{"id":1117,"date":"2007-05-18T17:07:17","date_gmt":"2007-05-18T22:07:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.tommangan.net\/?p=1117"},"modified":"2007-05-18T17:07:17","modified_gmt":"2007-05-18T22:07:17","slug":"new-camera-alert","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.tommangan.net\/index.php\/2007\/05\/18\/new-camera-alert\/","title":{"rendered":"New camera alert"},"content":{"rendered":"

I had to replace my Canon A520, which had developed an annoying tic of not opening its lens cover without assistance from yours truly. Naturally, two years later its replacement, a Canon A710 IS has all sorts of features unavailable on the previous cam — most notably image stabilization, which is designed to reduce shake caused by the hands of incompetent photographers. It appears to work pretty well. I tried it out at Castle Rock State Park and Sanborn-Skyline County Park on Friday. Among the highlights:<\/p>\n


\n\"Sun<\/a>
\n


\nThis is one of my faves: I shot the sun filling this wildflower — called, you guessed it, a sun cup, — by shooting it from behind.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/a>
\n


\nIt gets the color of the sky right.<\/p>\n


\n\"Live<\/a><\/p>\n


\nMadrones are one of the great challenges for shutter-bugs. They grow in clumps in the forest, where seemingly infinite variations of lighting make it hard for a camera to make up its mind and settle on a shutter\/aperture setting. This is one of the better ones, but it still gets the lighter areas washed out a bit.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\"Shadow<\/a>
\n


\nAnother shot from behind — note the bug shadow.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\"Dead<\/a>
\n


\nA good dead tree picture pretty much takes itself.
\n

<\/p>\n


\n\"Goat<\/a>
\n


\nA climber at Goat Rock.
\n


\n\"Nice<\/a><\/p>\n


\nPretty clouds. These were fairly faint but the cam picked them up pretty well.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\"An<\/a>
\n


\nAn iris: note the capillaries in the leaves. I’m not sure if this its original color or if it’s been bleached in the sun.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\"Summit<\/a><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Summit Rock at Sanborn-Skyline County Park. This immense hunk o’ sandstone has been thoughtfully decorated by local high school hooligans.<\/p>\n


\n\"Hollow<\/a><\/p>\n

A flash might’ve served this image well. It feels kinda flat.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\"Pretty<\/a>
\n

Orange flowers shot in macro mode, handheld. Note the bug crawling among them.
\n

<\/p>\n

\"Crimson<\/a><\/p>\n

Another macro shot. This is a crimson columbine … note the fuzz.<\/p>\n

Overall it’s a pretty good camera; my previous one never let me shoot any wildflowers in macro mode without a tripod; this one’s pretty good with handheld shots.<\/p>\n

I’m sticking with my insistence on using inexpensive point-and-shoots — the A710 street price is about $250 … it uses double-a batteries and SD memory cards. I bought an option package deal with two two-gig cards, a five year extended warranty, a battery charger (with batteries) and a case that fattened the final purchase price by another hundred bucks. Normally I never buy extended warranties but both of my previous Canons have developed malfunctions after the regular warranty had expired; I’m sure this purchase will guarantee a long and healthy life for this latest cam.
\n

Why not just suck it up and buy a digital SLR? Mainly because those have a bunch of features I’d have to learn how to use, and I don’t want to have to haul around all the extra weight. Plus I like the challenge of plucking good pictures from the dross these smaller, less ambitious cams produce.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I had to replace my Canon A520, which had developed an annoying tic of not opening its lens cover without assistance from yours truly. Naturally, two years later its replacement, a Canon A710 IS has all sorts of features unavailable…<\/p>\n

Read more \u2192<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3],"tags":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tommangan.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1117"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tommangan.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tommangan.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tommangan.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tommangan.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1117"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.tommangan.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1117\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tommangan.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1117"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tommangan.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1117"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tommangan.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1117"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}