Assuming, from the quality of the photos, she was an experienced photographer, I actually asked how she used her flash to balance the light so beautifully. After a brief exchange, which I still have a hard time processing, I found out she had used a regular, old point-and-shoot camera! How could it be?

Even after knowing it was a compact camera, I could barely believe the photos I was seeing. The sky was so perfectly blue and not overly bright. The faces all looked like there were either reflectors coming up from below or some creative flash lighting. Not so. It must have been the perfect day for lighting!

I do not say that to diminish her skills in any way, but simply to say that having not thought about the lighting at all, those were perfectly lit photos. She was obviously playing with the angle and perspective, though. That much goes 100% to her credit.

Some folks get all the perfect light. I guess it all goes to reemphasize for me that light is what photography is all about. Know how to “read” it, manage it it, and how your equipment reacts to it.

The update came from some friends in China whose young daughter had just successfully undergone heart surgery this morning. Obviously, that is scary, a lot of emotions are involved, and words alone are usually all we get through e-mail updates from friends. Ok, maybe we get some snapshot. This too was a snapshot, but a powerful one. Photography can be so incredibly powerful, if wielded well.

In the photo, a nurse is holding the six year old girl soon after surgery. The nurse and a couple more nurses behind the girl (in the center of the shot) and the mother are all beaming with joy, clearly saying with their expressions that the darkness of their fears has been washed away and the joy of the morning is dawning. The moment is perfect.

The photo is also dynamic. There is a subtle hint of movement in the mom, toward the girl, but the girl is fixed, clear, and the center of the joy. The blurred, far-background nurses make me feel that all else keeps moving, but for the girl and those around her, all time has slowed so they can drink up every joyous mouthfull of this perfect moment.

And it even has vignetting. Too cool. I am sure this is just the “inferior” qualities of the extreme wide angle of a compact camera, but it further brings my focus to the center of the photo.

These folks are not photographers. This photo is a total fluke. Anyone can take a wonderful photo, but we have to strive to capture all of this on purpose. That is a tall order. There is so much of that photo which cannot be made or forced. It has a lot to do with the settings being second nature so that when that moment comes, you do not think about how to capture it, you just capture it.

Anyone can shoot a great photo, but only the fearless can be great.

I complained yesterday about not having many chances to tell a story. Then, I came to the conclusion that stories are all around us, and I just have to recognize them and decide to record and retell them (using whatever medium I think best…though that is usually in  photos for me). Today, a great story opportunity hit, and I am going to take it on. I am trying to think through what I want to do with the story: how to tell it, what medium, what will I need to prepare, and so on. See…I told you I barely know what I am doing. I am very much shooting from the hip.

I found out my Thai visa runs out tomorrow. Our plan when the visa ran out was for me to head north to the Burma (or Myanmar, if you so prefer) border, walk across the bridge, walk back, and get a new Thai visa on re-entry…though the hole in that grand scheme, obviously, is that we forgot WHEN I needed to do so. Minor detail.

Anyway, when all those facts ran through my head, especially having just written a photoblog entry about not having story topics, I realized I had the perfect topic right in front of me. First, I have a really good relationship with the subject: I trust me pretty well. Second, since I will be traveling alone and not dragging the family to the border and back (they all have Thai passports, lucky dogs), I have no other commitments, at least for the duration of the trip. So, I have the “in” and I have the time. Let’s rock and roll!

I do not want to just shoot a card full of photos, then throw then all together in a slideshow, and tack on some nifty cultural music. I want to stretch my creative boundaries. I have long had the idea of mixing photos and video, but never really put it into practice. This day-long visa run is a perfect opportunity to play with the idea a bit so I can get used to it: find the difficulties, explore creative possibilities, map out the barriers to a different medium.

I know I need to storyboard a little, and though I am not always able to storyboard since I often have no idea where the story is going to take me, tomorrow is fairly predictable. I have thought through some kinds of video shots I want. I have also thought through (a little) how I want to combine the photos and video, but honestly have not thought much further than that.

I have to admit, I usually hit the scene, see what story unfolds, shoot it, and then go back and let the story tell itself. This one, I ought to think through a little more…though, I have this nasty feeling I will end up coming up with ideas as the day progresses.

As for transitions and other video effects, one thing I do know is that I am not going to spend a lot of time making this a blockbuster or even a well executed documentary. I basically will want to paste the videos together, almost back to back. I will clip the ends a little, but I think I might even build my transitions in manually by sliding something black up in front of the camera or some such. Corny, but this cannot turn into a time waster (it would simply never get done, if so). This is just a creative experiment.

