EquipmentDa Beat ran out of money at some point in his life. It’s not like he was spending copious amounts of “other people’s money” or anything, but owning a house with a mortgage is a little different in his locale from most other places. The banks here really like their moneys more than the real-estate that supposedly backs up their loan.
But that’s all irrelevant, we know how banks are, we didn’t manage to change anything fundamentally, so it will happen again to other people at some point, but Da Beat is no longer burdened by insolvability. It did require selling his hard earned Canon photographic equipment, including a perfect copy of the original 24-70mm and the fixed 200mm 2.8 which could cut holes in a sensor, so sharp it was, but at the same time could provide the most sumptuous backgroundblur ever.
After a year or so working a mind-numbing job in a cafetaria (yes, really Rob, and you thought a withering pension was bad), Da Beat managed to scrape some money together to purchase a pocketcam. After some deliberation he opted for the Sony WX350 and HX60, both purchased at a discount, and eventually hope to settle for one of them. Good value for the money if you think about it: 20 megapixels at 200euros, which translates to only 1 cent for a 1000 pixels, which unfortunately is exactly what you get: 20 million of the most dreadful pixels ever, the phrase “a dime a dozen” comes to mind, and that would be the most favorable thing to say.
What is great about those pocketcams is that you can really carry them everywhere and have a little more reach and control than with a mobilephone cam. The imagestabilisation really does help when it is needed, but it doesn’t help when it is not needed. These are the smallest sensors possible, so there is no controllable depth of field to speak of, which is great for architectural photography and the like, but you certainly wouldn’t want to use it for specialty portraitshots.
Furthermore, some of the lensartifacts are corrected in camera, so you get totally straight lines in the image, unfortunately, chromatic aberrations remain. I don’t quite get that.
Oh, and these cams do not do RAW.
What?
Yes, you heard that right. No RAW. It’s in-camera JPG. period.
Just goes to show that these cameras are meant for experts only, because you got to get it right in camera. Luckily, there is somewhat more control than would be noticeable at first sight, so even the WX350 can be adjusted to do something useful when desired.
But armed with his 8 year old laptop, Da Beat is not deterred at all. He remembers stacking images to great effect on similar excruciatingly dreadful pixels from an ipad, and so, stacking would be the route to go. Luckily, Da Beat still owns his old Manfrotto tripod, and these camera’s connect to mobile phones as a way of remote control, so he should be good to go. Of course, semi-auto-everything cams provide a few hurdles of their own.
Attached images show the camera on the scene. This was actually the day before when there was too much moisture in the sky which will turn white with the sun directly to the side. For reasons previously mentioned, a relatively constant blue sky was desired, although I figured that I could change that in post, if a new opportunity wouldn't present itself.