cameras

A few updates from the Okanagan

April 24, 2012 By Antonio Cangiano 3 Comments

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It’s a warm, quiet night so I thought I’d spend a couple of hours catching up on my blogging. In particular, I thought I’d post a brief update on what’s been transpiring in my life as of late.

It’s worth nothing that in my personal blog I haven’t adopted a particular blogging strategy when it comes to the type of content I opt to publish (such as the ones I advocate in my book.) Rather I aim at writing interesting posts regardless of subject, and offer family, friends, and “followers” a way to keep up with various going-ons in my world.

The big news at the moment is that my wife and I recently moved to the Okanagan Valley in British Columbia (specifically Penticton) from Toronto. It’s hard to believe that it’s been only two months since we left the hustle and bustle of urban Ontario. We went through so much stress/work/change, that it feels like half a year has gone by since then.

Our new house

Our new place is a stunning little house on two levels (plus basement). It has 3 bathrooms, 4 bedrooms, and a good sized area that we’ve utlized as a craft room for my wife’s scrapbooking and vintage addiction. Decorating the house the way we like wasn’t cheap, but people can’t stop complimenting us on how nice and classy it looks, so evidently that was money well spent. Suffice it to say, it was a fun and crazy shopping spree. I’ve never spent so much money in so little time. Thankfully that has come to a halt now, as we have all our bases covered. 😉

I even acquired one hell of a BBQ which has seven burners in total and can cook up to 37 burgers (or something like that) at the same time. I’m quickly becoming a master of outdoor cooking — and I’ve never felt so North American before. 😛

The actual renovation (which came before we arrived and started decorating and adding fancy furniture) was done by my father-in-law’s renovation company, who did an amazing job. The place looked brand new the second we arrived. I’ll try to take some pictures soon and post them here for you to see.

What really strikes me as being different is that our new home is located in a cul de sac near a creek and therefore is much quieter than the 23rd floor apartment directly above the busiest highway in Canada where we used to live in back in Toronto. In fact, all I can hear right now is the sound of the water babbling a mere 200 feet or so away. Very zen-like, I tell you.

My office is smaller than it was at our old house, but I love it nevertheless. Living in such a quiet environment enables me to better concentrate on work and other productivity tasks when I’m on the computer.

Penticton is beautiful

Penticton turned out to be bigger than I expected. Before coming to live here I’d thought of it as a small town, but it’s really more of a small city. There are very few things that it lacks and I love that any destination is just five minutes away. Even for things not available locally (e.g., the upcoming arrival of Target in Canada), there is a larger nearby city (Kelowna) located less than an hour away which usually gets you covered.

This town is stunning. It’s located between two lakes and it has an amazing mountain backdrop. It’s hard not to fall in love with this place and I can see why it’s one of the number one destinations in which wealthy people choose to retire in Canada.

In my experience people are very friendly around here as well, much more so than in Toronto. This can likely be attributed to the fact that Penticton is a much smaller city. It’s nice to see a more upbeat and relaxed approach to life by the locals, as this outlook helps puts one in a good mood.

As one might assume, it’s a much less multicultural area as well, so people may find my Italian accent to be somewhat of a novelty, and they may be more prone to ask about my background, how I ended up here, etc, and to show a genuine interest in talking to me.

I’m truly enjoying this little city, and I absolutely love and cherish being so close to my parents-in-law. They are kind, wonderful people who care about my wife and me, and I genuinely love to spend time with them.

B.C. driver license acquired

I got my B.C.’s drivers license and can now drive on my own. It turned out that my Ontario’s learner license (G1) was not transferable to British Columbia. So I had to restart the process from scratch and retake the theory test. I did it on the spot upon learning about this setback, without studying, as I was pretty confident that it wouldn’t be too different from what I learned in Ontario. I’m happy to say that such was the case and I passed on my first try.

As a result I immediately regained my status as learner and was able to amply practice driving with my in-laws and their cars for a couple of weeks. Thankfully, I didn’t have to wait for a full year before being able to take the actual driving test, as they were able to credit the time I spent practicing as a learner in Ontario towards my B.C. license. I took the driving test in mid-March and passed on my first try as well. Now I’m an N driver, which carries a few limitations, but essentially allows me to drive on my own everywhere I wish.

The B.C.’s driving test is definitely more challenging than the Ontario one because it tends to last much longer (30-60 minutes, at least here in the Okanagan.) The streets are less busy, but they also have more oneways, school zones, roundabouts, and other occasions to fail as an inexperienced driver. I’m glad I beat the incredibly high rate of first timers who fail at this examination center.

