Some of you guys are making me hate my camera. I've got a Canon Powershot A540, 6MP that's probably 5 years old or so. Any ideas on an upgrade that's in the $100-200 range? Something with all the manual control options but not the crazy pricey DSLR stuff.

 

Some of my older pictures since I'm in between camera's right now, I've added my created logo to it since that seems to what people are doing now.

 

Sony A55

 

For those that want to know more about aperture, shutter and ISO, and how they affect a photo, here's a great simulator that you can interact with and see results:

Camera Simulator

When interacting with the simulator for the first time, I'd suggest linking the aperture and shutter first and keeping ISO at 100 so you can really see how aperture and shutter work together to create a shallow or deep depth of field. Move the aperture or shutter slider to see the difference.

 

Pre-Earth Depth Charge





http://www.tfw2005.com/boards/radic...harge-imperial-peace-marshal.html#post6506911

 

The Canon Powershot SX130IS might be worth a look. It's just under $200 on Amazon and has manual control options. Definitely read some reviews first and try to get your hands on one at Best Buy or somewhere to test it out.

 

No words..... should have sent a poet...

Utterly gorgeous.

 

I **LOVE** this picture. Not only is it pretty, but you managed to seriously sum up his personality in a single, still shot.

Excellent.

And DeliciousPete, that custom incredible.

 

My word is that ever a perfect fit for the character and the design. You can totally see how he could have gone from this form to the form in Beast Wars. Nice job.

 

Yeah, I looked at that and was like, why didn't Botcon give us him that year? Nevermind that the mold didn't exist then!   Just needs a few Maximal symbols to finish it off, but that's amazing. I never would have thought that toy would be such an ideal fit for the character.

And reign's picture ...well, somehow the box that's trying to run away just makes the scene. That's a Metal Gear thing, isn't it?

 

This really makes me anxious to see more of Maketoys "Giant". The Crazy Devy parts are pretty sweet.

 

I use a Canon Powershot A550, by todays standards an old crappy camera, but I think it works great. As long as youve got good macro focus, youre good to go.

 

You guys are awesome. I will be reading and testing this weekend.  

Your photo skills really compliment your painting abilities.. So smooth  

 

I call these guys "The Trio". HA Mudflap, RTS Windcharger, and DX Swerve.

I use a Nikon p80, it's like a point and shoot model but it has a lot of good manual settings: ISO, F-stop, aperture speed. It's got a decent macro and it lets me shift the center of focus. The one thing it lacks is a good exposure control, it has a limited range from -1 to +1.

 

Glorious repaint, it fits so perfectly!

 

Dear god that's sweet. 
-G

 

That's not even a big deal when you get down to it. If it has an exposure meter that you can see when you're composing a shot, you can learn from that and be able to tell when you're where you want to be even if you can't adjust it so much that it reads 0. I didn't even figure out what the exposure compensation actually DID until this year, and I'd gotten perfectly used to the way the meter read otherwise so I never bothered with it.

 

Yeah, I rarely use the exposure control. For my camera the best way to brighten or darken a photo is to adjust the shutter speed.

I have some more unused photos, this time it's RTS Jazz. I shot these in December 2010 and never did anything with them. So I'll put them here.

 

Sounds like we've got nearly the same thing. It can take some great pics certainly, but when I compare some of my best stuff to pics from Gog and the others with DSLRs, there's a massive drop in crispiness that I want to fix.

The Canon Powershot SX130IS that monk1210 mentioned looks promising so far.

 

an example of how aperture can effect a photo

all of these were taken in succession, same lens, no setting changed other than the aperture and what the camera determined the shutter speed to be. this is called aperture priority as you set the aperture, ISO and let the camera set the shutter.

ƒ/1.4 1/4000

ƒ/2.8 1/500

ƒ/5.6 1/125

ƒ18 1/13

ƒ22 1/8


you can see that as the aperture number increases the shutter needs to stay open longer for the same exposure and the focal range becomes larger.

hope this helps a little.