Photography Blog

As a product photographer my preferred line of work is in the studio, taking shots of people and products. My aim is to always create images that need a minimal amount of post production. This not only saves me time but I feel it forces me to be a better photographer. If I take my time composing a shot with consideration to how it’s going to end up looking on my screen or in print then hopefully it will come out right with minimal post production work. It’s not easy to do this and far too often I hear people say ‘ah that will do, I can photoshop it out’. True, with the right skill set on photoshop there is very little that is not possible these days. But does that make you a better photographer, no it makes you a better illustrator or image retoucher or essentially a less creative photographer!

If you can get an image spot on with minimal editing why would you not choose that path? Unless you are more of a photo retoucher and enjoy editing image after image why do it? Well an answer to this question may lye in the economic climate of todays world. Businesses are having to become very clever in their marketing strategies and to keep on to of the game they need something fresh and new. Good photographers are no different; constantly on the look out for new ideas, new challenges and finding a niche or edge over the competition.

So you’re a product photographer and your client is looking for something different or fresh for their website, why not offer 360 Product Photography?

How to…

360 product photography is surprisingly easy to create, it is a little time consuming and you will most likely need to do some post production but it is worth it for the end result. As you see above you can create an almost seamless 360 image of any object and you really don’t need any expensive specialist equipment. The above image was created with a Canon 50d, Sigma 50mm f2.8 macro lens and basic lighting.

The trick….the only vital piece of equipment you need is a rotating cake stand / tray. They can be purchased for very little and enable you (once marked) to take a high number of images through 360 degrees. There are kits available that are fully automated that makes the process easy. By this I mean for $ $ $ you can purchase a kit comprising of an electronic rotating tray, all required hardware and software to do the job for you! All you have to do is set up your product on the tray point your SLR towards it, plug your SLR in to your PC and the software rotates the tray, takes the photos and even edits the photos for a pure white background! If you find yourself suddenly being requested for a high number of 360 images it may be worth investing.

If however you are just starting out in 360 product photography and rarely get requested for it then there is a slightly longer yet more cost effective solution.

Stage 1

1.         Buy a cheap white rotating cake tray.

2.         Buy some white card (your choice of satin or matt)

3.         Set up the card on the tray and either use card or a mini light box for your white background.

4.         Set your lighting.

5.         Take the required amount of images, remember the more images taken the more seamless the end result will be.

I took a series of 16 individual images, this enabled me to get the image above once they were all merged.

Stage 2

1.         It may be worth playing around with Stage 2 with a small number of images first to get used to the process. Open up Photoshop.

2.         Click on ‘Window’ – ‘Animation’.

3.         Open all the required images.

4.         Edit the images size, crop and white background to your requirements.

5.         Put them in order. Start with the first image in the series (the image you wish the animation to start with, for example the front of the product)

6.         You need to add all following images as a new layer to the first image.

7.         Unlock the first layer / image and make it invisible by clicking the little eye icon.

8.         To add a new image firstly click on new frame which is next to the bin icon on the bottom left.

9.         Drag and drop the second image in to the animation strip.

10.       Make the new layer visible by clicking the little eye icon.

11.       Click on image one in the animation strip and make that visible in the layer by clicking the little eye icon.

Once all images are in line highlight all frames and set the delay parameters, then set the first drop down to ‘forever’. This will ensure the image constantly rotates. Also set the time delay between 0 and 0.2.

See examples left 0 sec delay and right 0.2 sec delay.

