View single post by Sparkz
 Posted: Sep 19th, 2012 05:35 AM
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Sparkz



Joined: Jun 13th, 2011
Location: Florida USA
Posts: 42
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 That is a fine instrument, I am a huge fan of Canon and their products! The bad news is it will not support RAW output via it's paired CCD pickup and Digic processor. All the images though good and crisp are still - JPG compressed. But do NOT let that stop you. :D Seeing a handful of your recent shots and knowing the construction of the camera and placement of it's flash, I am going to call on the side of mild skepticism. You have shots of artfully placed dust particles. :(

I refute the claims of a visible face in the windows only because of the flash being unavoidably used. Even the *thinnest* film of dust or deposit on glass will alter it's reflective properties that will jump to the fore under the intense arc light of a flash. :( Ask anyone living in Florida with an irrigation well loaded with iron and phosphates and what it does to stone, concrete and glass. On glass, light water deposits from such a source will make swirls and slight discoloration that in time form pretty rainbows despite the most stringent cleaning. They are MOST apparent when examined under sunlight and especially a flash. On stone, concrete and paint, it just turns stuff rusty-brown. (just as an anecdotal example)

The GOOD news: You have a camera. :D It's better than nothing at all for certain!

The not so good news: However it lacks the ability to take it out of a pre-programmed mode of operation which will prohibit night exposures w/out a flash. Taking a camera  out of automatic "Program" or AE modes and feeling out the manual settings without a flash will benefit you in your orb hunts to an immense degree.

I do recommend a slight improvement in equipment payload the next time you go afield - it will lend credit to you and your efforts and you can wow the world with, "This is a self-illuminating phenomenon I caught when I was out by ________ !"

(I may be skeptical but - I'll try to help too, please do not take offense, I am not poo-pooing your effort or equipment)

Peace - keep up the excellent work.:thumbup:


***Did some quick research***

Shop for a camera that supports "RAW" or "RAW+JPG" frames to memory card media. Save your pennies, a really good unit will be on the European market come mid October, Canon's releasing a Digital Elph series that's compact with a retractable and very speedy, low "L" zoom lens. It's perfectly pocket sized for your hunts (haunts?) and offers manual control and flash overrides. If you wait a bit longer, I am certain it will come down in price, but they set it to debut at about 480 Euros. Keep your eyes open for the S110. Not to be confused with the one currently on the market - the new one supports Wi-Fi and live file dump capability! It will publish straight to the cloud or a waiting laptop in adhoc mode. I had to buy a flippin' expensive CF FLASH+Wi-fi combo card to make my EOS do the same trick. :P

Here's a link to the S110 page on Canon-Europe's site