Croc,
Buying a new camera for me is a lot like trying to use some of the new cameras these days. There are so many choices that I end up getting paralyzed and going home with nothing. For years and years I used an old Olympus OM1, which is a really good camera; manual, mechanical, and practically indestructible (except by salt water, the camera's equivalent of the nuclear bomb). They don't make them any more, but they might be available second hand. I really wonder about these new auto-everything cameras, it just seems like there's an awful lot to go wrong in there.
One thing I have noticed is that the point-and-shoot things have really gotten a lot better. I've taken pictures using a friend's Canon AS1, which is a point-and-shoot underwater camera that a lot of whitewater guys use, and published them; everybody just assumed that they were taken with an SLR. But the lens is a fixed-focus 38mm and you really don't have much light control. I've also had strong recommendations from whitewater photographers for the Pentax 90WR, which has a 38-90 zoom and is water-resistant (but they say it can take immersion).
If you mostly paddle flat fresh water I guess you wouldn't worry so much about waterproofness. Then I guess it would be a question of whether you want the super-auto, of which there are lots, or the old-style manual cameras (the Nikon FM2 is really good).
On thing I can pass on from the pro who photographs most of the stories I write: cameras don't take good pictures, people do. If you take good pictures with one camera, you will also take good pictures (maybe after a little adjustment if you're as slow as I am) with any reasonably well made camera.
Then of course there's the whole lens issue, which is equally crazy... I like low light and a lot of my favorite pictures are at wide apertures, so I don't use zooms a lot (problem with the point and shoots). But it's also a hassle to drag 3 fixed lenses around, though the 20mm, 50mm, and 135mm I had for the Olympus were not much bigger combined than some zooms.
In a perfect world I'd buy the Pentax for heavy paddling and a good light SLR (with the same 3 lenses) for hiking and flat water paddling. But being who I am, I'll probably spend the next year shopping without buying anything. Part of the problem is that both selection and prices are lousy here, which means shopping over the net or through catalogs. I hate buying stuff I've never seen.
Hope I've succeeded in confusing the issue....
(Only decisive in white water)
Steve
PS If you happen to be holding some Yahoo stock from the IPO, take a look at the Contax G2, really, really, nice, and really, really, expensive. |