Thank you for reading, please take a look at my gallery and other blogs and don’t hesitate to contact me.

www.mjlphotographics.smugmug.com

PowerShot A95 Digital Camera (5.0MP, 2592×1944, 3x Opt, 32MB CompactFlash Card) Strengths: High quality 5MP pictures, Camera feels great in hand, swivel LCD screen, best bang for the buck camera. Weaknesses: Included 32MB CF card is too small. Summary: This camera is awesome. I upgraded from a Canon A70 and it was well worth the money. The Canon A95 uses 4 AA bateries, but it eats through normal alkalines way too fast. I highly recommend getting rechargeable NiMH AA batteries and a quick charger.The swivel screen is a major plus, it’s 1.8″ compared to 1.5″ from the Canon A70. The screen is also higher resolution than the A70.I have used the camera for 3 weeks and printed about 50 pics so far. The pics look great and I even cropped to zoom in on some pictures and you couldn’t see any sign of pixelation. I love the manual flexibility with this camera, plus the automatic modes make it easy for anyone to use.The camera has a nice solid feel to it and fits well in the hand. I prefer the Canon A95′s size rather than the ultra compact cameras like Sony’s T1 because you can easily hold the camera in one hand and take pics. But if you have an ultra compact camera, you have to hold it awkward and it my easily fall from your hand.I highly recommend this camera to anyone looking into getting a 5MP camera that’s affordable, flexible, and normal size.

further info, visit; http://www.petrousdigitalcameraprices.blogspot.com

Cyber-shot DSC-W1 Silver Digital Camera (5.1MP, 2592×1944, 3x Opt, 32MB Memory Stick)

Strengths: Size, LCD, AA batteries, movie mode and black & white modes are GREAT – use ‘em all the time. Weaknesses: Flash is weak, zoom inadequate at times. Summary: I spent a LOT of time investigating digital cameras online -one would think I was buying a car or something. Anyway I am a novice camera user and remain very impressed with this little guy. I would certainly recommend it. The movie mode is great for ‘vignettes’ or small movie snapshots. I also use the black and white a lot. I also didn’t think the LCD would matter very much, but it does: I never use the viewfinder. I appreciate the large size of the LCD when passing the camera around to friends to view pictures and movies.Hint #1: Immediately jack up the megapixel resolution to 5 so that you can capture moments in the best resolution possible. Then, bypass Sony’s ridiculous profit margins- for memory cards buy SanDisk instead. The 512 MB is fantastic – you will get a lot of memory space. I saved .00 this way – 0 vs. 5. The 32 MB is inadequate for daily usage. I use it as ‘emergency’ memory when my 512 has filled up on me and I need an extra pinch of memory to get me through the moment.Hint #2: Do NOT buy the Sony camera case. They charge a ridiculous price for a shoddy version. Go for a Lowepro – I paid ten dollars and it is very sturdy – also has a nice inside pocket to keep memory cards.Hint #3: Buy a separate set of rechargeable batteries you can swap on the go. The AA battery format is a huge plus.Picture clarity is great for the size and price of the camera. The camera and case are small enough that I WILL take it anywhere, and have. In other words, it is a convenient model.I did find that for indoors the flash was inadequate at a distance. The zoom could also have been 4x or 5x.All in all I am quite happy with this model – but stay away from buying Sony brand ‘peripherals’ unless you like spending money.This camera fulfills my needs. The only reason it does not get five stars for the above drawbacks. Otherwise, a great job by Sony and their third-party peripheral competitors!

further info visit; http://www.petrousdigitalcameraprices.blogspot.com

FinePix E550 Digital Camera (6.3MP, 4048×3040, 4x Opt, 16MB xD-Picture Card)

