Tuesday, December 04, 2012

An Amateur Camera For Pro Use??? Never, Well Maybe

Good Afternoon Everybody,

Canon SX50I have to admit, that while we're in Cabo San Lucas Mexico, I'm having a great time with my new, early Christmas present, a Canon PowerShot SX50 HS Digital Camera.

The cool thing about this special, little camera is the fact that it will zoom from 24 mm all the way out to 1200 mm – 35mm equivalent – without changing lenses! If you let that zoom range sink in, just for a second, you understand why it is such a fun camera to use. While in Cabo, I've been photographing everything from sunrises to sunsets, landscapes, cactus flowers and plants, macros of baby sea turtles, goggley eyed crabs, wildlife photos, and even taking close-up photographs of the moon.

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It's the unbelievable zoom range of this camera that makes it so much fun to use. It produces a 12 mega-pixel RAW file which I can import into the latest Lightroom 4's beta release. Lightroom gives me plenty of control in enhancing the camera's images. The 12 mega-pixel file size is the same as my size as my beloved Canon 40D camera of just a few years ago. So I suspect I'll be able to print an acceptable 24x36 inch print from these files just as I routinely produced and delivered from my 40D.

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The camera is also responsive enough for me to capture most of the photographs that I want to take. The time it takes to write the file to the card is a little slower than I would like, meaning that I rarely do any burst shooting and that can be a real hindrance for any wedding photographer.  Don' t  get me wrong, I'm not suggesting you trade in your Canon 5D Mark III of Nikon D800.

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This camera is small, convenient, light weight and what I REALLY love about this camera is the zoom range.  It is that fantastic zoom range that offers not just an amateur photographer some added shooting versatility but the professional photographers as well. I know some of you reading this must think I'm "nuts" about now, but hang in there with me.  I ran a few tests about a week ago just to see what kind of real image quality I could produce out of the camera.  I was really surprised with my first tests!

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I have several sample images that I quickly printed 11x14 prior to us leaving for Cabo. I plan to share with you these images in a follow-up post this week. So, be sure to tune in, I think you'll be surprised with the results I was able to obtain!

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Hey, for $450 US dollars, this camera is one sweet little gem that I am thoroughly enjoying using while on vacation. Galileo would have loved it ;~)

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Hey gang, that's it for me today. Everybody have a great rest of the day in whatever part of the world you're in and I'll plan to see you again later this week.

Adios, David

3 comments:

  1. Thise images are incredible! I still have my old Canon PowerShot S2 IS which is an ancestor of that SX50 and I loved the extreme, variable focal length of it. Guess Canon listened to its customers and finally gave it RAW capabilities it never had in its previous iterations.

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  2. Thanks for sharing such quality info (great camera)... It's so important to have a list of good photography resource sites, as there's always important photo taking events coming up like Christmas, when it's so important to capture every single one of your most treasured memories, and this camera looks just perfect for beginners. I recently came across another great photography blog for beginners, which shared some really great holiday photography tips, which you might well like to read if you want to take great pictures like the ones seen in this post.

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  3. Hey, even Ansel Adams used a Polaroid once in a while. :-)

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