Upgrade early and often: It’s camera-buying-article season

Every year about this time a bunch of how-to-pick-the best-camera stories show up in preparation for the summer travel season. This year is no different and one that particularly caught my eye was the July-August issue of  Departures Magazine. (Departures is behind a paywall so the link will just get you to the login). This piece is worth pursuing because there is some sage advice offered up by brand photographers like Peter Turnley and Michael Yamashita.

I like the piece because one of my favorite cameras, Panasonic’s Lumix LX3, is in the handful of cameras the story profiles. I use the camera and have written about it here before. Also, it is the camera I most often recommend to friends. Unfortunately, it is hard to find this days (especially in black) because everyone else likes it, too. Another recommended camera is the Canon PowerShot G10. I’ve also owned this camera in an earlier iteration and it gets high marks. My only complaint is it’s larger size. The Lumix will slide into a pants pocket, the Powershots usually won’t.

Unlike film cameras, digital cameras can make huge leaps forward in one model rev. One example of  this game-changing innovation is touch screen focus found on this new 12 MP camera phone from Samsung. You choose what you want the camera to focus on by touching that spot on the LCD view finder. This could be an extremely useful way of manually focusing a camera that uses live-view. Another example is the improvement that can happen in sensors (something I’ll be talking about in my next post.

~ by keithphilpott on June 25, 2009.