Inexpensive????????? $400 not including tax, warranty and other costs is inexpensive?????
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Is a card reader really necessary?
- Thread starter jwolf6589
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$400 is pretty cheap for a camera, but believe it or not, nobody on this board cares what you shoot with. Despite some friendly rivalries and ribbing, we are all brand and camera type agnostic. Phone, film, mirrorless, point and shoot, dSLR, anything in between. NOBODY here cares what camera you use. If you can make magic with your $400 camera, then do it. Personally I've been keeping an eye out for a used film camera for less than $100. How much you spend isn't the issue.
Photographers care about one and a half things. The first, and main thing, is to go out and make photos. Use your gear. Capture photos. Save memories.
The other thing, which is only partially important, and not at all to some people, is to share those photos. Post to Instagram. Join the POTD thread. Display some on your walls. Ask a coffee shop if you can have a gallery show. Some people never want to share their photos, and that's okay; it's a very personal decision. I don't share photos of my kids very often, but otherwise I share here daily.
This whole fussing about megapixels and card readers and all of the other things aren't important to the actual making of photographs. Even if you do just literally point and shoot, the rest of it is just filler.
Photographers care about one and a half things. The first, and main thing, is to go out and make photos. Use your gear. Capture photos. Save memories.
The other thing, which is only partially important, and not at all to some people, is to share those photos. Post to Instagram. Join the POTD thread. Display some on your walls. Ask a coffee shop if you can have a gallery show. Some people never want to share their photos, and that's okay; it's a very personal decision. I don't share photos of my kids very often, but otherwise I share here daily.
This whole fussing about megapixels and card readers and all of the other things aren't important to the actual making of photographs. Even if you do just literally point and shoot, the rest of it is just filler.
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I don’t think they were trying to insult you - but yeah 400 is very cheap for a camera.
It’s not a country, it’s the internet, and the problem is is that, as a previous poster put it, you have broached the subject in a fairly hostile way, ready to attack or prove wrong someone’s way of thinking for just replying to the thread.
This particular photography forum (unlike others) is full of helpful people, full of good advice, and full of honest answers. Don’t sully it with ‘this way is better than that way’ arguments, with which you then use as a form of ammo which no one understands.
It appears from your media data that you are using, if that's the correct term, a Canon PowerShot SX 740 HS.
KGB
That's about the equivalent of $40 when I bought my first camera. At that time $40 would not buy you much of a camera. You needed about $200 to get a bottom end Nikon camera (AKA Nikkormat). I chose that over Olympus, Pentax and Canon as it had a vertical titanium shutter, as opposed to the cloth curtain shutter on its slightly less expensive competitors. Of course after that came various lenses over the years and don't get me started on the cost of the used Linhof 4x5 and new Schneider lenses.
Like it or not until you spend well over $1000 you are going to be dealing with small sensor cameras and the limitations thereof. That said you can do a lot with the small format especially with a good zoom lens. To do so requires exploring. That is taking pictures, learning to edit and size them correctly, learning to evaluate them, learning when to under or over expose, when to double down (do an under and over exposure and combine the two), when to use RAW if the camera has that feature, learning to use aperture and shutter speed to your advantage, learning the basics of good composition...
Yes it's a lot of work and there really are no shortcuts. Best way to get there is to take those first steps.
I used to work in the digital photography industry wearing many different hats. One of those hats was working as a digital camera service technician in the early 2000s and one of the main common repairs that we do often is to fix the USB camera port because they always come loose by the plugging in and unplugging on the USB cable to download photos. Many of the cost cutting measures camera makers do on cameras is to put a cheap USB port on the camera, because they figured most people just use them occasionally because there's a card reader. However, some people don't use a card reader and because the port was NOT designed to be plugged and unplugged so many hundreds of times, they then break on the trace level. Sometimes you can solder them back, but most of the time, it involves a logic board replacement. In fact, my Lumix ZS-100 camera is starting to develop this looseness on the USB/charging port precisely because I plugged and unplugged to it so many times that I recently bought an external charger to charge the battery with and download photos through a reader.
So that's my repair experience. The same happens with PC laptops as well on the charging port when I worked as a PC and Mac repair technician. They broke off due to constant plugging and unplugging. This is where Apple designed really well with MagSafe and even with the latest USB-C ports; they are well more re-enforced in anticipation of constant unplugging and plugging of cables.
