camera wanderlust

so the other day i was at the library and i overheard one of the staffers mention that they hate it when they buy something then find it cheaper elsewhere. and being the nosy brat i am, i chuckled, told him i related, and asked him what he got. he said, a nikon coolpix 2100.

a nikon coolpix 2100!! i exclaimed. that’s a cool camera! [michael and sharon have one of those!] i mentioned that i was also kind of peeking at the 3100, which has similar features, but is a 3.1 megapixel camera rather than just 2.1. while i love my canon elph s200 and the features it offers, the versatility of its manual mode is limited by having to sift through many menus to get the settings you want. and i’ve found that pictures usually turn out better when you set it up for the proper exposure, shutter length, shutter speed, flash, etc than when you just let the camera take them in automatic mode. pictures in automatic mode aren’t bad, but tweaking some settings is often worth the effort.

for instance, my favorite feature in the s200 is long shutter with delayed flash to photograph a subject in a nighttime situation where there are lights in the background. a regular flash results in a photograph with the subject illuminated but the background being completely dark. the long shutter/delayed flash feature keeps the shutter open for a little longer so as to let the background light in and then activate the flash to illuminate the foreground subject as well. this equals a successful picture.

but using this feature requires a whole slew of steps: first shifting the camera into manual mode, then going to a settings menu to turn on slow shutter, then going to a menu within the manual mode settings menu to select how long you want to keep the shutter open for, and THEN you finally snap the picture.

the nikon coolpix cameras also have this feature, but they work it like this: instead of having to navigate a whole lot of menus to set the proper settings for different scenes each time, there’s an icon menu of popular photo shooting situations: sunset/sunrise scenes, party scenes, portraits, night mode, and few other ones i can’t think of off the top of my head. so instead of navigating 4 menus, you just navigate one.

granted, you might not be able to customize the settings *as* much (and this i’m really not sure of, so if anyone knows, do correct me) but most people don’t really need to for the most part anyway. and if you really do need that kind of flexibility and versatility, then you’re probably getting an SLR anyway. but as far as a compact camera goes, i’ve found that it really has to be a quick-shoot type of affair, and that spending too much time fiddling with the settings means you’ve already lost the moment =(.

so yes. i think the nikon coolpix would be a pretty sweet camera, both the 2100 and the 3100 models. the design fits nicely in the palm of your hand, the construction is better than, say, a number of the fuji finepix digicams that came out earlier last year (want to add anything brian? was it the 3250?), buttons and dials are placed in easy to understand positions, and the features are readily and easily accessible, making some intermediate photo techniques accessible to the photography newbie. i wouldn’t mind a 2100 or a 3100 for xmas. ;-)

although i have to admit.. i really do have a thing for canon digital cameras. i can’t resist the sleek design and steel construction. plus i’m interested in playing with the DIGIC technology that shipped in all the canon cameras that came out after mine (shakes fist!), which would improve on the color issues i’ve had with my elph. SD100….. *drool*….. S400…. *drool*

so staffer-working-in-the-library… i may have had to tell you what features your new camera has, but i hope it helps you enjoy your camera to the full extent it deserves to be enjoyed. it’s capable of a lot. =) use it well~!!