Another difference is how afforable insurance is in BC. In Ontario it would have cost me several hundred dollars a month for a basic package. Here I only pay less than $250 and get full coverage, including vandalism, theft, etc. This was a pleasant surprise which enabled me to consider the purchase of a nicer car than I expected.

My new car

Truth be told I had a major incentive to get my driver license right away. Sitting in my driveway was my new car — a nice Jaguar S-Type. About a week before, when I was still a learner, I went to North Vancouver to purchase the car and drove it all the way back to Penticton (250+ miles) with my in-laws.

What an amazing experience it was to suddenly be driving surrounded by mountains, lakes, and nature in general. I was afraid of crashing the car before even getting it home, but thankfully nothing bad happened.

My father-in-law, who was a mechanic for ages, could not believe how new the car was under the hood. He told me point blank, “If you are not buying it, I am. This is a steal.” With only 40,000 miles on it and being the third luxury vehicle of an elderly gentleman (single owner), the car is virtually new inside and out and I can’t believe my luck in having scored such a wonderful car. How many people who don’t have wealthy parents can claim that their first car was a Jaguar? 🙂

Jokes aside, I love how comfortable and smooth the car is. I can really tell the difference when I’m driving someone else’s non-luxury car. Even newish cars feel bumpy and uncomfortable by comparison. The heated leather seats are even more comfortable than my couch or office chair.

Diet on hold

The bad news is that I’ve put my diet on hold during this period. I shouldn’t have, but I did for convenience sake. We spent several weeks at my in-laws, while our new house was being prepared and as we were waiting for our belongings to arrive from Ontario. Having to measure grams and calories (well, Weight Watchers points) for everything when you are staying at someone else’s house and eating out frequently, was a bit too much.

I decided to give myself a break from the diet to make these two months be a little easier, as they were exciting and stressful enough without having to worry about diet, weight, etc. Despite being much more active, I have gained back a little bit of weight as a result of being more lax with my diet.

But I’m not going to bullshit you. It’s still an excuse. I could very well have decided to stick to the WW plan. Thankfully, not all is lost. I’ll be back on the horse in a matter a days (I’m restarting my diet in May).

Getting back into photography

Now that I’ve a car for the first time in my life (growing up, my parents didn’t have one either), I’m discovering how many opportunities it opens up. I still catch myself thinking, “Oh I can’t do that, you’d need a car… Oh, right, I have one.” Photography has always been my main non-work-related hobby. I love it so much that I’ve even considered making it my profession at various times throughout my life.

I discovered that having a car changed my perspective on photography. In an old article I mentioned how I bought a compact camera because carrying around the DSLR and lenses was such a hassle. Imagine taking the bus and having to carry a heavy backpack laden with expensive photography equipment with you. Not having a car definitely affected the amount of use I got out of my pro-level equipment.

Now that I have a car, taking my camera and lenses with me when I’m out and about is a no brainer. I’ve also found that the Lowepro backpack I use works beautifully as a bag when opened up in the trunk of the car. Before I felt it was useless for my needs.

Practicality of carrying the equipment aside, the car allows me to scout better locations (for portraits), and enables me to photograph a greater variety of interesting subjects and locations.

My burning passion for photography, which never waned, really wants to take advantage of my new found mobility and freedom. I also tend to wake up quite early in the morning as I tend to start working at 9am EST (which is 6am here in B.C.), so my work day is generally over by 2 or 3 pm, which leaves me with plenty of time to go out and shoot. Of course, the downside is that I can’t go to sleep at 3am like I used to. But all in all, I feel that this new arrangement works well.

I’m including three pictures here which I’ve recently taken sine getting back into photography. They are respectively my beautiful wife Jessica, my beautiful mother-in-law Lynn, and the location spot near Skaha beach at the Okanagan Falls where I took Lynn’s portrait.

Equipment wise I’m still pretty good, even though my 30D is starting to be a bit old at this point. I bought it 6 years ago and it has only 8.2 megapixels, not a great number if you need to crop and make big prints like I do (megapixels are not so important per se, but the camera has other shortcomings as well). So I’ve been eyeing the Canon EOS 5D Mark III like crazy lately. With all the expenses we’ve been dealing with recently however, I’ll probably hold off for a few months before acquiring it. But it’s definitely on my wish list.

I’m also happy to have found a solid color management workflow thanks to the recent purchase of a Spyder4 Pro and a ColorChecker Passport. The first one calibrates your monitor, while the second one effectively helps you calibrate your camera so that the RAW images have a custom profile applied to them which makes the recorded colors as close to the real colors as possible. It’s micro-optimization stuff for sure, but as an engineer I like this kind of exact geekery. I should blog about this type of stuff soon as I’m sure others are considering these kinds of tools and wonder if they’re worth it.

