Iteration the Fifth

	Which camera should I buy? (The story continues...) Posted: 28-Aug-2008 13:58		Reply
(Reposted from our website) Well, Dr Who as Hamlet worked. David Tennant got away from the modern tendency to see not the ghost of his father, but that of Olivier walking the ramparts of Elsinore and was thus able to imbue the role with a rare freshness and energy that avoided the obsequious reverence which all too many contemporary actors have brought to the part. The previous evening saw Angus Wright give a wonderfully nuanced Shylock in a performance that sadly saw him receive little support from an otherwise rather wooden cast, and on our final night we were given one of the worst Tamings of a Shrew since Kate was first Kissed back around about 1594. All of which goes to show that spending the same amount of money in the same place for what appears to be a similar product can result in wildly differing results. Which, and perhaps we're trying a bit too hard here, brings us back to cameras. You'll remember that during The Merchant of Venice Bassanio, when looking into the casket in the hope of winning a wife (the 16th century equivalent of on-line dating?), says: "May the outward signs be least themselves, the world is still deceived by ornament," What he is saying here is that when looking for a camera, or a wife presumably, don't get taken in by the advertising. A phone may advertise the fact that it is fitted with a 10MP camera, a device that you may think is capable of taking a pretty good picture, but what it may not say is that the lens is half the size of your little fingernail and made of plastic. On the other hand, for less than a tenth of the cost of the phone you may be able to pick up a camera with fewer pixels but a proper lens, and you too will be able to say to your mum: "Look here, upon this picture, and on this, The counterfeit presentment of two brothers. See, what a grace was seated on this brow; Hyperion's curls; the front of Jove himself..." As Hamlet did to his when showing her a picture of his dad. With the phone cam, she probably wouldn't be able to see Hyperion's curls at all as, despite the higher resolution, the poor quality lens would let the whole thing down. Which may have been what drove Hamlet mad, of course. Do a little research. Pretty much every camera ever made has been reviewed somewhere and had its review posted on the net. Think what you need a camera for; just the odd snap-shot? sports events? wildlife? landscapes? There are plenty of books, courses, magazines and people who already know some photography who will be willing to answer your questions. The salesperson is primarily interested in your money, not your pictorial aspirations. "No profit grows where is no pleasure ta'en", as Tranio so aptly put it in Taming of the Shrew, he having obviously come up against some fly salesman who fobbed him off with an unsuitable camera before Kate and Petruchio's wedding. Don't let it happen to you! Just to cheer you up, I won't end with another quote. Jon Ryan