the 10D, it's important to format them on a PC with a 32K cluster size. You can do this from the command line on Windows XP using the format command, and the /A:32K option. This results in about a 40% speed improvement over using the camera's built in format command.

Other Canon kit I've owned

10D vs 300D (also vs 20D and 30D)

I initially upgraded the firmware of the 300D to make it similar to the 10D, on looking at the price difference on eBay, I decided to go the full hog, and upgrade the camera. I looked at the 20D and 30D, and although they offer a few more pixels (8.2M vs 6.3M) it's only about 14% increase in X and Y, so doesn't actually make that much of a difference. In RAW mode the buffer is much smaller (6frames I think), and this was the deciding factor to go for a 10D.
The advantages I've noticed of the 10D over the 300D:-
Of course when they release a 40D with a 10.1M pixel sensor, and at least a 9 frame RAW buffer, then I'll be saving the pennies again!

Canon IR info

The 300D and some of the other consumer level cameras, can use the RC-1 and RC-5 remote controls. The IR codes can be coded into a Pronto or something similar:-
now 0000007d00010001000f00f2000f0cdb
delayed0000007f00010001000f00b0000f0cbe


Konica Minolta X50

Konica's X50 page
Fantastic little camera with 5.0MP with 2.8x optical zoom

Fuji F10

The Konica popped in to the repair shop, and I though it was going to be beyond econmical repair, so while it was out I got the Fuji F10. It's low light capability is about the best on the market, and it's got a few more pixels than the Konica, but 9 times out of 10 the Konica takes better pictures. The Fuji is a better camera, it has a better sensor, better lens, better screen, and it's faster, but... In point and shoot mode, the Konica X50 "Just Works" better.




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This page was lasted updated on Saturday, 07-Nov-2009 06:58:37 GMT

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