L603+Fiesta+2+Annette+Griessman


 * Digital Cameras**

For this assignment, I borrowed my daughter's digital camera, a 4.0 Cannon EasyShare CX7430. I have little experience with this camera, but as I tried to take pictures of a bumbling bumblebee, I was struck by how slow this camera was to react, both to actually take the pictures, and to save them. This resulted in me not being able to take two pictures, from a distance and then zoomed in, quickly enough to capture a bee in the same position, or even on the same flower. (Note: The bees were sitting on the flowers for quite a long time--a quicker camera would have done the trick.)

Here are some of the pictures I managed to get:



Another issue with this camera, something that shows up in the second picture, is that it doesn't have image stabilization abilities, and so even the slightest movement when taking a picture is noticable. This was especially troublesome when trying to take close-up shots.

I tried taking just some pictures of the flowers, trying for something artistic. Here are the results:



Here, I got some unexpected results. For some reason, when focusing close-up on these flowers, the camera gave me an image that was not as well lit as the previous shot. I tried a couple more close-ups, with similar results. I especially wanted to see the colors in the center of the coneflowers, which should have shown more red on the tips of each spine, contrasting with the darker interior. This would have served to give some depth to the picture.

For focus and lighting on this camera, you must press the button that takes pictures half-way down before then taking a picture, in order to allow the camera to focus and adjust lighting. Unfortunately, for the type of close-up work I was trying to do here, this camera was lacking. Here is another image that came out overly bright:



I think that for taking pictures of your friends and family at gatherings, this camera is fine. For the type of pictures I would be interested in taking--pictures of insects, birds, bats, and critters of all sorts--I'd need a better camera than this one. Most likely, I'd need a good digital SLR model, or perhaps a newer model pocket digital model, one that had image stabilization at least.

Now, on to Digital Photo Editing