Love At First Click!

Wow……

That’s really all I have to say about this little camera. It’s amazing how $40 more can buy you soooo much more camera. This camera’s quality is lightyears ahead of the Nikon that I had. Kind of holds true to the old adage, “You get what you pay for.” Like I said in the beginning though, I wasn’t expecting a lot but I was expecting quality. I was willing to settle for the “quirks” that the Nikon had but when I can’t take a clear photo in room light of my son sitting across from me, I’m going to get a little frustrated.

So on to new things! The Canon SD1300 is very well-rounded. It’s versatile, compact, easy to use, and doesn’t have a lot of bells and whistles which for the new photographer is great! It does low light well, closeups really well, sports well and what is really remarkable is that it uses available light like nothing I have ever seen. It rarely ever wants to use the flash and will only use it when absolutely necessary. That is a plus because as any photographer will tell you, natural light is more often than not, the best light.

To give you an example. I took this photo of my own eye from about 2.5 inches away,holding it myself. Now it took about 4 tries to get the focus right. It kept wanting to focus on my eyelids rather than the eye itself but once it did, wow! The clarity is unbelievable.

Immediately after receiving this camera I started playing around with it at my desk. Getting to know its functions and generally just seeing what it can do. Remember I had said that some of the best practice you can get is taking photos of whatever is right in front of you. There’s no need to pack up the car and head to the hills, just head to the backyard. In my case I headed to my desk.  Check out some of these photos in the gallery below and tell me what you think. In some cases the lens is so close it is almost touching the subject. Very, very cool.

So a few days later I am driving to work and Tropical Storm Hermine hits and just wreaks havoc all over kingdom come. So I am sitting in my car waiting to go inside and I decide to pop off a few photos real quick of water drops on the windshield just to see how they come out. Not bad at all. I also stopped on the way home and took some photos of the stormy skies over Western Bexar County.

Thursdays are soccer practices for the kids so I decided to take it there and see how it does. It is very hard for me to get used to the point and shoot vs the DSLR especially in a fast-moving environment such as sports but I am working on it. So far this little camera has yet to disappoint me. The photos of Clarissa and Jake at practice in motion were nice, and pretty much what I expected them to be. The zoom rate is very quick which in sports photography is a plus. It responds well and the power up time is nearly unnoticeable. Very good things to have in your camera in a fast moving environment.

The video is high quality also. I haven’t shot any type of video in the past few years except with my cell phone and we all know how wonderful that experience is. I think I will be using this function very often as I don’t have a dedicated video or digital camcorder. I think the kids would like to see what they were like at this age on the tv some day and my Smart Phone video just ain’t gonna cut it. Plus I think I can get some really cool video of photo shoots to share with you here on my blog.

What surprises me even more is the quality of your photos at full digital zoom. Now this camera has a very good, clear 4x optical zoom and up to a 16x digital zoom. The Nikon had the same but at full digital zoom the camera shake was too extensive and the photo was so pixelated that the image was too distorted. This camera at full digital zoom takes a very clear photo and automatically compensates for camera shake. The image stabilizer is remarkable and worth every penny of the higher price especially for you mom’s and dad’s out there with little ones in sports. You’ll be able to get the closeup without the distortion.

More pics to come soon but until then enjoy these.

Until next time, Happy Shooting!

-Robert Hillis