The easy way of finding the best camera.

Trying to find the best-rated digital cameras online is a difficult task. I have finally found a good format to guide you through the maze and to the digital camera that is best for you.

I have created an interactive Mind Map to show you which digital camera to buy based on your requirements. You can manipulate the map and let it guide you toward a small selection of cameras that fit your needs:

Learn how to avoid data loss and how to shop smart.

Nothing can be more frustrating than losing pictures due to memory card problems. I shot some nice pictures at the end of a strenuous hike to a waterfall. As Murphy wants it, those images were lost, not the ones easier to take again.

As a semiconductor professional, I have some insight into Flash technology. Some of it translates into easy to follow guidelines to avoid data corruption. I put technical background information in italics, making it easier for you to skip over these sections.

Geotagging

Through geotagging, you can put spatial information in your pictures, making it easy to find out where you took a particular photograph. The exact GPS coordinates are impressed into the EXIF image data. You can then put your photographs on a map and share it.

My Dad used to travel a lot when he was younger. He was a service technician and he got around. He infected me with the travel bug. I still love to listen to his tales of foreign places. Years take their toll on memories, and sometimes my Dad cannot remember where he took a photo anymore. (I also bought him a slide scanner to prevent his pictures from fading away.)

How different is our world by comparison? We take digital photographs whose color will never fade and now we can even geo-tag them, so that we may never forget where we took a photo. Years later, we can go back to precisely the same spot and see what changed. We can share special places with others or simply promote our photography (Panoramio, Flickr).

The prices for GPS receivers have eroded. Even my iPhone has one already built in. It takes photographs and automatically attaches GPS data. Jobo and other accessory makers have developed GPS receivers that record a location every time you press the shutter release button on your camera, allowing you to combine them later on your PC. For several years, I used to carry a small Garmin GPS, recording track logs and using programs like JetPhoto Studio, Google gpicsync or Microsoft Location Stamper to put the GPS data into my digital files. Geotagging is now a mainstream technology and is more popular than ever.

However, new technologies always bear dangers of exploitation.

This article is part of a larger series on lens buying options.

Choosing the right lenses is still hard, even with all the technical facts at our disposal. How do the lenses behave in real life and why are lenses from some manufacturers cheaper?

Small ApertureWhy some lenses cost more than you can imagine.
Lenses with wide maximum aperture are big, heavy and expensive. Besides the coolness factor of showing off large lenses, what drives people to buy these monsters and why should we even care?

What is Aperture?

Aperture is the circular opening of your lens.
You can control the size of the opening with the aperture setting on your camera. The camera then controls the lens. Depending on the lens you are using, you can dial in a different maximum aperture setting (smallest f-number). Lenses with large maximum aperture settings thus, need to be physically large as well, to deal with the wide opening.

Somehow, whenever Dani and I go on a trip, we end up shopping for it. This time we bought better carry-on suitcases with laptop bay, since we will try to cut down on our check in luggage.

We also end up buying camera stuff, even if we buy just a filter or some other accessory.

This time we will go on a big city trip in the eastern USA and Canada. Big tripods are always a hassle on trips like this. Even if you would choose to lug a big tripod through a city, officials often restrict access to public places if you carry a tripod. They automatically assume that you make a load of money from your pictures, just because you plan and choose not to have blurry pictures.

On this trip we are going to better the odds in our favor with our new Gorillapods. We bought the large version (Gorillapod SLR-Zoom) which is surprisingly small. It appeared bigger on the pictures. I think you also need a tripod head, although you can screw the pod into your camera directly, some positions require the head. I am using my Bogen Head in the picture.

Attaching the pod to the tree is surprisingly flimsy. I do not expect to get superior results from this, especially on a windy day. I have to remember to turn on the mirror lockup feature, even with moderately long exposures. When I am back from the trip, I will post a Gorillapod review.

This article is part of a larger series on lens buying options.

Scenario: Wildlife photography on a shoestring

Mark’s story:

Mark contacted me with a difficult task.
Mark is a photo enthusiast who upgraded his Canon S2 to his first D-SLR, a Canon XTi. The XTi is an excellent choice and apparently, he got a good deal on it, too.
Mark lives in Alaska and always enjoyed the great range of his S2 (432mm equivalent) to capture wildlife.

What we considered:

Since his XTi already came with a kit lens, we focused on the most reach for the money. A 300mm lens gives him an equivalent focal length of 480mm due to the XTi’s 1.6 crop factor.

Split Neutral Density Filter (c):kodak.comLandscape scenes often contain more dynamic range than our cameras can capture. Even though digital cameras have increased their resolution tremendously, the dynamic range they can capture has not changed much over the years. Fuji has introduced the Super CCD SR to extend the dynamic range, but the technology is expensive and has not been adapted throughout the industry.
Split Neutral Density filters are one solution to this problem. They regulate the amount of light hitting the image sensor. A Split Neutral Density filter works like graded sunglasses for your camera. The gradient will make sure that there is a smooth transition between the shaded and the clear area.
Usually one would use these filters with the darker area covering the sky, to reduce the brightness levels there and reduce the dynamic range of the scene to something the camera can manage.
I do not use these filters anymore for their many limitations. The transition is usually on a straight line, which works well for reasonably flat landscapes with a clear transition between sky and land. In other cases, this is not the case. I would not use a split neutral density filter to shoot an alley, a tunnel, or a city skyline (a fact that bit me in this shot).
Another big drawback is that you need too many of those filters, depending on your focal length. Wide-angle shots require a much smoother transition, since your lens covers a much wider area. Telephoto lenses require filters with a much harder edge.
These days I usually take multiple exposures or try to recover as much dynamic range by processing my RAW files through HDR software.
If a scene has no movement and there is plenty of time to set up a tripod, I always prefer to take multiple exposures. During post processing, I can create any kind of transition with any shape I want. Even easier is to run these images through the same HDR program. This is what I did for this image of False Kiva.