Studio Alegria - Image Fusion Studio Blog

Note: I am sorry about the wrapping around the pictures. I am trying to find a way to fix that
-dave

Today was such a nice day.

I decided to go out a play a bit with the cameras.

I had a conversation a few days ago with a friend about cameras and creating basically snapshots for use on a personal website. I maintained that really, for the web you did not need a “pro” camera to make perfectly good quick photos for website use.

Now I want to make clear, I am not talking about professional commercial photography here, but simple quick snaps.
To prove my point I went out with my workhorse Nikon D200 and my Canon (yes I have a canon) Powershot S45 to find a good example scene to photograph. I made it about 10 feet from my door before I found the right scene.

A little background info on the cameras

The D200 is a Nikon Pro body. Rated at 10.4 MP
The S45 is a older very cool little carry around camera

To make it fair I shot the D200 is basic JPG mode which is its lowest quality setting

The first 2 images were taken in manual mode with both cameras. The settings were calculated using a Sekonic L-358 light meter

The metered exposure was 1/800 at f71.

Actually, the images come out pretty close.

Can you tell which is which?

The one on the left was taken with the S45 the Right one with the D200.

But really no one with a point and shoot camera meters the image and shoots in manual except photo geeks … So lets go full auto.

The shots are slightly different here to take full advantage of the different image size between the 2 cameras

Which one is the D200 image?
If you guessed the one on the right. You are wrong ! It is the one on the left.

On the auto settings the D200 went with a smaller apature value F10 and a slower shutter speed of 1/400th the S45 went f4.5 at 1/800th.

So you see that when apples are compaired to apples for web use …the cameras make no real difference.

Before every point and shoot photographer or every pro photographer flames me to death. here is one last image from the D200. This one is processed and ready for the stock photography world.

So when taking pictures for your personal website or just for fun … don’t worry about a great camera … just worry about great pictures !