Neglected to mention…

24 Jan 2005

… that my parents got me a digital camera for the birthday a few days back. It’s a Pentax Optio S40, has a 4MP sensor, 3x optical zoom (and some digital which I’ve of course disabled), a flash, 11MB inbuilt memory (I presume THAT means that there’s 16MB, 5MB of which is software stuff) and another 256MB SD card which we bought.

Every photo posted here from The Lazy Kings til now has been taken with that camera… yeah, I was using it before my birthday, bad me :P

I maintain that the other Pentax (SP 500 film SLR) takes better pictures, especially at night, but it’s just so much more expensive to use all the time! Having said that, I’m not going to let it sink into a cupboard and disappear: It’ll be on hand whenever i’m planning to take (good) photos, whilst the new Pentax will be for general happy snaps and the like.

Qualms with the camera thus far? It didn’t come with a rechargable battery. $90 later, and I’ve got a Samsung charger with killer battery life, so that’s no longer a problem — but it’s an expense that should be noted prior to purchase. Other than that, I haven’t figured out how to manually adjust exposure, so if you’re taking photos at night without a flash (scenic shots, etc.) then it’s not a great idea. Having said that, the massssssssiiiiveee exposure in “Night” mode does do some cool blurry things to photos…

The exposure time (according to the EXIF data) on the Harbour Bridge image is 4 seconds, and 1 second on the first shot (Coogee) — but it felt like lots more, because it was really windy standing on the head. (No, not standing on my head… that would be talent!)