{"id":2013,"date":"2010-02-22T14:58:50","date_gmt":"2010-02-22T22:58:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/?p=2013"},"modified":"2010-02-23T16:53:07","modified_gmt":"2010-02-24T00:53:07","slug":"new-pocket-camera","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/2010\/02\/22\/new-pocket-camera\/","title":{"rendered":"New Pocket Camera"},"content":{"rendered":"

Right now I don\u2019t have a small camera that I like to shoot with. The shots today are from my unloved old SONY DSC T2.<\/p>\n


\n[An artwork on the wall of the studio\/dwelling of the photographer Bart Nagel<\/a> and his partner Bonnie Powell, who invited us to a nice open house yesterday. Thanks, guys!]<\/em><\/p>\n

My Canon G10, which I liked a lot and have been using regularly, stopped working about month ago—it was under warranty, being exactly a year old. I mailed it back to the factory repair service twice, and they didn\u2019t fix it either time. They\u2019d say they\u2019d fixed it, but it would still be broken. They finally said the problem was with the built-in, retractable lens cover, and that this is my problem.<\/p>\n

I did some casual checking around and I think the repair could run $150 or $200, which isn\u2019t really reasonable for a camera that cost me about $400 a year ago. So it\u2019s farewell, G10. I took over 5,000 pictures with it over the year that I had it, so I got fair use out of it. Frankly, if you shoot a lot, you can\u2019t usually expect a digital camera to last much more than a year. <\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

One minor lesson here. Canon and some of its more favorable reviewers like to say that the G9, G10, G11 models are \u201cbuilt like a tank.\u201d\u009d That\u2019s a carefully crafted illusion. They make the cameras out of metal, so they do feel solid. But any retracting lens system is highly vulnerable to being shoved out of alignment. And you may not always be the only person who handles your camera. And even if the alignment problem doesn\u2019t arrive, the leaf lens cover seems to be very fragile as well. It\u2019s the heavy-duty SLR models like the Canon 5D that are built (somewhat) like tanks. The solid appearance of a G model is really just a cosmetic trick.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

So now what do I put in my pocket? I considered dropping back down to the SONY Cybershot DSC T2 touch screen model that\u2019s been moldering in my bookcase. But, stepping down to such a poor image quality is hard to take. The lens, the sensor, the processing—they all seem second-rate. And, for me, the dealbreaker for this model has always been that the frikkin\u2019 touch screen doesn\u2019t work reliably. No matter how hard I try and bend my will to the chip\u2019s, no matter how many times I recalibrate it, even if I use my fingernail instead of my finger, only about sixty percent of my screen taps on the SONY DSC T2 will register and work. It\u2019s not like the touch-screen problem is unsolvable, by the way—my impression is that iPods don\u2019t have much of a problem. But I hate touch screens anyway. I much prefer the positive feedback of a button.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

I could slavishly buy a Canon G11 for my walking-around camera, but there\u2019s another problem with the G series that\u2019s been bugging me all year with the G10. They don\u2019t fit in my pocket. I have to wear them in an awkward belt-pouch, shove them into an overcoat pocket, carry them in a knapsack, or dorkily wear them on a strap around my neck. \u201cHi! I\u2019m a goob!\u201d\u009d<\/p>\n

The whole digital camera industry changes every couple of years, and one of the new waves are the SPS (Shirt Pocket Size) high-quality digital cameras in the $400 range. Two of the main contenders here are the 2008 model Panasonic Lumix LX3, which has the glamour of a Leica-designed lens and the 2009 model Canon S90, which has the same sensor chip and processing software as the Canon G11.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve been a Leica lover for decades, but I like Canons a lot too. If there were a new Panasonic LX4 out, then I might well go with that. And the fact that the Panasonic LX3 has a physical lens cap object instead of a leaf-based lens-cover is really very tempting. But…the fact that the Canon S90 model is a year more recent than the Panasonic LX3 makes a difference to my tiny lemming-like consumerist mind. <\/p>\n

I cruised a number of reviews—over time, if you\u2019re a camera-drooler, you learn that certain reviewers have tastes and shooting styles that match yours. My favorite reviewers, Ken Rockwell <\/a>and Luminous Landscape<\/a>, encouraged or at least abetted me in going ahead with the Canon S90. And Ken Rockwell\u2019s posted shots with his S90 really knocked me out, they look like the shots I\u2019ve been getting with my G10.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

So I ordered a Canon S90 from Adorama today. You’ll probably be seeing images from it in my posts before long.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Right now I don\u2019t have a small camera that I like to shoot with. The shots today are from my unloved old SONY DSC T2. [An artwork on the wall of the studio\/dwelling of the photographer Bart Nagel and his partner Bonnie Powell, who invited us to a nice open house yesterday. Thanks, guys!] My […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2013","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2013","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2013"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2013\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2025,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2013\/revisions\/2025"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2013"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2013"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2013"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}