I availed myself of the special show pricing (and suffered the robust crowds) to buy a Canon 400D body, plus the lens I’ve been trying to get hold of – the Canon 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 IS. The lens is cheap, but allegedly better optically than its poor non-image-stabilised cousin that is shipped by default with many Canon bodies. At some point, I’ll invest in something better.

I had a (35mm) SLR some time ago, but sold it when I started using my digital compact more. I’ve been missing the flexibility of an SLR, though, and the appeal of higher ISO (the heroin of digital photography?) was too much. I’ll give it its first proper crack at the whip at the weekend, no doubt.

Flickr, of course, has been a great success story of recent years, providing a simple and cheap way for anyone to upload and share photos. They have got the balance just right between the man-in-the-street and the enthusiastic amateur, so much so that many professionals now inhabit Flickr (don’t be fooled by the ‘pro’ logo, though; it means nothing more than that a subscriber is paying for more space – which is what I do). They’ve also spent a considerable amount of time getting the social aspects right, so much so that it’s easy to spend hours browsing Flickr for funky photos and talking with other keen photographers. Many of my friends are also into photography and most of them have Flickr accounts.

At the same time, Flickr makes it trivial to access mountains of excellent content that most photographers would be rightly jealous of. I’m proud of some of my best photos, but it doesn’t take long on Flickr to find stuff that’s miles ahead.

Despite the legal, moral, and practical issues involved in copying a photo (see the Creative Commons page for an indication of how unnecessarily complicated it can be to understand), I can’t help but think that all of this will reduce the average cost of a saleable photo for a professional photographer – whether they choose to participate online or not. In fact, it’s easy to see that this is true, simply by observing the rush of online stock photography websites selling stuff for pennies. Put in other terms, it makes it easier to become a professional photographer, whilst making it harder to make money from it. It’s a good substitution argument – if I don’t like the price you’re charging for your pretty picture, I’ll find another one (and Flickr and the web makes it easy). It’s no coincidence that the consequences of this digital enablement roughly mirror the struggles and increased opportunity that many music artists are going through with the rise of online music, file-sharing, etc.

None of this is designed to discourage anyone. It’s got to be more satisfying to beat the world than just those lucky few who can afford a camera. But like much of economic progress, the commoditisation of good photography is going to be easier for the consumer (viewer) than the producer (photographer).

Nevertheless, I went for a wander earlier around town, particularly down to the Financial District, where I took a few pictures of San Francisco’s most famous (and tallest) skyscraper, the Transamerica Pyramid. Currently trying to figure out the good places in town to chill out – I really don’t want do that much touristy stuff, especially since I’ve done a lot before. I hope to spend some time unwinding before heading back to the UK.

Advantages:

• Easy-to-use Sony design – the build quality seems pretty good too. Normally I avoid Sony in the same way I avoid Apple – I just don’t understand the fuss (sorry Apple fans). This time, the bargain price swayed it for me.
• Much slimmer and lighter than my Canon.
• Goes all the way up to ISO 1000 (my Canon only does ISO 400). It remains to be seen how much noise there is at this level, but it’s still nice to know it can do it. I shoot in low light a lot, and hate compact-camera flash almost on principle.

Disadvantages:

• Not quite as many features as my Canon. It won’t do aperture-priority, shutter-priority, etc. I can do without these for the time being.
• No gravity sensor. It remains to be seen how annoying this will become, but Picasa makes rotating easy so hopefully it won’t be a big problem.
• Only a 3x optical zoom. Not sure what this translates to in old numbers, but it ain’t much.
• US charger – of course I didn’t expect anything different, but will have to solve this in the UK somehow.
• US-only warranty – didn’t expect anything different either, but just decided to take the risk – that’s an easier decision to make with $240 than the ~$1000 the 400D would have cost.

I’m really not sure what I’ll do when I return to the UK. It probably depends on how many the Canon will cost to fix. I might sell it on Ebay once fixed and part-buy an SLR with the proceeds (I really should have followed Adrian‘s advice originally and bought the 400D in the UK). I don’t really want to keep it; I’m most unimpressed with Canon now, and I get the impression the Sony will probably do everything I want from a compact. We’ll see.

I’m still stuck with the problem of how to take pictures; I’ve looked into hiring a camera, but the only ones seemingly available are high-end SLRs at around $75/day – far more than I want to spend. I may just end up buying a cheap compact so I have some photos to take home.

Unsurprisingly, Canon’s UK website provides much worse service – I can’t even find an email address to check with them whether they’d fix a camera under a US warranty. I still find it amazing that companies think it’s reasonable to leave their customers without an email address to contact. I’ll probably call them on Monday to confirm, but I’m not happy with this level of pre-sales support. I’ll be taking a look at Nikon.

