From my search engine list:- “camera for the disabled”. Well, that one’s very simple – there’s no such thing.
What camera to choose depends on many factors, of which your particular disability is but one, though arguably the most important one. Still, if you’re thinking of buying a camera, you must be capable of using one, and the choice is huge.
Personally, I’d rule out compacts, they’re just too limited, no matter that some are insanely expensive – the Sigma DP2 costs more than some d-SLRs. My personal choice is a digital SLR, I have an Olympus E-500, with a Zuiko 70-300mm lens and the 17.5-45mm kit lens that came with the camera. The 70-300mm is an excellent lens, at a sane price, which is relatively unusual for digital lenses. Currently the list price is £379, but shopping around can get that down – I paid £289 for mine earlier this year. In 35mm terms it’s equivalent to 140-600mm on my E-500.
Digital cameras, especially d-SLRs, are in a constant state of development and, whatever you buy, it may be out of date within weeks. There’s nothing you can do about that, so just forget about it – that means you can buy second-hand without feeling too paranoid! If you have normal dexterity, and the budget, I’d recommend a d-SLR without hesitation.
However, if you find the prospect of swapping lenses daunting, then I’d suggest a bridge camera – that’s a camera that bridges the gap between compacts and d-SLRs. It’s d-SLR shaped, and about the same size, but with a non-interchangeable zoom lens. Often quite a wide-ranging zoom – look for something with a 10x or even 14x zoom. I have seen them up to 18x, but that’s a tad extreme and, at the long end, would probably need a tripod. Bridge cameras, apart from the lack of interchangeable lenses, often have all the features you might expect to find on a d-SLR.
My advice would be to avoid cameras, of whatever type, that use xD cards, as they’re pretty slow recording the photo. SD cards are OK but, for the ultimate in speed, Compact Flash is unbeatable, though you have to pay for the privilege – buy cheap CF cards, you’ll get cheap performance. I use SanDisk Extreme III
With a bridge camera, or a d-SLR, you may need to think about some sort of camera support. A tripod is the ultimate support, but a pain to carry around, and I’ve not been impressed with monopods. What I have used, successfully, is the Konig Neckpod. See this post and this one, too, for information.
Personally, I prefer a camera support, plus holding it properly – always use the viewfinder, NOT the LCD screen – cameras are not supposed to be held at arm’s length, and you look a pillock. The original purpose of the screen was to review photos you’d taken, and get a quick look at the pic immediately after pressing the shutter button, to see if it’s OK. As far as I’m concerned, that’s ALL it’s for. Indeed, my E-500 doesn’t allow the screen to be used as a viewfinder – it has an optical viewfinder, just like a 35mm SLR. This, of course, means that there is very little drain on the battery in normal use – something to think about with a camera that’s 100% dependent on its battery.
Were I to recommend a camera, it would be a used E-500 with the 70-300mm Zuiko lens, a combo that will set you back about £500. Later Olympus E-series cameras had Live-view screens and electronic viewfinders (and so were battery-hungry), and some have image stabilisation (which, if you hold and support a camera properly, is a needless complication – something else to go wrong in an already complex device). But hey, that’s just me!
Don’t get obsessed with megapixels. 8 or 10 megapixels is enough for any normal person, if coupled to the right lens, because lens quality makes the picture – another reason for avoiding compacts, unless you pay a lot. Lens quality is paramount – any sensor shortcomings can mostly be made good in post-processing with Photoshop or – cheaper, but better for most people – Photoshop Elements. Lens shortcomings you’re pretty much stuck with.
With zoom lenses, you may read, in reviews, of barrel distortion at one end of the range, and its opposite number, pincushion distortion, at the other end. Don’t worry too much about that. You can either avoid the range extremes or do what most people do – just crop your photos. I almost always, when photographing birds, centre the subject in the frame. That way I can recompose the shot, and crop it to a more pleasing configuration, in Photoshop (for example, waterfowl look better if they appear to be swimming into the frame, not out of it*) – just because your photo is postcard-shaped with the subject spang in the middle, doesn’t mean it has to end up that way.
*Like this one, with the birds entering bottom right (though this wasn’t actually cropped, but I would happily have done so, to get this)…
This is a cracking image – I use it, much enlarged, as my Desktop wallpaper. It’s a much reduced image from my E-500, using the Zuiko 70-300mm lens. The original is a 23MB TIFF image, run through Photoshop to tweak it as it was a very dull day, the water was like pitch, and I needed the birds to show up better. It was then saved as a high-quality Jpeg, which brought it down to 6MB, and this more web-friendly version is further reduced to 0.70MB. That it can be reduced so much, and still look good, is testament to the quality of the original, and proof that even a camera as modest as the 8-megapixel E-500 is capable of excellent results.
The E-500 takes photos in a 4:3 aspect ratio (this type of camera goes under the generic name 4/3rds), so I made a point of buying a 19″ TFT monitor in the same aspect ratio, so I can see my photos as they should be seen – full-frame. 4:3, by the way, is the same aspect ratio as a standard cathode-ray-tube TV.
Obviously, you can’t go round testing dozens of cameras, but hey, here’s someone who’s done it for you, Steve’s Digicams. To see the reviews, click on the camera name, not the Shop button. The site has recently undergone a redesign which I don’t particularly like. However, the site is user-configurable to a considerable degree, which only works if you know what you’re doing (which is why I don’t like it – too many people will be put off). If you feel a little overwhelmed, use the brand buttons in the left-hand menu.
Steve’s reviews are excellent. Things that matter most are lens and sensor quality and, by extension, image quality; and shutter lag – the time between pressing the button and the pic being recorded. This, on some cameras, especially compacts, can be absurdly long. Less it better. No matter how sensational a camera is, if it has a long shutter lag (never include auto-focus times in shutter lag – it doesn’t count), it will always disappoint – unless you’re just taking photos of landscapes or buildings – anything that doesn’t move. I’m not aware of a d-SLR that has a long shutter lag – this is mainly a feature of smaller cameras, where compromises have had to be made to squeeze in the electronics and optics.
If you’ve used a film camera, you’ll be fine with digital, though the learning curve is quite steep. If you’ve never used a camera before, be aware that a camera is only as good as the user – the learning curve, in this case, is very steep and will require some commitment on your part. If you can’t be bothered learning how to use it, forget it – buy postcards!
Whatever camera you buy, always buy several memory cards rather than one huge one, then if a card fails, and they occasionally do, you won’t lose all the photos from that once-in-a-lifetime trip. Buy a card reader, too – plugging your camera into your PC is a good way to drop it, and always have at least one spare battery and a charger. In my experience, cameras that have a dedicated battery, rather than using AA batteries, will give you longer battery life and, no matter what battery your camera uses, you’ll find it online at a sensible price, so don’t be put off if a reviewer grumbles about a camera-specific battery, as the odds are it fits other cameras, too, or even entirely different devices, and is widely available – something you can easily check online before buying.
One very important thing to remember, if you find out something for yourself, it’s infinitely preferable to asking somebody, and you’re more likely to remember it, so do read your camera’s manual assiduously. If, as so often happens, your camera’s manual comes on a CD – a cheap-ass pain in the butt, and useless if you’re outdoors – you can probably get a printed copy here. Mostly they’re photo-copied, but to a very high standard, far, far better than you’d get by printing the manual from the CD. Trust me, I’ve done both, and my E-500 printed manual, which comes in two substantial volumes, lives neatly in an A5 binder.
If you run up against a snag, always keep this foremost in your mind – R.T.F.M.!
