Calling All Photogs!

I took a few pictures yesterday when we were transitioning from the upper 20's down to Michigan Freezer quickly.

One critter in the neighborhood decided to go out for a snowy stroll. Squirrel tracks, I think.



The sun tried to peek out a few times. This was as a far as it got. I think it eyeballed the temps and noped out of here


I stepped outside to take a picture of the ice & snow on a bush by the door.



Everything outside was a little too icy for klutzy me to have good traction on, so I noped inside before I broke something & took one through the window on the door, despite it fogging up.



08/23/17 Edit: Fixed broken photo links.

Sorry for the delay, but these 24-hour Photo Develop Shops
aren't what they used to be!
Here's a pic of BIAD dealing with an intruder near his shed.

Nyiah,

1.) Nyiah, would you like a separate photography board within "Members' Interests?" Would there be sufficient interest in it? Please let me know. (Of course anyone else with an opinion may chime in either here or through PM.

2.) I'm considering buying a camera. Haven't had one for years. Might I ask a couple of simple questions, then ask for any other advice? I'm going to go digital.

2. a.) At what point does the Mega Pixel race get silly? Is 3MP enough? Should I try for as many as I can afford? Is there some level where adding more MPs just get to be a status symbol and unnecessary for photography?

2. b.) What about zoom? I've seen a few models with zoom of 14X and above. Same question as the Mega Pixels, does it get silly at some point and unnecessary?

Thanks for the advice. (Assuming someone offers some.)

Charles1952, I don't know if it would be worthwhile just yet. Perhaps down the road in time if photography threads are in abundance? I appreciate the sentiment, though :)

I'm not sure I'd be of much help in answering any questions about cameras. I don't consider myself to be a photographer by any stretch -- I still haven't fully figured out the manual mode on my camera. At best, I'm a novice who likes to think I have a half-assed picture-taking hobby XD

I can give advice based on what I've owned, though. The first one I actually owned myself was a Kodak EasyShare that my dad gave to me for Christma one year. It lasted several years, and was a good introductory camera for me to learn to use. It was a basic point & shoot camera with just a few composition setting styles (portrait, landscape, macro, etc) After it died a noisy whirring death some years later, I went through several cheaper digitals trying to find one with equally good specs. For what it's worth, I wasted money on Panasonics & Fujifilms back in the day. They took horrible photos. I don't know if they've improved at all or not since then, but I have a stretch of pictures when the youngest was a baby that are simply awful -- overexposed, underexposed, bad color saturation, etc. I can probably have them corrected by a professional, but I've never been able to fully fix the pictures myself (we'll get into photo softwares in a bit)

My current camera is a Sony CyberShot, and I've yet to regret buying it. I tend to use the auto setting the most, where it automatically adjusts based on the environment. Most of the time, that's plenty sufficient for me, but I do sometimes switch over to another setting, like one for snow, or bright sunlight. I occasionally use the manual mode to set up the camera to take long exposure pictures at night. It's a 16 MP camera, which from what I understand is more than good enough. The quality of the picture has more to do with the quality of the sensor in it than the MP. I settled on it after doing a lot of googling, honestly. That was the biggest help for me when I was trying to find the best camera for my budget. I read through several blogs, I compared every model in my price range & looked up reviews on them, etc. When you get away from the cheaper drug store type digital cameras and start looking at the more expensive ones, you realize it's not just a purchase any more, you're making an investment. You want the best your budget will allow for, and for it to last the longest before you want or need a newer one. My CyberShot seems to be pretty durable (or I'm just lucky?) I dropped my Kodaks several times (had the first, and a second after the Panasonics & Fujifilms) They were so fragile, one hard bump & I'd have to send them off for warranty repairs. My CyberShot seems to be able to handle stupid human moves pretty well, I've dropped it more times than I can count, including down stairs.
When you look into the user reviews for brands/models, this is the kind of thing you want to watch for outside of image quality -- how sensitive it is to jostling, whether the shutter has a propensity to jam & such. It might take good pictures, but if being handled a little roughly gets it shipped off for repairs often, it's probably going to be more of an aggravation to have.

As for the megapixels, it's like I said -- more dependent on the sensor. The bigger/better the sensor, the more light the camera's eyeball here can collect & render into an image. Here's an article that explains it better than I can:
www.tomsguide.com/us/how-many-megapixels-you-need,review-1974.html

As for zoom, I can say the digital zooms tend to have more image noise no matter what, like what you see if you look at a picture in photo software cropped down a lot. Digital zoom basically crops & enlarges whatever you're photographing, kind of like what cropping a picture in photo software does, except it's done on the camera before you press the shutter button. I try to avoid using it on mine, I have a 16x optical zoom (uses the lens to magnify rather than digitally enlarging) Depending on how far you want to be able to zoom, the zoom is up to you. But don't go by digital zoom numbers, you want your optical zoom to be the defining factor for distance images, not digital.

Edit: Oh yeah, photo editing softwares! I'm no help there, I tried to figure out GIMP (a free mirror of Adobe Photoshop to an extent) I couldn't figure it out, that stuff was beyond me. I use a software called Photoscape. It's quite basic, but it gets the job done for me for cropping, fixing over or under exposures, fixing color temperature (is it more blue based light to the human eye or is it really this reddish? that kind of thing) errors and such.

Nyiah, Thanks for the help. I'm planning to start walking and doing a little backpacking soon, I thought a camera only made sense. I won't be in your league, but if I get a picture which doesn't induce nausea, I'll post it.

By the way, have a "Post-E" for your excellent post.

Testing

Okay, you learn something new everyday.

I wanted this pic to be a closer up so you could see the ends of the rainbow, the rest of which are covered by the clouds. I tried to attach a larger version, but was told the image was too large

On my computer at least, if you move the curser over the pic it shows an enlarged version to the right. If you click on it, it appears in another window.

Sorry guys, I used to be better at this sort of thing years ago.

I took it with my Samsung 5 in central Arizona. Elevation is about 5,300. On my phone I can maximize it all I want. It really is a good pic, I think, of only the ends of a rainbow

I have other weather pics I'll share as time allows

Nyiah, that does look like a sparrow sun bathing on your roof. nice pics all around especially the fireworks mid blast