Since I started my “amateur” photography business, I’ve been asked several times about the equipment that I use. My husband bought me a Nikon D3100 for my birthday from Best Buy at the beginning of this year, which I initially LOVED. I had been DROOLING over it for a while and it only set us back about $700 which relatively isn’t a lot of money considering what many people pay for their camera bodies! I got a 16GB memory card and I was good to go! After a couple of days, though, I felt extremely limited by the 18-55mm lens (which only offers 3x optical zoom) and started pricing some other lenses. Eicheewawa!!! They were EX.PEN.SIVE!
After some pondering and online perusing, I decided to take it back to Best Buy and exchange it for a Canon Powershot SX30IS which boasts an 18-840mm lens, up to 4320 x 3240 photo resolution (which prints at 16″ x 20″) OR you can shoot at 3744 x 2104 photo resolution for wide size prints, 35x optical zoom, and 140x digital zoom! ;) I love this camera. It offers me MOST of the DSLR perks without having to buy extra lenses! Like Digital SLR cameras, it has a flash hot shoe which accepts more high powered external flash equipment like the Canon 270 EX Speedlite for better image quality and longer flash range.
The Canon Powershot SX30IS has several shooting modes:
- Auto (detects the best settings for the perceived environment)
- Program (allows you to choose the white balance, flash power, brightness, etc)
- Portrait (sets the camera to maximize the quality of shots you take of people)
- Landscape (self explanatory lol)
- Active (allows you to shoot moving objects continuously)
- Scene (optimizes camera settings for specific shooting arrangements: beach, foliage, snow, fireworks, Panoramic stitch assist, smart shutter which detects smiles to automatically release the shutter at exactly the right moment, low light, super vivid, posterized effect, color accent, color swap, FISH EYE which I love lol, and miniature which blurs the top and bottom of the frame)
- HD Video (allows you to record up to 1280 x 720 high definition videos and presents colorization, white balance, and effect options)
- Shutter Priority (you set the shutter speed and the camera will select the aperture)
- Aperture Priority (you set the aperture and the camera will find the best shutter speed)
- Manual (lets you set the aperture AND shutter speed, just as any DSLR camera allows – this provides the most flexibility when shooting, but requires some knowledge)
- Two modes for saving custom shooting settings (I found this TOTALLY helpful during basketball season, saving settings for the game gym environment and another set of options for the practice gym)
Other controls that I enjoy having are manual focus (on my Nikon DSLR this was basically me turning the dial on the lens until the focus was how I wanted it. On my Canon Powershot SX30IS, I turn the dial on the back of my camera to find my desired focus), self-timer mode, ISO control, and the manual view finder for when it’s too bright to see my LCD screen. The display also has a grid view option for using the Rule of Thirds (if you don’t do photography you probably won’t know what that is — the best places to align the focal point of the photograph is where the lines intersect!)
There are plenty of other features but I won’t get into all of that. My camera of choice for the photography I do is the Canon Powershot SX30IS which retails for $429.99 at Best Buy (at this moment it’s on sale for $399). Eventually I may want something more powerful but this camera has yet to fail me and allows me to take amazing, beautiful captures without investing in — and constantly switching out — a lot of lenses! I highly recommend it for any amateur photographer who is in the market for affordable, versatile equipment.
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