Strengths: Well priced, 6+mp, all features including raw image Weaknesses: This camera uses 2 AA cells in a hurry Summary: As a professional digital camera lecturer, I must admit that the Fuji E-550 was a very pleasant surprise for me. Priced at about 0, this digital camera produced digital photos that were much sharper, more detailed, and more excellent than I, frankly expected.I found the digital camera very easy to use right out of the box. While this digital camera does have a 12mp interpolated image size available, I found the 6mp native image size to have more contrast, detail and resolution.As you might expect in a consumer digital camera, the digital camera’s flash is not very powerful. At 200 ISO it will produce excellent exposures out to 13 feet. By adding a supplementary slave flash such as the Sony HVL-FSL1B and a bit of flash compensation, I was able to extend the effective flash range out to 25 feet, making the Fuji E-550 useful for indoor photos of large groups.The Fuji E-550 does an equally amazing job with macro or close-up digital photos. It will focus quite close making it very effective for photos of small items and jewelery that might be photographed for sale on auction sites such as www.ebay.com.The strongest suit for the Fuji E-550 is it ability to record a great deal of detail with extreme sharpness and clarity while being handheld. The Fuji E-550 is also very capable of taking excellent night photos when it is placed on a tripod.All in all, I was extremely impressed with the Fuji E-550. I received a lot more digital camera than I expected for the samll price of 0. For those who like to use the raw image format, you will understand that you can essentially re-take the digital photo all over again right in your computer. This is a huge advantage.Of course, being a Fuji digital camera, the Fuji E-550 uses the somewhat more expensive XD electronic data chips. However, the Fuji E-550 is very speedy. From power on to being ready to take the first digital photo takes 1.4 seconds. This digital camera is equally as fast in writing your digital photo to the XD chip.The newer Fuji digital cameras are marketed to compete dollar for dollar with the Kodak line of digital cameras. Therefore, they tend to be very competitive with Kodak and offer in most cases, a lot more features.There is available for the Fuji E-550 an adaptor as well as both a wide angle and a telephoto (1.9X) supplementary lens. The supplementary lenses are very fairly priced and readily available through Fuji’s own website. This is a pleasant contrast to the accessories offered by Sony, through their own website, whose wide angle and telephoto supplementary lenses are unreasonably high in price.

Conclusion: The Fuji E-550 is a top quality digital camera. It more capable than most might expect. In addition, it is quite small and pocket sized, extending its appeal to many more digital camera users. It is worthy of your attention. The digital photos produced by this digital camera are amazing and compare most favorably with much more expensive consumer digital cameras. I would happily purchase this camera again.I will be very confident in introducing the Fuji E-550 to the attendees of my workshops all over the world. It is a digital camera that I can point to with a lot of pride, simply because it gives the digital camera user many features and excellent digital photos for a very resonable price.

further info please visit; http://www.petrousdigitalcameraprices.blogspot.com

Whether you are planning to build an online product catalog or a printed version including rich digital photos will enhance it and will increase potential sales. When building a catalog photos are a powerful tool that you must use. Here are a few tips for taking digital photos that will bring justice to your products and will help increasing sales.

Product catalogs that do not include photos are boring. For example imagine that you are looking to buy a new digital photo printer. You just found a new online catalog or got a catalog via regular mail. The catalog has plenty of digital photo printers and also a lot of information about them such specifications, capabilities descriptions and more but it does not have any photos of the printer. You are most likely going to dump that catalog and search for the printer in another place.

This behavior is common to most consumers especially in this era of immediate gratification and impatience. Consumers do not want to spend time reading and figuring out what the product can do. They want to see a photo and get a short snippet of what the main features of the product are and what the price is.

Just taking photos and adding them to your catalog is not enough. Good photos can add a lot to a product image but at the same time bad photos can really damage that image. Here are some tips and concepts that can help taking good photos that in turn help selling products online:

Variation: Take more than one photo. Show the product from many angles: zoomed in and zoomed out and in different positions for example if the product is a clamshell-phone you should show it both in the opened and closed positions.

Quality: The photo quality must be as high as possible. Don’t confuse quality with file size or resolution we refer here to photographic quality: Follow the rules of good photography, use a tripod when long exposure is needed make sure the photo is not overexposed or underexposed and that it is not blurry.

Background: It is very important to shoot with the appropriate background. Usually you would stage a background that is in contrast with the product and that has no details or distracting objects that can catch the viewer’s attention. Make sure that the background is matte color and that it does not reflect light. For example when taking a photo of a black digital photo printer use a white or light gray background.

Show details: Emphasize the product details. Every product has unique features or important details that you would like to draw the viewer’s attention to. The best way to do that is to take close-up photos of those details. You are not limited to physical details for example when selling an digital photo printer that has long battery life take a close-up photo of the digital photo printer’s LCD screen displaying how much battery is left. Such a photo conveys credibility and is much more powerful than the product battery life specifications text.

