I enjoy taking photos. Having kids, they are present in many of them, but I also like to take photos of nature, architecture and more. Lately I've started feeling the pain in using point-and-shoot digital cameras. The main difficulties I'm encountering are :
- Shutter lag - taking photos of your kids can be tricky when you need to take a photo exactly when they do that funny face or before they find something much more interesting to do then to stand and wait for your camera to focus. One of the main benefits of a DSLR is the very short shutter lag and high performance.
- Low light performance - point-and-shoot cameras are not very well adapted to taking high quality photos in low light conditions. In DSLRs you can gather more light into the sensor (which is usually bigger then point-and-shoot sensor) by changing to a bigger aperture lens.
A DSLR also has more benefits mainly because you can interchange lenses and therefore get better suited glass for the specific scene requirement.
Having 2 Canon point-and-shoot digital cameras, I naturally got interested in the new Canon Rebel XSI (aka EOS 450D) which is the new model in Canon's DSLR Rebel series. One of the most interesting features this camera offers is the Live View shooting mode which allows you to frame the picture using the screen instead of the viewfinder which is very similar to the way most of us use point-and-shoot digital cameras. When researching further I discovered that the way Canon implemented the Live View mode is not suitable for fast action photo taking, but more for tripod based accurate photographing. Nevertheless, this camera has a very impressive feature set and photos that I saw in reviews reveal very high image quality. 
A couple of weeks ago when discussing this issue with a friend he asked me if I'm familiar with the new Sony DSLR cameras. I was surprised since I didn't know Sony manufactured DSLR cameras. I knew that the Sony brand is well known in audio and video equipment market but I wasn't familiar with the fact that they had professional DSLR cameras. After some reading I've discovered that Sony is indeed a newcomer to the DSLR market and that their entrance initiated in 2005 by jointly developing DSLR cameras with Konica-Minolta and eventually buying their entire DSLR business at 2006. Sony's DSLR series is called "Sony α (alpha)" and the two newest are the A300 and A350. Again, what caught my eye was the live-view feature that Sony implemented in a innovative way which does not hinder the camera's performance (especially the quick focus) when using it. Another feature that the new Sony cameras have (and Canon's don't) is in-body image stabilizer which works with every lens you attach. On the downside Sony's cameras do not perform as well as Canon's in high ISO settings and they have a much smaller variety of lenses available.
The only thing left to do is hurry up and go the the camera store and try them myself before my birthday arrives (which is two weeks from now).
Comments