Camera Gear and Software used
Camera gear
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my first digicam. Choosen during spring 2003. Was the best
performance/price at the time for 600 euros, goal being something that
can shoot great pics and help me learn shooting. After 2.5 years, I was looking for a real viewfinder, a fast
AF and a good (=short) DOF, so I sold this camera to upgrade to a
DSLR. The s602 was a pleasure to use and
help me learning lot of stuff. The main s602 features were:
- bridge camera (EVF with fixed lens), 35mm equ. of 35-210mm F2.8 -
F11
- Fuji 3.3 million sensors 3rd generation SuperCCD, used in 6 Mpix
Fine mode
- 15 to 1/10000 Sec Shutter Speeds
- lot of functions: white balance (presets, manual); bracketing; 5
frames/s, exposure compensation; M,A,T,P modes (+scenes); multi
64-division, center-weighted average, and spot metering
- external flash mount; dual AF system (really fast for a bridge
camera outdoor, but really slow indoor); 49 selectable AF points;
manual focus
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Allow to mount the filters and close up. But also protects
the camera zoom from shocks and prevent dust to enter the camera. Way
cheaper than Fuji brand ring, but as effective. It is
alway mounted on the camera (by default with the UV0
filter)
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Needed to shoot macro with blurred background. See Hector Niam
website for an excellent tutorial about insect
Macro Photography
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Needed to protect Camera lenses
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Can be great for some landscape shots
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Best performance/price ratio of s602 flashes. The head
swilvel and tilt, allowing to bounce whereever you want, plenty of
power. not TTL, but I do not care since the camera does not have this
feature.
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soften flash light. Used for Macro, and for Portrait when I cannot do
flash bouncing.
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entry grade tripod. Allows me to experiment the world of long exposure.
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Used mainly for: shots in zoo (animals are often far away), portrait if
enough distance is available (shorter DOP, blurred background). Gives a
35mm equilavent of 357mm, no f-stop loss. Cheaper than fuji, same
quality, better factor
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1 set for the camera, one for the flash, and one backup set for each.
Sets for the flash were intialy used for the cam, but after 2 years
they deliver a too low voltage, so I now use them in the flash only.
The camera has now two new sets. They last about 500 shots.
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works fine. The cam. would use faster card at the same speed, so no
upgrade forseen.
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same as above
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Wonderfull camera bag. Lightweight, but big enough to hold all of above
gear. Does not look like a camera bag. comfortable enough for biking,
hicking, skiing. 'sling' type allows you to swing it around to the
front provides quick access to your camera stuff.
Software
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- $60
Image management tool - cheap and incredibely
powerfull. Now you can really organize your 10 000+ pictures spread
over several drives and DVDs. I'm using it to download and rename files
from card reader (one click!), categorize, build my web gallery. This my 'photo digital workplace'. I'm
starting the other tools from Imatch (gimp, qimage.). I'm not aware of
any software that could replace it.
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- $45
Multiple Image Printing and Processing Software
Print digital photographs with maximum quality. I'm using QImage for
color correction (levels, cruves, white balance,...) and for printing.
It will rework your picture to adapt it your exact printer (or internet
lab) DPI, using advanced interpolation algorythm. The result for large
prints is way better than what you can get by relying on the lab
without preprocessing or with resizing in other software (including the
over priced adobe photoshop. It will also optimize paper usage by
placing Multiple Prints/Sizes Per Page, Including Posters. ICC
mamangement. I tried a A0 poster (4x4 pages, about 120 by 80cm or 4 by
2.5 feets!) from a S602 picture and at 1 meter the result is
stunning. And last but not least,it saves your picture
processing in a separate file, leaving the original untouched.
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- free
I'm using it for photo retouching, image composition and image
authoring. It is not a daily tool for me, most shots needing only
color/sharpness adjustment, that will be done in QImage. It's
free, and fullfill my needs that are not covered by
IMatch and QImage.
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an easy to use GUI for Panorama Tools GUI -
free
With hugin you can assemble a mosiac of photographs into a complete
immersive panorama, stitch any series of overlapping pictures and much
more. Not a tool that I'm using daily, but I keep it on my hard drive,
doing 2 or 3 panoramas a year. Known to be the most efficient free tool
for building panoramas. Was unstable, but getting beter and better with
new releases.
As you can see, for about the price of photoshop elements or paintshop
pro, I've got a full workflow with the above software.
Got to improve my noise removal step. I'm using the free version of
Noiseware. But I
will have to review other solutions like noiseware pro, NeatImage or NoiseNinja to work in 16 bits color mode
when I will get a dSLR and will shoot raw.
Regarding usage of color profiles, I'm quite convinced it is a real
improvement. So I'm using an internet lab that is providing its own ICC
profile. Regarding my own printer, my old e20 agfa scanner is not good
enough to create good profiles, and since I'm using the internet lab when
I want high quality prints (after processing with qimage) I do not want
to pay for professionnal made profiles for my printer, that would link me
to a paper brand. So no profile
prism or vuescan purchase
forseen.
back home
last update: 2005.12.22