Support the product description: Take photos that support the textual description of the product. For example if the text claims that the digital photo printer comes in three colors: black, silver and red show three photos of the printer in those colors.

Convey physical attributes: If your product has unique physical attributes that you would like to emphasize take photos that convey them. For example if the product size is important use a known size object in order to help the viewer visualize the size take a photo of the digital photo printer next to a quarter coin to show how small the printer is. It is much easier for viewers to visualize and understand measurements if they are put in reference with objects they know very well. This is much more powerful than specifying inches and ounces in a textual specification.

Keep file sizes small: This is relevant for online catalog only. Keep the photo file size small. When viewing a photo on a computer screen low resolution photos are more than enough. In most cases a VGA (640X480) picture is all that is needed and such a photo file size can be 50Kbytes or less. It is important to keep this in mind and not be tempted to put high resolution big photos files. Such big files load slowly on the viewer’s computer and in most cases the viewer will get frustrated from the slow response and would just skip to the next site.

360 degree product photography is a so delicate and involved topic because products come in so many shapes and sizes. Some may be very reflective, some may have dimensions that will prevent you from simply dropping them on a turntable, and some may have features that can be only highlighted when shot from a specific angle while hanging from the top and with a certain lighting setup.

The more constraints you have in your 360 photography setup the less options you get at your disposal for creating smooth 360 product views. It’s also very important to be able to quickly assess how your product appear from different angles with a given setup before you start on the actual production of 360 product images.

So before you go ahead and spend your hard earned money on a computerized equipment (which is invaluable if you do this commercially), here’s a simple guide for building a DIY turntable that will likely solve some of your product photography needs. The good news? It will only cost you a trip to a hardware store (Ace Hardware or similar), and an hour of your time to get it all assembled together!

What you need:

2 x 23″ disks of round plywood –
1 x 12″ Lazy Susan Bearing –
1 sheet of white paper enough to cover the top of plywood disks

So the turn table will be built using two disks of round plywood and a lazy susan bearing attached between the disks to provide a smooth and steady movement. The bearing is tough enough to deal with weights of up to 400-500 lb or even 1000 lb depending on a brand, so the weak link is the plywood. If you go with Shepherd’s bearing, they come with pretty good assembly instructions. The key is to find and mark the center on the plywood disks. This is pretty simple as long as the disks are perfect circles:

First, you will need to find something that has a 90 degree corner like a piece of a white paper sheet. Place the right-angle corner of the sheet at any point on the edge of the plywood disk and mark the other two points where it crosses the edges on the plywood. Then draw a straight line between the two marks and connect the marks with a straight line. Now repeat the same procedure using another point on the plywood. The intersection between the two lines is the center of the disk.

The rest of the assembly is pretty straightforward – just follow instructions on the bearing package!

Now that the major work is done, you need to decide how many frames your 360 product views will be comprised of. Usually, 20 frames per view gives a nice balance between the total size of the images/download speed and the smoothness of your product rotations. Check-out these sample 360 product views to see if 20-frame 360 animations will work for you:

Sample 360 product viewer 1
Sample 360 product viewer 2
Sample 360 product viewer 3

So to get 20 product shots, the turntable should be able to rotate in 18 degree increments. The key is to mark the top plywood disk in such way that you can easily identify the increments. One approach is to put numbered marks on the side of the disk. Since you already have found the center on the top disk, creating the 18-degree marks is pretty simple with a protractor.

The final step is to attach a piece of white paper on the top of the plywood disk where you will be placing your products and put a measuring mark on the bottom plywood base. Now put your camera on, align it with the measuring mark on the bottom and the center of the rotation, then place your product on the table and you are good to go.

Happy 360 Product Photography!

If you think that pictures in product advertising or product etiquette are attractive, it means that you are enjoying product photography. This is one of the most attractive and popular genres other than fashion and food photography. Surely, if you want to learn mastering this certain genre, you can easily do it. You can learn its basic techniques first to develop your skill. Here are some basic techniques that you can try to apply in learning product photography.

