(no subject)

[inahandbasket]

I wish I took more photos.

Why don't I? A couple of reasons.
- Because my DSLR is fairly large and it's difficult to fit nicely into my daily-carry bag. It fits great if I pop the lens off, but then it takes me a minute or two to take a picture, which is anything but quick when trying to catch something neat that I noticed. It also takes a full 3 seconds from power on to first capture, so even if I leave the lens on the body (and carry my larger bag) I often miss that short-lived moment.
- It's fairly old (first-gen Digital Rebel), and the image quality isn't good when compared to just about anything newer. I can fake it to some extent in photoshop, but when the data ain't in the pixels there's only so much you can do.
- I don't like being "that guy" who always caries an SLR around his neck and frequently stops to shoot things. Sometimes I'm ok with it, but sometimes I'm not. If prosicated and I are just out for a walk I have no problem with it, but walking to the drug store by myself and randomly stopping to shoot photos always rubs me the wrong way. I don't know why.

Is this just a whine to rationalize getting a new camera body? Meh. Not really. I can rationalize that to myself well enough if I really want to. It's more me mulling options.

coraline just got a new Canon Rebel XSi body which is quite nice, and much smaller than my existing one, which would address a lot of my above issues. From the feature-set and physical-handling perspective my selection would be the Canon 40D, but that's a much larger camera body than my current one, exacerbating the portability issue.
So if I'm going to upgrade do I go with the 40D and a decent point-shoot for constant carrying, only whipping out the big-guns when I really need it? Or do I go with the newer and smaller Rebel body and get a sort of compromise arrangement?

All a moot point until after the house is bought obviously, but it's been on my back-burner for over a year now.

Comments

[inahandbasket]

See these days all SLRs have a point and shoot mode anyway, the only real difference would be the convenience of having a PS in my pocket. The line between SLR and PS is blurring from a features perspective these days, with SLRs mostly just adding hardware flexibility. (Also more buttons means easier access to the settings that PS's make you delve into obscure menus for.)

Meg and I will always have a PS around because they're infinitely useful, but the question is just how I want to deal with carrying things around. The smaller Rebel bodies would certainly satisfy my actual needs (cake) as well as the 40D would, but I'd prefer the 40D for some "icing" reasons.
The question is; at what point does convenience outweigh icing? And that's purely subjective. ^_^

[coraline]

at what point does convenience outweigh icing? And that's purely subjective

exactly!

for me, i'm glad the answer was clear enough to avoid any sort of agonizing over it. hope you find a solution that works for you though... yay photography!

[prosicated.livejournal.com]

Does make one desire some very convenient frosting, though. (& yes, yay photography!)