I will be using my trusy SLR camera, and our family compact (point-and-shoot) camera. I might even try out a fun idea I had last week for the QingMing Festival, but did not have the opportunity to use: filming with the compact camera while shooting with my SLR. If I hold them together, as in, physically touching, the film records the sound of the SLR shutter. That could be a great sound effect, built right into the video, where I could freeze the film and insert the photo taken. We will see how it works.

This will be fun. And yes, I will definitely post the video when I finish it up, but more than likely, you will hear more about it before it is done anyway. I will be posting to @CooperStrange on Twitter throughout tomorrow if you are interested in keeping up while I am out on the move. Woohoo. I get to tell a story and let flow some creative juices!

My wife recently bought a point-and-shoot for family use–honestly, it is mainly for videos. When I was setting everything up for her, one of the decisions I made was NOT to use the highest image quality setting. Call me crazy. A few factors came into play: image quality, file size, and how big the photos might be printed.

I have already waxed on about the size of the sensor and how that affects image quality. What I still wondered was what the difference really was…I mean in real-life images. The settings I wanted to compare on our camera were the two 12 megapixel settings and the 6 megapixel setting (there is nothing in between). So, here you go:

Comparison of 6MP and 12MP images from a FujiFilm F50fd compact camera.

Those are all separate photos taken at the same time, from a tripod, with the exact same settings (as best I could do so with a compact camera which chooses some settings for you). So, the only difference should be the image quality setting.

Can I see a difference? Sure. On this camera the actual file size of those photos is approximately 1.2MB, 2.8MB, and 4MB, though size varies from camera to camera and photo to photo. Those look like a small difference right now, but 1000 photos later, that is gigabytes worth of difference, and if they are family photos, they are probably all going to be sitting on our laptop so we can show people. So, what I see is this: I can save a lot of space on the computer for a very small difference in quality.

And as for printing, well, never would one of these photos be printed more than an 8×10 inch size, and six megapixels is more than enough for that. So, that is not a problem.

So, my choice (for the point-and-shoot, compact camera) is to just shoot the 6MP setting. What do you think of the quality difference in the images above?

So, that is the first question. What is essential in a compact camera? Honestly, all we wanted was something small to do videos of our children since I am already carrying around my camera for the photographs. I think we can safely put the video issue aside, though, because almost all compact cameras take the same quality of video. What is the most important part of any camera? Image quality.

My search was to find the best compact camera possible, but not to pay a huge price for it. My research labors where not in vain.

Now, I do not know all the science of it all, but I know the size of the camera’s sensor has a huge part to play. That is fairly easy to understand. I also know that some companies can use a big sensor but still totally mess up the image quality with other factors in the chain, and some companies do pretty well at the impossible task of keeping decent quality from small sensors. Basically, though, the bigger that sensor, the better quality photos you will have. So, my first step was to research compact camera sensor sizes.

I know, this sounds ridiculous, but it is simply something the manufacturers do not want you to know. More megapixels from the same physical sized sensor is not going to give you much better results…if any better. So, I went to the trusty DPReview website, my first stop for research and reviews on cameras. I used their side-by-side comparison to go through (literally) every single compact camera they had in their lists. I found out pretty quickly that there are two basic physical sizes of compact camera sensors on the market: 1/2.5″ and 1/1.6″. I am assuming that is a diagonal measurement, like TV screens and computer monitors. So, even the bigger size is only just over a half inch…diagonally. It is a wonder they can take any decent photos!

So, I made a list of every single larger-sized sensor compact camera. The list itself was interesting. Now, don’t quote me on any of this; I am doing it from memory (I should have kept that list, huh?). Canon had some, but only among their expensive compacts (G9, G10). Of course, Leica had a couple, but you will pay for those too. Several companies were completely devoid of any larger sized sensor…Sony being the one I remember most. Samsung had a few, but very scattered here and there in their camera lines…therefore, it would be pretty hard to actually find one. FujiFilm was the real champion here. Their entire F-series line had the bigger sensor, and that line also has some very competitively priced cameras.

So, for the completely subjective part of this whole thing, my wife had recently shot on a friend’s Samsung compact camera. Since, I have seen photos from the same camera. She did not like the display, and when I saw the photos, I was absolutely appalled at the image quality. We know it was new. There just is not any excuse, regardless of how much it cost, for images that horrible. I am not kidding.

And for the other subjective input, my wife had also recently shot a FujiFilm compact that she kept saying how much she loved. I did not want her to influence me too much while figuring out which cameras were options, but then when the FujiFilm F-series showed so many larger sensor cameras in my list, we started looking that direction.