First, you need to provide appropriate photography equipment. You might have some different requirements of photography equipment depending on the product that you are shooting. However, lens will be one of the most important things that you need to prepare. You can simply choose good lens with the feature of mid zoom since it is more flexible. Besides, a fast lens will also be a great help for you in taking great photograph.

Second, you need to think about background. Background has a very important role in determining the beauty and attractiveness of a picture. When you are going to shoot products that have darker shade, it will be better for you to choose white background. It will make the products become the prime or the main focus of the picture. Besides, picture with white background is also easier to edit by using Photoshop.

Third, you have to be very careful about the lighting. Without providing appropriate level of lighting, you will never produce attractive and beautiful photos. Good lighting exposure allows you to make the product illuminated well. Besides, you can also avoid any harsh shadow that will ruin the beauty of the picture. When you are doing a photo session, you should use bright lights. In order to cover the shadows up, you need to use camera that is completed with flash.

Fourth, find the best angle that brings the most beautiful result. Mostly, professional photographers prefer to use simple angle in shooting any object. Zoom in as much as you can to get different view. However, do not take strange angles to shoot the product since it might ruin the result.

Those are some basic tips that will help beginners to develop more skills in product photography. Surely, those tips are not enough to help you be a professional photographer. You need to gain more details about the techniques in some schools, classes, or courses. Therefore, you will be more and more expert in taking beautiful and appealing product pictures.

In the beginning there was product photography, and it was good, good for anything printed on paper that is.  But now the advertising world is different. Every year more and more consumers turn to the internet for not only information but for purchases, large and small. And since they cannot touch the product they want as much information about it as possible.When Apple computer invented QuickTime Virtual Reality almost 20 years ago, it promised to change the way we looked at photography, both of \’objects\’ and environments.  As exciting as it was, for several reasons it never became part of the mainstream. Perhaps the most significant barrier was the technology itself.  Until the last few years, Apple computers claimed only a 5% market penetration in the PC market. That meant that even in the early 2000’s 95% of computers not only did not have QuickTime installed on them, but that the owners of those computers had mostly never heard of QT, and considered it an \’Apple thing\’. Sadly, generally attempting to open a QT movie without the application installed on one’s PC, resulted in computer crashes and hangs. Also several companies capitalized on the technical aspects images for 360º degree photography and produced very specialized and very high priced special tripod heads, rigs and computer controlled turntables—which contributed to yet another misconception, that one had to have lots of money to produce this kind of imagery (which wasn’t going to make you any money anyway).Another barrier was the file size of the final image file. Though small by today\’s standards, there was the perception that with consumers mostly using dial up connections that, even if they by some chance had QuickTime installed on their computer, they would not be willing to wait for the file to download. There also wasn\’t an abundance of asymmetrical CODEC’s or streaming possibilities.Lastly, though the QTVR interface has several extra capabilities, they are not well known or obvious to a viewer who doesn\’t know QuickTime, and most think only of products spinning on a white background, or being able to pan around a room—entertaining but not ‘ready for prime time’.All these factors combined to make QTVR and as a consequence, all 360º photography, perceived as a novel technology that though fun to view and experience, was not economical to produce, not capable of delivering attractive exciting photography and most importantly was not viable for real world retail uses.These days… Not so.With Adobe\’s Flash player boasting an almost 100% installation on all computers and 70-80% of internet consumers using some type of broadband connection the possibilities for 360º views and elaborate product tour interfaces.  Products can now be shown not only in 360º views but with zoom and pan features as well as informational graphical or even video ‘call outs’.  With broadband connections being so prevalent in households, and Flash being a streaming media the product displays can use high quality photography and video.  They are used cross media as well for not only web, but trade show displays and even sales presentations.  A salesman can carry a laptop computer full of virtual products that otherwise would be too large or numerous to carry, as well as not possibly getting past security in office buildings.Retail giant, Party City, for the past 2 years has used “Virtual Fashion Shows’ on their website to promote their extensive line of Halloween costumes.  They feature live models photographed as a 360º view and place them in a custom interface that not only rotates, zooms and pans, but is designed with a Halloween style to match their wed design. Since Halloween sales represent  over 30% of their yearly business, Party City feels that it’s important to use all possible technology to give themselves an edge in a very competitive business.©2008 Logan SealeOregon based  Benchmade Knives uses 360º photos with video call outs to display the features of their high line knife collections, again it gives them an edge over the competition which these days is more important than ever.©2008 Logan SealeSome photographers are even experimenting with making unusual and artistic virtual reality photography. With careful planning and control one can be very successful with this idea.For more information and images visit http://www.LoganSealeInteractive.com

