Friday, June 5, 2009
Conversation Bites / Good advice / Kitchen Gear / News Slender, Smart, Accomplished: It's My New Camera
Posted by Nicki Wood on Fri, Jun 5, 2009 at 10:50 AM
The quality of photos from cellular telephone cameras is surprisingly good, as I've learned over the last couple of months after the compact family Olympus up and died. Still, cell phone pictures were just a stop-gap measure, and for my birthday, Big Fella gift-wrapped a mighty little Nikon Coolpix, Nearly New In Box, bought from a gearhead upgrading to more video capacity.
The owner's manual is 117 pages long, and I am working my way through it. So far it seems that the camera can do everything but order pizza.
Pizza shortcomings aside, the Nikon does so much more than I need, but I hope to become worthy of it. My first big achievement was to set the default mode to close-up shots in dark rooms without flash. In other words, plated food inside dim restaurants. There's also a mode called Best Shot Selector. In BSS mode, the camera continues to shoot so long as the shutter button is depressed, up to 10 exposures, then selects the best one based on number or density of pixels. I KNOW -- IT'S PRACTICALLY EINSTEIN!
The Nikon is half the size of the deceased Olympus and one-quarter the size of the big Canon, which we call The Tank. The Tank takes great photos, but is so big that it causes anxiety in restaurant proprietors and made me look like a tourist.
The Nikon and I are in honeymoon phase, and I'm still learning about it. If you have tips, experience or wisdom (with the Nikon, I mean) pass them on.
Comments (0)