I am with you on this. When moving photos to my iMac from the cards, all I do is to select all the photos in the card's folder, and drag them to a folder on the desktop. In the past I used Photo Downloader to transfer the photos from the camera to the computer (via a cable) but that took too much time.
I've done direct to camera more than once, but it's not my preferred way. For one thing, if I'm sitting on the couch working up photos, I'd rather have a card reader sitting on the palm rest than have a camera tethered to my computer. For another, a broken card reader is a lot easier and less expensive to replace than a damaged USB port on a camera.
I rarely use SD cards(only a few specific situations) but even when I did have a built in card reader I would only use it in a pinch. External always for me. The current rumors, though, are that the next gen MBPs are bringing back SD readers, so apparently someone wants them. The USB-C mini-dock I carry with my computer most of the time has an SD reader built in also.
I rarely use SD cards(only a few specific situations) but even when I did have a built in card reader I would only use it in a pinch. External always for me. The current rumors, though, are that the next gen MBPs are bringing back SD readers, so apparently someone wants them. The USB-C mini-dock I carry with my computer most of the time has an SD reader built in also.
I'm an unapologetic gear buyer/hoarder/collector/whatever you want to call it. Occasionally I manage to get a decent photo I think...the whole blind squirrel finding a nut thing.
For me, though, if you search through my POTD posts I've made(and I really enjoy making them) I think you'll find that for me my photos aren't really about the photos themselves but the story of them. I'll talk about the story of how the thing I photographed came to be, or how I came to find it, how I happened to be there, what was involved in getting there, what was involved in taking the photo, etc.
In other words, for me, fundamentally the process of taking it is as important as the end result. I WANT to have good results to show for all of that, but in a sense that's almost secondary.
I have a bunch that I need to work up and post that honestly I'm really proud of. I need to look at what I actually have, but in a sense these photos are a "conquest" for me. It's a fascinating site out off the backroads of Kentucky that's been decaying for years but also heavily guarded. I'd never ventured "over the fence", but had photographed what I could from the road. I spent years watching it change hands, would reach out trying to get permission to go there, and never was successful. Finally, someone started doing something with the property, and it's open to the public now with some amazing restoration to its former grandeur. Again, it's not that special since it's open to the public, but it's over 10 years of waiting for me to see it.
I know that's a weird perspective, but it's a lot of what's kept me engaged in this hobby since I decided in 2005 that I wanted to buy a "nice camera" and "get serious" about it(Canon A-1, BTW).
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Where did I say that? None of my cameras have built memory used to store images(other than the volatile buffers)
I don’t use SD cards, that is correct, or at least have a strong preference to not. I only use them in my Nikon Df because I don’t have any other choice
Not on SD cards, which were a terrible design from the start made to be cheap, not good. SD cards aren’t the only type of memory card.
Compact Flash is my main choice, although it’s only still alive because Nikon and Canon held on to it for a while on their pro cameras.
I used XQD cards when I had my D500, and when I get a D850 will use either the XQDs I already have or will buy CFExpress
I see. Hmm… They should make cameras with built in memory like voice recorders. My VR has 4GB of internal space. Not much for a camera but plenty for a voice recorder.
Built in memory went out about 1999. I wouldn’t use it if it was there. At least you’re f a card corrupts you can usually send it off to the manufacturer for recovery(at least for the reputable brands, which is all I buy) and if they die you can pop a fresh one in.
My digital voice recorder has a SD slot if I need it. However I backup all my recordings that are important to my Mac.
But how much did your voice recorder cost? If the internal storage goes bad it probably doesn’t cost much to replace it.
the cameras that a lot of us have are in the $2,000-$3,000 range (some more than that). That’s a big investment if the storage craps out and you have to either send in for repair or replace.
OP, If you don't need a card reader, why concern yourself with whether or not others think they do need one?
MR is one place on the internet where a lot of strangers seem to need and live for getting validation from other strangers. Rather strange.
MR is one place on the internet where a lot of strangers seem to need and live for getting validation from other strangers. Rather strange.
A digital voice recorder is a very different device with an entirely different purpose than a camera.