You will find that digital cameras can be used in a variety of situations. These can be functions, weddings, birthdays and even pictures of nature. The Canon digital cameras are suited for these many events. In the Canon range the Canon PowerShot Digital camera has the ability to fulfill this role quite well.

The many Canon PowerShot Digital cameras are about the size of a credit card. The Canon PowerShot Digital camera is considered to be among the smallest digital cameras that have been produced. While this camera is small it still manages to give you high quality pictures.

The Canon PowerShot Digital camera case is made from steel. The exterior appearance of the digital camera is flat fronted. To protect the lens of the camera you will find that this digital camera comes equipped with an automatic lens cover. This cover will protect your digital camera when it is not in use.

Since the camera is made from steel and it has a protective covering for the camera lens you will not have to worry about handling the camera in the worry of something happening to it.

As the Canon PowerShot Digital camera is stylish due to the steel casing which lends it a sense of sophistication you are more likely to take this camera along with you when you go out. This means that you are more likely to take a fantastic photograph with the Canon PowerShot Digital camera.

The various Canon PowerShot Digital cameras all belong to the Canon Digital Elph family. These cameras are all designed to be small is size and yet they give superior performance value.

Most of the digital cameras that are being sold in the world are known by one name like Pentax, Minolta and Kodak digital cameras. The Canon PowerShot Digital camera is however given other names in a variety of countries. These names are Digital Ixus in Europe and South East Asia. In Japan this camera is called the Ixy Digital camera.

The best fact about the Canon PowerShot Digital camera is that it has been designed to merge traditional photography with that of digital photography products. This allows you to take conventional photos without having to worry about setting the cameras to various settings. All that you need to do is to point and click.

The many experts who have reviewed this camera state that the Canon PowerShot Digital camera is a good buy for the average consumer. This digital camera is known to be a superior pro-sumer product.