Again on DPReview, just offhand to try a different approach to find for high-quality compact cameras, I looked at their most highly rated cameras. What do you know, in the list of the most highly recommended cameras on their site, two FujiFilm F-series cameras were listed: the F31fd and F50fd. If you actually read through either of those reviews, you will see how little the extra megapixels help us. The F31fd review not only put it among the best compact cameras of its time, but the F50fd review, which was good in and of itself, still struggled to compare to the F31fd in image quality, especially noise at high ISO (film speed).

So, though I tried my best to search for a F31fd (because image quality better than most new cameras at an old camera price was fine by me) among the shops, I found some as old, but there were no 31s to be found. Actually, since I was actually looking in Singapore, I found that there were many F-series cameras not on my list…I guess they have some Asian versions that DPReview would know by different numbers. Anyway, we ended up buying the FujiFilm F50fd and are already impressed by the image quality.

As for all the other features they are trying to pack in new cameras and the extra megapixels, I would say image quality is the most important factor to most people. Woops. I do know of one feature the FujiFilm cameras have, which most do not, which really is a great feature I could talk about more some time. It has a setting on the dial where it will take two photos, back to back, one with flash and one without. Wonderful. If only more people could see how much better their photos were with the flash off!

So, I will give a respectful nod to the bigger sensor compact cameras from Canon, Leica, Panasonic, and (grudgingly) Samsung, but FujiFilm gives quite a variety of price and function in their F-series, all of which (as far as I can tell) have the (comparatively) larger sized sensor. FujiFilm F-series wins. Rarely would I specifically give brand names like this, but in this case, it really did seem to come out quite clearly.

I am looking at getting a nice digital camera. I am looking at the Nikon D40 and the Nikon D60. I really like the price of the D40, but I want something that is going to be good and that I will enjoy for a while. I am not necessarily sold on Nikon, it just what I know. So, any thoughts on my purchase would be greatly appreciated.

You are looking at the D40 and D60, but are not even brand particular. What should you buy? Here is my simple answer: if the question is which of those two, I would go for the D40, any day (or maybe a Pentax…they have great, cheap cameras). I have shot the D40 myself and love it for just shooting around. You will probably never use all the features of the D40, so paying more for more features in the newer D60 really would not make much sense, unless there was one feature in particular which was important to you which only the D60 had. And as for the megapixel size, it does not really matter that much. The D40’s six megapixels are more than enough for your needs…my camera is only 6MP!

There is my simple answer. Maybe that answers your question. If you want to know more, here is my slightly longer answer.

Here are some questions and comments to confuse things a bit. Do you need a SLR (SLRs are the big cameras with changeable lenses like the D40 or D60) or just a point and shoot? One of the big questions that decides that issue for many people is this: do you want to be able to do video? For me personally, I am all about photographs and do not really do the video thing, so that question is a no-brainer for me, but for many people I have talked to about this, that is a key feature for them.

Here is a quick aside for more info on video-capable cameras, since that is really important to so many family oriented picture taking folks. The SLR cameras are just now starting to have video capability (and full HD video at that). So if, in your quest to find the right camera, you are thinking of a more amateur photographer kind of camera and want to do video as well, take a look at the Nikon D90…and I think the Canon 50D has video too (you will have to double check me on that).

So, back to the SLR or compact camera issue. Assume you bought a D40, if you are just going to use the automatic photo taking features anyway (i.e. press the button and let the camera decide how to take the photo for you), you might be better off just buying a nice point and shoot, because an SLR in auto mode is only a larger, clunkier point and shoot…or even a cheap point and shoot, for that matter. Summed up, the basic reasons to buy an SLR and not a compact (point and shoot) camera are these:

• you want control of the photo taking process
• you want to be able to switch lenses
• you want a faster response when you take the photo

That last one is a big deal for lots of everyday picture takers, but there is a simple trick to make compact cameras respond much faster when you press the shutter button…but I will not get into that here.

If those are not big issues to you and you just want to take better pictures, which is the same boat as many, many other folks out there, the answer (unfortunately) is not a bigger, nicer camera. I am basically writing all this because I just do not want you buy a nice camera, then realize the photos are not any better, then later, because it is big and clunky (compared to a little compact camera) you finally decide to buy a small camera that can take video and do your best with that and leave that cool camera sitting in a closet at home. I know lots of folks who have walked that road, and it is frustrating.

So, since I could gab on for quite a long time on this topic and all its tangents, I think I should stop now. I think I have answered the basic question, but that might make you rethink things and ask a slightly different question. Feel free to ask more, after thinking through all that, about which SLR or which compact camera to buy. It is really hard to dig through all the brand-centric, marketing hype out there, and I am more than willing to help in any way I can. [That goes for the rest of you readers out there, too...just write a comment below...I will see it.]