My first nice camera was a Canon T70. It was a film camera that I managed to get really cheap at garage sale back in the early 90s, but then digital began to replace film. My parents bought me a digital Canon point camera for my birthday. I think that camera was only 3 or 4 megapixel. It went a lot of places with me. Finally around 2005 I gave it away to boy who was graduating from the Fold Family Ministries. After that I went for a period of time without a camera. It felt weird to not be able to take pictures. Then finally around 2006, I bought my first Panasonic camera. It was the FZ30. If memory serves me correctly, the camera cost me 255 dollars on Ebay. I loved its zoom range, 35 – 420mm seemed to cover everything. My super zoom camera went everywhere with me. Interestingly, here in Hong Kong a lot of these older cameras end up getting a second life. There are camera shops in ShamShuiPo that resell them. Over the weekend you will see lots of young people out looking at them. I was surprised to see my old FZ30 selling for 450 HKD. It brought back memories. Each of the above mentioned cameras were small sensor cameras. They shot their best at their lowest ISO setting. I think that was 80 ISO on the FZ30.
From Small Sensor Cameras to M43
Although the G1 one felt very plasticy, shot pretty good pictures. At that time, I did my post processing with After Shot Pro. It allowed me to process the camera’s raw files. The jpeg files just didn’t look as nice. The G1 was my first camera that allowed me the advantage of raw picture files. The G1 is a 12MP camera so the files, even as raw files aren’t extremely big. Being a M43s camera, it has a larger sensor. Now for the first time, I didn’t have to slow down the shutter speed or put the camera on a tripod. I could comfortably shoot shots at 800 ISO or even a little higher. That allowed me to use a higher shutter speed. So I had fewer blurry shots.
Different Cameras
What about you? What’s your camera journey? Do you agree that it is best to start with a small sensor camera and later upgrade to a larger sensor camera if you need to? I think there are a lot of people out there that think you need to have full frame to take nice pictures. I took a lot of great pictures on small sensor cameras. Now I regularly use both. Be on the look out for pictures and video from from Japan. I will be using both my small camera and my large camera. Tracy and I will be setting off with a tour group to SenDai, Japan tomorrow morning. We are excited.