Whether you are planning to build an online product catalog or a printed version including rich digital photos will enhance it and will increase potential sales. When building a catalog photos are a powerful tool that you must use. Here are a few tips for taking digital photos that will bring justice to your products and will help increasing sales.Product catalogs that do not include photos are boring. For example imagine that you are looking to buy a new digital photo printer. You just found a new online catalog or got a catalog via regular mail. The catalog has plenty of digital photo printers and also a lot of information about them such specifications, capabilities descriptions and more but it does not have any photos of the printer. You are most likely going to dump that catalog and search for the printer in another place.This behavior is common to most consumers especially in this era of immediate gratification and impatience. Consumers do not want to spend time reading and figuring out what the product can do. They want to see a photo and get a short snippet of what the main features of the product are and what the price is.Just taking photos and adding them to your catalog is not enough. Good photos can add a lot to a product image but at the same time bad photos can really damage that image. Here are some tips and concepts that can help taking good photos that in turn help selling products online:Variation: Take more than one photo. Show the product from many angles: zoomed in and zoomed out and in different positions for example if the product is a clamshell-phone you should show it both in the opened and closed positions.Quality: The photo quality must be as high as possible. Don’t confuse quality with file size or resolution we refer here to photographic quality: Follow the rules of good photography, use a tripod when long exposure is needed make sure the photo is not overexposed or underexposed and that it is not blurry. Background: It is very important to shoot with the appropriate background. Usually you would stage a background that is in contrast with the product and that has no details or distracting objects that can catch the viewer’s attention. Make sure that the background is matte color and that it does not reflect light. For example when taking a photo of a black digital photo printer use a white or light gray background.Show details: Emphasize the product details. Every product has unique features or important details that you would like to draw the viewer’s attention to. The best way to do that is to take close-up photos of those details. You are not limited to physical details for example when selling an digital photo printer that has long battery life take a close-up photo of the digital photo printer’s LCD screen displaying how much battery is left. Such a photo conveys credibility and is much more powerful than the product battery life specifications text.Support the product description: Take photos that support the textual description of the product. For example if the text claims that the digital photo printer comes in three colors: black, silver and red show three photos of the printer in those colors. Convey physical attributes: If your product has unique physical attributes that you would like to emphasize take photos that convey them. For example if the product size is important use a known size object in order to help the viewer visualize the size take a photo of the digital photo printer next to a quarter coin to show how small the printer is. It is much easier for viewers to visualize and understand measurements if they are put in reference with objects they know very well. This is much more powerful than specifying inches and ounces in a textual specification.Keep file sizes small: This is relevant for online catalog only. Keep the photo file size small. When viewing a photo on a computer screen low resolution photos are more than enough. In most cases a VGA (640X480) picture is all that is needed and such a photo file size can be 50Kbytes or less. It is important to keep this in mind and not be tempted to put high resolution big photos files. Such big files load slowly on the viewer’s computer and in most cases the viewer will get frustrated from the slow response and would just skip to the next site.

PowerShot A95 Digital Camera (5.0MP, 2592×1944, 3x Opt, 32MB CompactFlash Card) Strengths: High quality 5MP pictures, Camera feels great in hand, swivel LCD screen, best bang for the buck camera. Weaknesses: Included 32MB CF card is too small. Summary: This camera is awesome. I upgraded from a Canon A70 and it was well worth the money. The Canon A95 uses 4 AA bateries, but it eats through normal alkalines way too fast. I highly recommend getting rechargeable NiMH AA batteries and a quick charger.The swivel screen is a major plus, it’s 1.8″ compared to 1.5″ from the Canon A70. The screen is also higher resolution than the A70.I have used the camera for 3 weeks and printed about 50 pics so far. The pics look great and I even cropped to zoom in on some pictures and you couldn’t see any sign of pixelation. I love the manual flexibility with this camera, plus the automatic modes make it easy for anyone to use.The camera has a nice solid feel to it and fits well in the hand. I prefer the Canon A95′s size rather than the ultra compact cameras like Sony’s T1 because you can easily hold the camera in one hand and take pics. But if you have an ultra compact camera, you have to hold it awkward and it my easily fall from your hand.I highly recommend this camera to anyone looking into getting a 5MP camera that’s affordable, flexible, and normal size.

further info, visit; http://www.petrousdigitalcameraprices.blogspot.com

Cyber-shot DSC-W1 Silver Digital Camera (5.1MP, 2592×1944, 3x Opt, 32MB Memory Stick)

