Matthew Rutledge » canon powershot g10

Not feeling the love for my new camera

Matthew Rutledge — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 18:06:49 +0000

I have had my new camera for over a month now, and I just don’t feel it. At least, I think it’s my camera that is to blame — it’s probably a bit of the camera but also the fact that I can snap and snap and snap pictures of Austin all day long, but I still don’t like what I see. I miss both New York and Seattle for different reasons, but I also miss the weirdly organic, imperfect yet richly detailed manner in which my old Pentax rendered photos.

They say that megapixels aren’t everything, and that is entirely correct, but it still doesn’t account for the fact that my Canon G10 is a technically superior camera to the 7 megapixel Optio S70Z in every way. If I still had that camera, if I hadn’t dropped it on the ice in January, I would still be using it. I look at my photos from back then and I feel tiny bits of the emotion contained therein, not just because I remember being there, but because the eerie tenor of the photos is one of the few examples where something entirely digital felt as analog as life.

Some of the more ethereal moments:

Cartoonishly pretty

Matthew Rutledge — Sat, 27 Jun 2009 03:57:50 +0000

My camera is that good. I didn’t do a damn thing to this picture, not even a contrast or exposure adjustment ex post facto.

100 degrees in Austin

Matthew Rutledge — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 16:21:49 +0000

When I took these photos, it was still well into the 90’s, even after the sun had set. There was a point in the evening where I almost passed out due to the combination of walking steep hills, carrying a big messenger bag full of assorted computer/camera items, and not properly hydrating.

When I was younger, when it would hit 100, it would do so in late July or through August, never in June. It is so hot now that I am sweating by 9AM. And don’t let people fool you, Austin is one of the worst cities for heat, because it retains the humidity of the Gulf of Mexico, but is far enough away from a major body of water to allow for high temperatures — so you get the triple digits of Tucson and most of the humidity of Houston. I won’t see a 60 degree evening until late September, I bet.

Oh, the irony…

G, that’s a lot of megapixels.

Matthew Rutledge — Sun, 21 Jun 2009 09:25:00 +0000

I have officially made my first impulse buy since having returned to the world of employment. It’s not entirely impulsive, as I haven’t been the same since my Pentax Optio S70Z died after nearly 4 years and 9,800 photos of rigorous duty. I bought the Canon Powershot G10, the Bosch dishwasher of consumer-grade cameras. Here’s the first set of “acceptable to show” photographs.