Photo Q&A: What compact point & shoot should I buy?

Hi Pete.. I want to purchase a new camera soon.. but i am sooo not sure what to buy... after a great pocket digital that can handle low light shots really well.. I want something I can capture the beauty of the city at night and day.. Hopefully you may be able to help

 

Sure! Well first of all no" point & shoots" are that great in low light. They tend to suffer from noise due to their small sensors. Having said that there is always noise reduction software that can fix that up pretty darn good.  But your best bet for cameras IMHO would be probably something like the new Canon G12, Canon S90 or Nikon's P7000. These are what I would go for if I was getting a compact camera. Although the G12 would be a little heavy in the pocket it is still a great camera and not that heavy to carry around, especially compared to a DSLR. The main thing to remember if you want to shoot in low light is you will need a tripod. Even a small one will be better than nothing. You might like to look into Joby Gorillapods. And for night shooting the camera must be capable of taking long exposures. So something with manual or shutter priority mode would work for you. Hope this helps!

My next gen 3D TV!

Zero Life
Originally uploaded by Shenanigans in Japan

Nah not really but looks like it could be right! This is actually my first attempt at this new kind of light painting which involves dragging my iPad through the long exposure while it is creating these 3D words. It takes some practice to get it right. So I'll be experimenting more with it when I get time.

If you have an iPad and a camera that shoots long exposures and would like to give this a try, you can download Holo Paint from the Apps store for about 100yen or a buck from the U.S store. Also works on iPhone but just a lot smaller.

Wedding photography sample

Heres a very quick little teaser of the kind of work I do here in Okinawa. I Don't have any of these photos posted online so this is the only place you'll see them. Hope you enjoy!


Create your own video slideshow at animoto.com.

Shenanigans at Rocktoberfest (Torii Station)

Had a rare weekend off work for a change so took the oppertunity to catch up with our good friends Kris and Denise out at Kadena air base. Kris was nice enough to give me a guided tour of where he works as a Para rescue Jumper.

We also dropped in to Torii Station, another U.S base as they were having they're annual Rocktober festival with a bunch of Rock, Ska, Metal bands playing over 2 days. Unfortunatly the day we went did not have much interesting music going on (IMHO) But the kids were happy playing in jumping castles and I had some fun watching the burnout comp and other demo cars. Heres a little video of one of the cars smoking it up. Shot on my new iPhone 4 which I am loving to bits!

Model shoot with Mimi

Did a little model shoot the other day with the Miriam Galarza from New York. We decided to shoot up one of the beautiful quiet little beaches near Maeda (A famous diving/snorkeling spot). We planned to use some of the shots for my good friend Adam Lewis's iSurf magazine for the iPad.
The weather cooperated with us for the day which is rare here on the island. Anyway heres a little video shot by Adam on his iPhone 4.




And heres a few shots from the day.














Big thanks to Mimi, Adam and Tracy for all your help and for the video.

Canon and Nikon lens coffee mugs arrived

Canon and Nikon lens coffee mugs arrived
Originally uploaded by Shenanigans in Japan

Thought I would try a little iPhone 4 test shot of my new Canon and Nikon coffee mugs/thermos's that just arrived from Linkdelight.com in Hong Kong. They were pretty cheap. Well the Canon one was anyway. I have 4 more coming today as my boss and some other photogs at work want one also now haha. I know there are probably much better quality ones around but as long as they hold liquid its all good.

Jenna starts walking

I came home from work tonight and found Jenna just wandering around the apartment walking like a pro haha. So thought it might be a good chance to try out the video camera abilities of my new iPhone 4.

Follow this video to You Tube to watch in HD

Worlds biggest Canon sign?

Worlds biggest Canon sign?
Originally uploaded by Shenanigans in Japan

While out on a photowalk in Taipei city I came across this insanely massive Canon billboard advertising the Canon 1DmkIV and I think the 600mm f4L. Whats funny is this guy just ever so casually hiking up in the alps with this beast. Notice he is also wearing a harness with a bunch of cams etc.. suggesting he actually did some trad climbing up rock carrying that also! What a man!!

How did you take that?

I get a lot of questions asking about various photography stuff, techniques etc.. So I thought rather than re answering the same questions over and over I would just post them here on my blog so others can perhaps learn from it also.
Ok so heres a question I recently got asking how I took this shot.

How I did it was mount a camera on the end of a monopod via a ball head. In this case at the time i had a Canon 40D with a 15mm fisheye attached to it. Point the camera back at myself from the ball head mount then run a shutter release cable from the camera body to my hand. 
Set a slow enough shutter speed to be able to get some blur when moving like 50th/sec etc.. I would suggest shutter priority mode and a low ISO. Then the next part is just a numbers game. Start spinning around while taking LOTS of photos. They won't all be sharp so take lots. Thats it! You will need to delete probably about 99% of them but there should be at least one really good sharp one in the bunch to keep. Or you could keep them all and put them into a stop motion video. Have fun with it! And try not to throw up on your camera gear once your done! 8)