Saturday, November 13, 2010

More notes on railfaning and bloging

As I plan my effective recreation, the question that comes up is what do I take. In the early days, I simply carried a camera. Before that it was just myself but that was too long ago. My first camera was a good one. It was a simple manual SLR. In time, it ages a bit and I moved to a better, automatic SLR. Both of these film cameras. I took thousand of slides, half were of trains. Some were good. I eventually got a 8ml camcorder to widen my options in filming. I could never get the hang of using both in the same excursion. The camcorder was purchased after my last train excursion, so it never became a problem.

Now we are in the era of digital. I got a very simple point and shoot digital camera. It was too simple and user friendly. I would take a picture of a engine but the headlight would throw the exposure off so it gave me an error message to correct. By that time, I missed the egine. There was not a manual or bypass setting on the camera, that I could find. So I use both cameras for a long time. Trains were film and everything else degital. However, I paid extra and had the slides committed to digital format when processed.

Finally, I got myself a digital SLR and it was the best thing I could have. My camcorder got lost in the shuffle. I finally invested in a mini-dvd camforder. It works well. Now comes the question of what to use when. In reality there are three forms of cameras. The DSLR has the best optics, resolution and control. Second is the camcorder. It does pictures as well as video, however there is less resolution of the pictures. There is one last item to add to the photographic equiptment and that is the cell phone. A few more choices to make.

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