Which pro-sumer digicam to buy?

Thursday, September 22nd, 2005 @ 12:13 am | photography

Time to upgrade, methinks; my Canon PowerShot S60 has had a great innings (had it 14 months now) but I think it’s time to look for something else. Here’s my thinking…

… why am I changing cameras?

I’m bored with my S60. It’s a brilliant camera, but it’s aimed at the amateur photographer who wants to have a bit of a fiddle with some manual settings, but not at someone who wants to keep developing their skills and understanding of photography and photographic equipment. I know 75% of photography is about composition and timing, but when you get that perfectly composed picture you want to be at one with your camera so you know you’ll be able to make the most of it, not spend 20 mins beggaring around with settings while the perfect shot disappears.
I’m convinced that I’d be a more confident photographer if I had a camera which looked the part. The S60 in its case can be chucked into a rucksack or velcroed onto the outside without much thought, and is top for taking pictures of ‘things’ – buildings, landscapes, doors, lighting (with a lot of fiddling)… but when you want to take a picture of a person (especially one you don’t know) you feel like a tourist rather than a photographer, and it makes me think twice before asking someone.
Low light, macros, low depth-of-field images… all these things are hard to set up and produce unpredictable results – sometimes brilliant, sometimes not, however long you spend tweaking settings. I want something with easily accessible manual controls (ie – dials where your hands sit, rather than using the cursors on the back of the unit) and where I can at least see what I’m doing through the viewfinder.

And… I just want to upgrade, because I tire quickly of new things.

So, which ones am I looking at…

Konica Minolta Dimage A200
http://www.steves-digicams.com/2004_reviews/a200.html
http://www.dcresource.com/reviews/minolta/dimage_a200-review/index.shtml
http://www.imaging-resource.com/PRODS/KMA200/A2A.HTM
http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/konicaminoltaa200/
Price: here