Which unfortunately leaves me without a way of taking pictures whilst I’m here. And that makes me a sad Andy. Anyone see a way out of this?

Fortunately, my trip out today wasn’t really that photogenic in practice – there’s been a lot of rain here recently, and even though I drove 140 miles today (all the way up the East side of The Bay to Oakland, across the Bay Bridge, and through San Francisco), it was pretty misty and wet, and I wouldn’t have got any good pictures anyway (although I got a good view of downtown, with the Transamerica Pyramid and many of the other landmarks I remember from my last trip).

Nevertheless, I’ve decided to comfort myself by buying another thing I can break – the 400D (together with the IS lens Adrian suggested). Amazon here are doing a good price, and will probably deliver it by the end of the week, in time for next weekend. I just need to make 100% sure that the warranty covers the UK – I’m getting mixed messages from the web.

Observations on Hertz #1 Club Gold: So cool. Just turn up (2 hours late but it didn’t seem to matter), get in the car, show your license, and drive off. This is the way things should be.

Observations on American Driving: Automatic transmission: simple, just don’t forget it moves when you take your foot off the brake. Driving on the right-hand-side of the road: easier than expected. Following the instructions Neverlost gives me: harder than expected. Getting your key out of the ignition without calling the Hertz helpline: apparently impossible.

But driving here is incredibly lazy. After experimenting this afternoon with the cruise control, I know this is the way it ought to be: big roads, no lack of power, no worrying about gearchanges, no worrying about navigation, a soft and comfortable ride. I took a trip down to Santa Cruz – a lovely little town – and thoroughly enjoyed the drive in the sun.

plv has convinced me to try and use Flickr again – for highlighting my best photos. I’ve uploaded some today from the trip to Santa Cruz (and one from yesterday showing the ice across the Midwest). I expect I’ll continue to use my gallery, but probably won’t upload to it whilst I’m in the US.

I grew up in Farnborough, so I’ve been familiar with the area for quite some time, and when I was younger, we used to jokingly refer to it as ‘Boringstoke’. But Basingstoke is a city of strange contrasts, unlike many others I can think of. The main thing that strikes you as you walk through parts of the city centre is 60s concrete architecture (a much maligned style in my opinion; Ernő Goldfinger showed how to do it right). However, Basingstoke has pretty parts that remind one of cathedral towns such as Winchester, Guildford, or Salisbury. It also has some gleaming, shiny parts (the Barclays building) and some unforgivingly ugly office blocks (such as Alencon House, previously occupied by IBM). It has some hilly streets that in places seemed to uncannily resemble Kendal; and a spotless shopping centre selling upper-middle-class goods and services.

What a bizarre place Basingstoke is.

However, whilst digital has brought innovation to the back-end – what do you do once the picture is taken? – the front-end is still as much hassle as ever. I own a Canon Powershot S80, a high-end compact camera which aims to provide many of the facilities of an SLR on a compact. Canon have done a good job – it pretty much does this – since a lot of those facilities are only in software anyway, it’s not hard. However, it still doesn’t match up to an SLR in one fundamental way – the picture quality is simply not as good (not as clear, fringing round the edges), mostly a result of a smaller CCD and a smaller, cheaper lens. Accordingly, I plan to buy an SLR at some point in the future once I can get what I want (>12MP for less than £500 – I’m betting on two years).

It’s painfully apparent that cameras themselves haven’t changed much in size or ease-of-usage since digital photography came along. Compact cameras have got slightly smaller than later-generation 35mm ones, partly because CCDs don’t need to be 35mm in size, and partly because many viewfinders have been eliminated in favour of an LCD screen. SLRs, however, are still basically the same size they always were – and I would assert this is mostly because of the large physical size of high-quality lenses (I’m sure high-quality CCDs could be reduced in size with a bit of investment).

The problem, of course, is that there are fundamental physical limitations to do with light that affect the quality of the lens. I’m no physicist, but I suspect from what I remember learning in physics at school that these are likely to be the biggest problem. However, I’m sure that there must be more one can do to shrink SLRs (and presumably their lenses). There is of course a huge pre-existing investment in lens mountings by consumers and professionals (for example, Canon have their EOS system), which is bound to slow down the rate of change and adoption, but I for one would love to see some investment going into shrinking the whole camera. I’d pay a lot for a high-quality SLR that fits in my pocket.

Updated 2007-01-11: Bit of a simple treatment perhaps, but this guide might nevertheless be useful when determining megapixel requirements. Of course it does make a (partly) abritrary choice of 300dpi resolution.

In general, my observations of Canon have been that they produce good, solid cameras (the S80 is an excellent camera for a serious amateur who doesn’t want the bulk of an SLR) and that they provide good service. I’d recommend them without hesitation.

(note: Hannah’s blog is accessible only from inside the IBM network, but the picture is on Flickr)