I bought a new camera!

Yeah baby! I already mentioned it a few times in previous posts, but for my birthday which is coming up on Friday, I wanted to buy a new digital photo camera. The one that I’ve been using, a Casio Exilm EXZ20, was bugging me for months. It hardly focused, it washed out every color in every picture and I was getting more and more fed up with it. Needless to say, I bought it over 4 years ago, in 2008, so it isn’t all that surprising that it has seen better days.

I had been doing research on which camera to get for a few months. Since I am not the best photographer and it’s not necessarily a hobby of mine, I quickly opted out of getting a DSLR. Too complicated and not necessary. I also looked at a bunch of semi-DSLR cameras (in Holland these are called systeem cameras) but decided that for that amount of money I could also get a basic DSLR which is not what I wanted. That’s why I decided to go for a simple point-and-shoot camera. They’re small, handy and are easy to carry around. And since I mainly want it to use during my summer vacation, I knew that’s what I had to go for.

After reading a gazillion reviews, I went to a store to check out some cameras. The guy there pointed me to something completely different then I had initially set out to look for (a Panasonic Lumix). Still not sure what I wanted to get, I decided to do some more research and finally ended up deciding to get the Canon Powershot SX240HS. The reviews were good, it was right within my budget and would definitely mean a step up from my old camera. So, the other day, I decided to go to the store and buy it. This is what I took home:

The camera comes in a standard blue box. Nothing special. The camera comes in Black, Silver and… Pink. Now, I had set out with the idea of getting the black one, but they didn’t have that in stock. Then the silver one, which was in stock, couldn’t be found. So I ended up thinking: what the heck, a camera is a camera so why should I care what color it is? As long as it works… So this is what it looks like:

Canon Powershot SX240HS

Specs:

• 12.1 megapixel
• 20x optical zoom
• HD movies
• wide angle
• HS technology for low-light shots
• Manually set shutter time and aperture

You can visit the Canon website to read more about the specs. But now what do I think?

Back view of camera

Front view of camera when it’s switched on

First of all the camera is a lot heavier than my old one. I’m sure that’s because the lens of this thing is about 20x bigger than my old one. The screen on the back is large, but it does have regular buttons to control the camera. The wheel at the top lets you control your settings, then there is the button for recording videos and to view pictures, then there’s another wheel to control your flash, macro etc and to navigate menus and then there’s the display and menu buttons. Pretty standard. The on/off switch as well as the button to press to take a picture are at the top on the right hand side.

The controls are so far easy to manage. I have only played around with it for a little while, but I will take it with me on vacation and that will be the ultimate test. It is a lot quicker to take shots than my old one, the colors are more vibrant (as you will see in a little bit), the images are sharper and so far it’s doing everything I hoped it would be doing. One bonus on this camera that my old one didn’t have is that you have a few settings to play around with the white balance. So you can adjust the camera for sunny or cloudy weather. That to me is a great plus!

So let’s see what pictures it takes. I just took a quick snap shot of a blush with my old and new camera so you can see the difference. The blush featured is the NYC mosaic color wheel blush in pink glow.

Casio Exilim EXZ20

Canon Powershot SX240HS

Can you see how the colors in the second picture are more vibrant than in the top one? In the top picture, the colors are much darker, the edges of the mosaic pattern are slightly blurred and there is a slight sheen to the shimmer. In the second picture, the colors are pretty much bang on, when I put my blush next to it, these colors are so much closer to the actual blush. The mosaic pattern is nicely visible and the shimmer shows up much more subtle.

All in all I’m happy with my new camera. The reason why I already bought it, is because I want to play around with it, take some photos for my blog, before I go on vacation and start using it more intensely. I just ‘want to get to know’ the camera before that time. I still have a few posts coming up that will feature pictures from my old camera as I took a bunch of pictures a while ago and am still working on writing the articles that go with it. But expect better quality pictures on this blog soon! I also bought a tripod (just a basic one) so maybe I can now film outfits of the day or at least take some better pictures (without the mirror).

What camera do you like to use?