I can’t seem to win.
For those who know me, I’m a pretty avid photographer. I have some pretty decent gear — my Canon 30D is my main body and my “walk around” lens is a 17-40 F4. It’s an awesome setup for a lot of things I like to do.
Alas, it’s not the best thing in the world to carry around when hiking through the woods and geocaching. First, it’s heavy with everything attached (I have a battery pack, too, so that adds weight). Second, I’m always worried I will do something to it and then be out money to fix it.
So, I got a point-and-shoot camera. I busted the screen on that one when geocaching (and it didn’t have an eye hole, so it was shot) and then I bought a new one. I’ve had that for a bit and I really like it.
Problem is, it doesn’t always do what I like. Maybe I need to find out how to use it better, but for the most part, I want to be able to point-and-shoot. If I want full control, I have my main camera.
My issue is with the results. For the most part, things are decent and I can fix things in photoshop if needed. But not always. For example, if the sky is in the shot, everything seems to get blown out.
Example:
You can see the color is drained and the light from the sky totally takes away from the image. Usually a point-and-shoot reacts much better than this, but this is awful. I played around in photoshop with this one and got this result:
Obviously better and I think if I had messed with it more, I could have gotten a few of the colors to pop more. That doesn’t take away from the light at the top blowing things out still.
It also happens even when I’m attempting to shield the skylight:
I didn’t even attempt to fix this one because I wouldn’t know where to begin. This is just something that is killing me. I’ve played with the camera wondering if I have some wacked settings. But, I can’t seem to find anything that looks like a setting not done well. Maybe I’ll just set this back up on all default and go from there.
My other idea is to dust off my first digital SLR — the Rebel. It doesn’t have a battery pack and I haven’t used it since getting the 30D. Therefore, it’s not being used. I figure maybe I could find a cheap case and attach a 50 mm lens and just use that. That way I can still shoot in RAW and JPEG, so if I see something decent, I can shoot it. I won’t carry the other lenses — again, still too much weight — but at least I will have the ability to take regular photos. I can still have the point-and-shoot with me for small photos, maybe group photos and video — but still have the ability to set something up a little more.
If I get a cheap case for the Rebel, I could just put it in my backpack and things should be OK.
However, if anyone knows anything about these point and shoots a bit more (I have a Canon PowerShot SD1100 IS Digital Elph), let me know if you can help!
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REMINDER: If you plan on getting into HooHaa TB Race 2, please make sure you post a comment on that thread!
More later!
