Are Sony cameras the best?

A friend today asked this question and I asked back, why did he think so. His impression of Sony seems to have been made based on high popularity of Sony LCD televisions and also  the sleek designs of Sony pocket cameras.Sony's advts saying that its battery lasts much longer and it uses Carl Zeiss lens also add to customer getting swayed towards their cameras.

But the truth is that all major camera makers have similar quality of lenses and sensors. The overall design and build quality are also nearly similar. What sets a particular model apart is the features that it has, e.g. zoom. Before buying a camera, one should match such features with one's requirement. For example, whether one wants to make prints or keep the photos in digital formats only; whether one needs to shoot distant objects (e.g. wildlife) too often; and so on.

ultra-compact camera, worth the price?

Let's introduce you to the COOLPIX S01camra, a highly compact one, and yet with some good features.

The selling point of this mini is its size; it fits into your closed palms: it is even smaller than most smartphones. To compensate for lack of space for buttons, it has touch screen for display as well as setting changes. 

The camera boasts of about 10MP picture size and 3x zoom, good qyuality of pics and also HD quality movie recording. 

But, is it worth the price it comes for: about Rs. 7000 [or $140] at present? Yes, only if you - especially ladies - were in the lookout for a camera that was feather-witht and small, so that you could fit in your pocket / purse and carry it everywhere. But why not use the smartphone camera, if you want to keep yourself so light? Some solace here: its optics are likely to better than most phone cameras, even those with very high pixel counts. Then it has built-in flash, not found on many phone cameras.

The camera comes in white, silver, pink and red colors.

GIMP- the perfect photoshop alternative

GIMP is a free image editing software that gives the proprietory Photoshop a good run. In almost all aspects of editing images, it is as good as Photoshop. I have been touching and improving upon photos with this great software for ages. There are some very minor compartments where Photoshop is still better but these are seldom required even by professional photo editors.
GIMP has recently come out with its 2.8 version. It is superb, but has some bugs. You can go for the sturdy and highly functional version 2.6.
What is more, GIMP has a huge fan following and you can get support from these GIMP users. There is also an exhaustive tutorial. There are thousands of sites talking about tips and tricks that can be done through GIMP.
If you have questions about GIMP, you can send them as comments to this post. I will try to help or guide you to the right source.

Panasonic Lumix DMC-FH4: OK at this price

Lumix FH4 is a rather good camera at this price (Delhi: Rs. 4500 or less: equivalent to ~ $85)

This pocket camera comes with 14 MP censor and HD video recording and 4x optical zoom. Its ISO goes up to 1600 and it also has high sensitivity mode with ISO at 6400.


Panasonic also boasts of iA (intelligent automatic) mode: “You just choose the iA Mode, aim at your subject, and shoot. Six detection and correction functions are simultaneously activated to optimize the settings, so you get stunning photos every time.”

Sony HX-100V: will you buy it?

Sony Cybershot HX-100V is a superzoom camera, with 30x optical zoom. It is often branded as a semi-DSLR with its zoom, goo quality video and other features.

However, at the price of Rs. 21,000, I won't recommend it. It is neither here nor there. If you are into professional photography, why go for 1/2.3 sized mini sensor? You are not going to get as good results as from an entry-level SLR. If you are a hobby photographer, why spend this much amount?