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baby duck monge

macrumors 68000
Feb 16, 2003
1,570
0
Memphis, TN
is this camera any good?
its got bulb settings and manual shutter speed...

http://www.amazon.com/Kodak-Easyshare-P880-Digital-Optical/dp/B000A8JYB8


do you think it would be able to take pictures like this?
[Picture]

Here's a pretty comprehensive review of the camera. Clicky. You would probably need to ask more specific questions to figure out if it's "good," though, because not everyone is looking for the same things.

As to the picture: do you think you would be able to take pictures like that? Do you know anything about post-processing? A nice camera is still going to take crap pictures if you don't know what you're doing, and a lousy camera can take a decent picture in the right hands*.



* I am in no way saying that I know what I'm doing, but I do know that operator competence is worth a lot more than a fancy camera.
 

juze

macrumors newbie
Apr 9, 2007
12
0
do you think it would be able to take pictures like this?


It might be possible, but very difficult. You see, digicams have tiny little sensors with tiny little pixels and the tiner the pixels get, the noisier they get. Also, their dynamic range is absolutely appalling compared to that of DSLRs. This image has a very wide dynamic range (i.e. the various elements of this image have very different degrees of brightness), so with a digicam, you'd get burned out highlights and black shadows.
Now I'm not sure whether this picture was made with HDR (High Dynamic Range), which basically combines different exposures (one exposure to get the highlights, one exposure to get the midtones and one to get the shadows) to produce an image with a very wide dynamic range.
If it was, yeah, you could do it with this camera. The thing is, though, if your camera doesn't have automatic bracketing (shooting, say, three images in a row, one at normal exposure, one with -1 EV compensation and one with +1 EV compensation, basically what you need to get an HDR image), you'll need to fiddle with your settings between shots. If you fiddle with the camera, you might move it, even if it's on a tripod. If you move it, well, you can't combine those pictures into a single HDR image, because the silhouette of a building in one picture will be (for instance) 10 pixels away from the silhouette in another picture. And this is the other HDR caveat - if you shoot things that move (like clouds or foliage), well, you'd better shoot fast, before they move enough to make it noticeable in the picture.
If it's a straight shot (no HDR), then no, you'd need a DSLR, preferably a full frame one, to capture such a shot.

Sorry I can't provide you with a yes or no answer.
 

ChrisA

macrumors G5
Jan 5, 2006
12,828
2,033
Redondo Beach, California
is this camera any good?
its got bulb settings and manual shutter speed...

Good for what? Long exposure, low light photography as
in the expample photo?

If doing long exposure and low light work what you should be looking for is a very low noise. For lowest noise you want the camera with a sensor that has the largest physical size (measured in millimeters across the edge, not in megapixels) This means a DSLR will be best.
 
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