Strengths: Size, LCD, AA batteries, movie mode and black & white modes are GREAT – use ‘em all the time. Weaknesses: Flash is weak, zoom inadequate at times. Summary: I spent a LOT of time investigating digital cameras online -one would think I was buying a car or something. Anyway I am a novice camera user and remain very impressed with this little guy. I would certainly recommend it. The movie mode is great for ‘vignettes’ or small movie snapshots. I also use the black and white a lot. I also didn’t think the LCD would matter very much, but it does: I never use the viewfinder. I appreciate the large size of the LCD when passing the camera around to friends to view pictures and movies.Hint #1: Immediately jack up the megapixel resolution to 5 so that you can capture moments in the best resolution possible. Then, bypass Sony’s ridiculous profit margins- for memory cards buy SanDisk instead. The 512 MB is fantastic – you will get a lot of memory space. I saved $75.00 this way – $150 vs. $225. The 32 MB is inadequate for daily usage. I use it as ‘emergency’ memory when my 512 has filled up on me and I need an extra pinch of memory to get me through the moment.Hint #2: Do NOT buy the Sony camera case. They charge a ridiculous price for a shoddy version. Go for a Lowepro – I paid ten dollars and it is very sturdy – also has a nice inside pocket to keep memory cards.Hint #3: Buy a separate set of rechargeable batteries you can swap on the go. The AA battery format is a huge plus.Picture clarity is great for the size and price of the camera. The camera and case are small enough that I WILL take it anywhere, and have. In other words, it is a convenient model.I did find that for indoors the flash was inadequate at a distance. The zoom could also have been 4x or 5x.All in all I am quite happy with this model – but stay away from buying Sony brand ‘peripherals’ unless you like spending money.This camera fulfills my needs. The only reason it does not get five stars for the above drawbacks. Otherwise, a great job by Sony and their third-party peripheral competitors!

further info visit; http://www.petrousdigitalcameraprices.blogspot.com

FinePix E550 Digital Camera (6.3MP, 4048×3040, 4x Opt, 16MB xD-Picture Card)

Strengths: Well priced, 6+mp, all features including raw image Weaknesses: This camera uses 2 AA cells in a hurry Summary: As a professional digital camera lecturer, I must admit that the Fuji E-550 was a very pleasant surprise for me. Priced at about $340, this digital camera produced digital photos that were much sharper, more detailed, and more excellent than I, frankly expected.I found the digital camera very easy to use right out of the box. While this digital camera does have a 12mp interpolated image size available, I found the 6mp native image size to have more contrast, detail and resolution.As you might expect in a consumer digital camera, the digital camera’s flash is not very powerful. At 200 ISO it will produce excellent exposures out to 13 feet. By adding a supplementary slave flash such as the Sony HVL-FSL1B and a bit of flash compensation, I was able to extend the effective flash range out to 25 feet, making the Fuji E-550 useful for indoor photos of large groups.The Fuji E-550 does an equally amazing job with macro or close-up digital photos. It will focus quite close making it very effective for photos of small items and jewelery that might be photographed for sale on auction sites such as www.ebay.com.The strongest suit for the Fuji E-550 is it ability to record a great deal of detail with extreme sharpness and clarity while being handheld. The Fuji E-550 is also very capable of taking excellent night photos when it is placed on a tripod.All in all, I was extremely impressed with the Fuji E-550. I received a lot more digital camera than I expected for the samll price of $340. For those who like to use the raw image format, you will understand that you can essentially re-take the digital photo all over again right in your computer. This is a huge advantage.Of course, being a Fuji digital camera, the Fuji E-550 uses the somewhat more expensive XD electronic data chips. However, the Fuji E-550 is very speedy. From power on to being ready to take the first digital photo takes 1.4 seconds. This digital camera is equally as fast in writing your digital photo to the XD chip.The newer Fuji digital cameras are marketed to compete dollar for dollar with the Kodak line of digital cameras. Therefore, they tend to be very competitive with Kodak and offer in most cases, a lot more features.There is available for the Fuji E-550 an adaptor as well as both a wide angle and a telephoto (1.9X) supplementary lens. The supplementary lenses are very fairly priced and readily available through Fuji’s own website. This is a pleasant contrast to the accessories offered by Sony, through their own website, whose wide angle and telephoto supplementary lenses are unreasonably high in price.

Conclusion: The Fuji E-550 is a top quality digital camera. It more capable than most might expect. In addition, it is quite small and pocket sized, extending its appeal to many more digital camera users. It is worthy of your attention. The digital photos produced by this digital camera are amazing and compare most favorably with much more expensive consumer digital cameras. I would happily purchase this camera again.I will be very confident in introducing the Fuji E-550 to the attendees of my workshops all over the world. It is a digital camera that I can point to with a lot of pride, simply because it gives the digital camera user many features and excellent digital photos for a very resonable price.

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