OK, this is enough of a narcissistic fix for now. I don’t usually talk so much about myself, the things I own, etc, but they’ve been such large changes in my life lately that I felt they were worth sharing.

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A Survey of the Best Prosumer Compact Digital Cameras

December 13, 2010 By Antonio Cangiano 2 Comments

Ever since I was a little boy, photography has been one of my main hobbies and interests. My collection of cameras, both film and digital SLR, is pretty decent. I also own some good quality lenses that span the broad range from 12mm all the way to 300mm. Wide-angle lens, check. Walk around f/2.8 zoom, check. Portrait f/1.8 lens, check. Macro lens, check. Canon L series zoom, check. You get the gist. 🙂

The trouble with SLR cameras

Despite my SLR kit, over the course of the past few years, I really haven’t taken many pictures. Lately as well, I’ve been reflecting on the fact that I have relatively few photos of my wife and I together over the course of our lovely, happy six year marriage. I realized that no matter how good one’s equipment is, you can’t take the shot unless your camera is actually with you. And the truth is that between the monetary value of the equipment I possess and its bulk/weight, I only take my DSLR out of the house when I’m on an occasional photographic mission (aka, outdoor shooting session).

The value of the image quality provided by a DSLR with good glass is not lost on me. But owning such great equipment has paradoxically led me to take fewer and fewer pictures over time, thus I end up missing out on the opportunity to spontaneously document life as it occurs. For this reason, I decided that it was high time for me to buy a compact camera that I’d be able to have on me all the time when I’m out and about.

Experience has taught me that I will gladly trade the flexibility, speed, large sensor size, and image quality of an interchangeable lens system for the portability of a high-end compact digicam that can hang out in my coat pocket at all times. I will definitely still use my DSRL kit for situations when a photographic shooting session has been planned (if I’m taking pictures of a friend who volunteers as a model, etc…) or when it’s convenient to do so (such as when I’m shooting at home).

I did a lot of research on the topic of compact digital cameras so as to update my knowledge on the latest models that are available on the market, and as such I thought I’d share some of what I’ve learned with my readers in this post. I really hope that the info provided here will be of help to you if you’re also contemplating getting a compact digital camera for yourself or a loved one.

Requirements

My main concerns when selecting a camera were common ones: portability and price. I don’t want to carry a $700-1000 camera on me most of the time, nor was I interested in an SLR-like super zoom (sometime called ZLR) that would hardly fit in my pocket. For the most part this ruled out great μ4/3 cameras, which are a compromise between a compact camera and a DSLR.

I find such systems (like the Sony Alpha NEX-3) to be outstanding, and think that their popularity will continue to skyrocket as more people start realizing that SLRs are fun but not always very convenient to actually tote around with you. Though I was tempted by this type of camera, in the end it was outside of my comfort zone both in terms of size (it’s a tad too bulky for my intended purpose) and being able to fit into my budget.

As such I shifted my attention to relatively compact pro-digital cameras. Image quality and flexibility (in compact camera form) were my main concerns. In particular, I was looking for the following features:

High-quality, fast optics: I wanted a camera with rapid autofocus and the ability to handle a variety of photographic scenarios, including low light situations.
Image Stabilizer (IS): Lens-based image stabilizers can really help achieve sharp images at lower shutter speeds. As I may not always have a tripod with me this point is important.
Larger sensor than the average compact camera: Generally speaking this leads to better images and less noise due to the lower pixel density on the sensor (assuming the same megapixel count is applicable).
Good usable ISO range: Photography means painting with light; a camera with a usable 800 ISO may make the difference between getting a shot in low light and missing out on capturing it completely.
Full manual control: Sometimes the camera knows best, other times I need to be in control of all the parameters that define the exposure.
Support for RAW files: JPEGs are fine for most shots, but RAW files afford me post-processing flexibility when I need to save a photo or really make one shine.
An excellent wide-angle: Unless you are spying on your neighbors or attempting wildlife photography with a compact camera, you’ll find that a good wide-angle range is often far more important than having an extreme zoom. Given the choice, I would happily trade 100mm on the telephoto side for 10mm gained on the wide-angle side of the range.
Good macro support: Most compact cameras do a good job in this regard already, but I was definitely looking for a camera that would include this handy feature.
Support for HD video: Let’s not kid ourselves here. I’m not going to shoot Avatar with a pocket camera. It would be nice however to be able to shoot the occasional movie clip and do so in HD format with decent results.
No more than $400: This was the budget I set for my new camera.

