Aug 24, 2014

A Proud Little Moment

I may or may not have mentioned that for Eloise's birthday I thought it might be nice to get her a little camera that she could learn the ropes on. Most cameras these days don't have ropes though so it turned into a bit of a chore to find her one that would let her, for instance, change aperture without having to delve through twelve menu levels.

My initial thought was to get her a GoPro, a ruggedised camera for extreme activities that can go underwater and survive hard vacuum, in case you find yourself on a spacewalk; you can take it basejumping into the caldera of an active volcano; or mount it upon your helmet if you want to video the ride of a lifetime (though I don't see how it wouldn't get in the way).

Anyway: to cut an excessively long story to just too long, the GoPro, while tempting, ended up being a non-starter because it... well, it has no settings.

I found out this factoid at the camera shop having done my usual amount of pre-shopping research, with Lyra balanced on my shoulders, and was expertly guided toward the low-end portable pseudo-SLR cameras that have no internal mirror or crystal viewfinder but a large screen on the back with the capability to change lenses... and shoot in RAW.

Now this might seem like a camera whose capabilities are a little on the high side for a nine-year old. But don't forget that this is a nine-year-old with a photography geek for a Dad; not that I intended to use this camera myself.

Its charms have impressed themselves upon me though a bit; it's light and portable; the focusing speed leaves a little to be desired, and off-camera flash would be a bit of a bastard; but it takes a nice natural-light picture.

Anyway to cut a too-long story to just a long story, Eloise isn't really interested. I suppose she needs to get into the habit. However I took it out with us the other day when we went to the Botanical Gardens, and she took some photos which were actually OK.

Of cabbages.


But they're nice, the picture is nicely completed, well exposed. It's a good effort!

2 comments:

  1. Which camera did you end up buying for Eloise?

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  2. Neil, it was a Canon EOS-M. It takes nice pictures but being a touch-screen has a tendency to change its settings in the pocket or when it hangs next to the body. Which is a pain.

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