Note: I don’t care about marketing gimmicks like total megapixels (anything above 8 megapixels is plenty if you need to print enlargements).

Top cameras

Based on the criteria above, I shortlisted the following enthusiast/premium/prosumer/pro (10Mpx) digicams. In truth, these are some of the best cameras on the market, regardless of price.

Canon PowerShot S95

This camera stands out for being extremely compact (it’s so compact that it fits into a shirt pocket). It has a 1/1.7″ CCD sensor and can shoot 720p @ 24 fps movies with stereo sound. The embedded lens is a bright, fast IS 28-105mm (in 35mm terms), f/2.0-4.9. It supports RAW files, has a good ISO range (80-3200, which is very usable up to 800), and its JPEG processing is fantastic. On the downside, it lacks a viewfinder or the hotshoe for an external flash (however Canon provides the option to use the camera to trigger a wireless flash that’s sold separately).

Panasonic Lumix DMC-LX5

The LX5 is larger than the S95, though it still remains comfortably pocket-sized (especially if we are talking about a jacket pocket). It has a slightly larger sensor (1/1.63″ CCD), which is unique because it allows for four types of aspect ratios that can be switched by moving a dial on top of the lens (4:3, 3:2, 16:9, and 1:1, respectively). Different pixels are actually “exposed” depending on the aspect ratio, so this isn’t just a gimmick that’s equivalent to doing cropping via image editing software.

This camera has a fast IS Leica lens and comes in at 24-90mm, f/2.0-3.3. The telephoto end is shorter than the S95, but it provides a much better wide-angle and a brighter lens (f/3.3 at 90mm). The ISO goes from 80 to 12800 (it’s extremely good up to 800). This camera can record very good quality movies at 1280 x 720 pixels @ 30fps, allowing you to customize the exposure much like you can for a photo (you can also zoom during recording). As well this model has a dedicated button that allows you start recording video immediately (note that the audio quality is reported to be less stellar than that of the s95).

Unlike the s95 however, the LX5 has a hotshoe and an external flash (which can be purchased separately), as well as an optional viewfinder (optical or digital). The JPEG processing is arguably not as good as that of the S95, but processing RAW files with the LX5 leads to great images. Lastly, the battery lasts longer than the S95 with an average of 400 shots per battery charge (versus 200 shots for the S95).

Samsung TL500 (EX1)

The EX1 is the bulkiest of the group, at almost double the weight (356g) of the S95 (193g). It still fits into a coat pocket – but we are stretching the definition of “compact” a little bit. However, it has the fastest lens of any compact camera (with a stunning image stabilized 24-72mm f/1.8-2.4). The sensor is the same size of that on the S95 (1/1.7″ Type CCD), with an ISO sensitivity of 80-3200 (like the previous two cameras, this model shines up until an ISO of 800).

The EX1 lacks HD video (480p @ 30 fps) and its RAW files don’t appear to be currently supported by Mac OS X programs. People have also reported issues with the built-in metering system (which appears to be a bit inconsistent). On the plus size it’s excellently built, with good manual controls and a decent battery life (250 shots).

Though it’s admittedly out of its league in terms of this shortlist, I wanted to mention the Panasonic Lumix DMC-ZS7 as well. It’s more of a “travel zoom” than a prosumer camera, but the presence of a large, relatively fast zoom, GPS, and its significantly lower price point (it’s currently on sale for $239) made me give this camera some thought.

As well, I didn’t include overviews of the Nikon Coolpix P7000 or Canon G12 here because they’re both slightly out of budget and are far too bulky for my intended purpose (despite remaining excellent choices if you’re fine with a slightly larger compact camera).

My final choice

Overall the three cameras above all produce excellent images given their compact size. You really can’t go wrong with any of these powerhouses. I personally decided that in the end, I wouldn’t be happy without HD video and as such decided to give up on the idea of purchasing the Samsung model. That left me with the choice of picking between the S95 and the LX5, which was anything but an easy task! I love the super compact nature of the S95, its JPEG processing, and manual focus ring. However, the LX5 arguably had the edge on a feature-by-feature basis, so in the end I went with the Panasonic Lumix DMC-LX5 (on sale for $399) over the S95, and am now sincerely looking forward to using this terrific compact digicam.

Disclaimer: Please note that the links to Amazon contain my referral id. Clicking on them won’t cost you a cent and you can think of doing so as a way of tipping me for writing this article if you buy something as a result of it.