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Northwestern Gardening

Digital Camera for plant pics

18 years ago

I'm planing to attend a Horticulture program and part of if involves identifying several hundred plants and shrubs. I plan to buy a Digital Camera to help with this, but there are so many. I've seen great pics on line here and thought I'd ask for information on what kind of Digital Camera you like and why.

thanks

David, Nanaimo, BC

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Comments (12)

Patrick888
18 years ago
Hi David,

I use an Olympus C-5050 (current model is now C-5060) which is a 5-megapixel model and comes with a 3X zoom lens. I take lots of flower & garden photos as well as "people pics". I think it does really good work on close-ups. For the majority of the pics I take I use automatic settings and treat it like a point-and-shoot camera and it "does me proud". I've been teaching myself a little more about White Balance (especially for indoor pics), remote control and sequential shooting, and some of the many other features the camera offers. If you have time to order one over the Internet, you'll probably get better prices than buying through a local retailer...I did. With today's greatly reduced prices, I wouldn't go for anything less than a 5-meg digital. I'd also prefer a bigger zoom than my 3X, altho it does great for the uses I've stated.

PCWorld has a good web site at:
http://www.pcworld.com/home/index/0,tk,dfTAB,00.asp

They have lots of good info on digital cameras, often ranking the top 10 best in given price ranges and listing on-line shopping sources along with customer ratings.

They also have a section entitled "Digital Focus" by Dave Johnson (I believe he's a Microsoft employee)..you can sign up for a free newletter on this or other subjects. Dave walks you through the process of doing many digital things, especially with photo imaging software...I think it's a great resource, especially for novice digital photographers. Here's a link for the newsletters.

http://www.pcworld.com/resource/newsletters

Hope this is of some help...choosing my first digital camera was difficult, but reading ratings and comparisons offered through PCWorld was a big help.

Patrick
David5B
Original Author
18 years ago
That's great, thankyou Patrick.
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It ~is~ really hard to choose a digital camera, isn't it? I was shopping for one this past fall, and what a nightmare! I didn't even know what the different megapixels were all about. Cena's advice is really good. Play with it in the store, so that you can decide if the zoom and clarity are good enough for your needs. But even though you say that most of your pics will be plants, I think that you'll likely find that you end up taking more and more pics of other things, too - friends, family, outings, sunsets, whatever. I find that I take way more shots of *everything* now, since I can easily delete them. I ended up getting a Canon Powershot A510 (3.2 megapixels). It's a good little camera for the price (somewhere around $250), but I have two problems with it. One, I find that the flash is WAY too bright, even when I set it to the lowest intensity, so that if I take a closeup shot, the people/plants look washed out. This means that unless I have optimal natural lighting, my shots are either dark or super-bright. And two, unless I have it on the "action" setting (for action shots), my shots come out a little fuzzy. Now, I know I'm not *that* spastic, so I clearly chose a camera that was too sensitive. Also, I wish it had a delay so that I could get into some of the family/friends shots that I take. And I would have liked a bigger screen to preview the photos. The pluses are great, though: the price was excellent for the product I got; the camera has a panorama setting, so I can take shots of an entire garden, or group photos of my gigantic extended family; and transfer from camera to computer is quick and almost effortless. For what it's worth, though, I've never heard anything bad about Nikon cameras... I just couldn't afford one. As for fussing around with the photos once they're taken, I've been told that it's much better to use a computer program, rather than do it on your camera. I only have Kodak Imaging on my computer, and I absolutely hate it. I can't do anything - resizing is minimal, I can't really play with colour. Also, with Kodak Imaging, the photo quality is really poor when I look at the shots on my computer (although they print out fine). And finally, I can't modify any shots (not even rotate them!), and then save them again in jpeg. Kodak Imaging is the absolute WORST. I'm getting Photoshop with my next computer, no question. Friends of mine use it, and it's wonderful. But because Kodak Imaging is so horrible, I tried zooming photos on my camera (after I've taken the shot), and they looked rather pixelated. I asked a friend about that, and apparently it's pretty standard. He suggested that I only edit photos on my computer, because even with a crappy program, it's generally better than editing with the camera itself. If you want to take a look at some of the shots I've taken with the Canon Powershot, I'll link to my yahoo photos account. This shot is of my tattoo - it was taken without a flash, and with no zoom. I just held the camera really close, maybe a foot away. Here is a link that might be useful: Canon Powershot close-up shot, with no flash
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I have only played with the 550, I don't own it. My aunt owns one and I messed with it at the family reunion. I also like the Canon 710, but I think the option you get the the Olympus 550 is the best for what you have asked for. I own three cameras: Canon XT Olympus E500 (best value for entry DSLR, my opinion) Olympus E1
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If you transferred the pictures from one to the other, I can only assume that you were able to transfer them onto the computer? Can you now transfer them back? If not, most places can just take the entire memory card and pull pictures from it for printing.
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But..I keep reading the fact that the ink jet ink just won't last. I am printing my own pictures, too..and hoping for the best, but I just bought a Picture It program and it says the pictures will last anywhere from two months (two months!!!!!!!) to forty years...lol. Well, the forty years would probably take care of me and mine (the grandkids might like them longer than that though) but I have yet to see one that lasted only two months. I did a little experimenting and printed one off and pinned it up on my bulletin board in the light and air....it lasted about four months that way until it was a "ghost" picture. I have one printed on plain ol paper, but under glass on my desk here, and it has faded some, but is still nice. The book for the Picture It said that the ink will start "shifting" at about the two month point. I LOVE my digital pictures and you can print so many different sizes and do so much "adjusting" on them. But...I'm afraid ten years down the road, all of my work will be for naught. This is one of my favorite pictures and I treasure it....time will tell, I guess I wrote, "Christmas is Magic" underneath it. The book I was reading said to use the very best photo paper, and, of course, I do that, but I'm still a little worried about this. I've been doing this for about two years and keep going back and checking the pictures. I can't see that they are deteriorating as yet...
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maltby
18 years ago
Two other cameras you might consider, the HP R707 Photosmart and the new Fuji Finepix F10.

The HP R707 (5 meg)is a good beginning digital camera. It has straight forward menus with in camera help messages available, and they make it easy to email and print pictures. Lots of program modes, like in camera panorama.

The Fuji finepix (6 meg)has useable ISOs up to 1600. That means you can take pictures in low light without flash. It also has great battery life-as in hundreds of shots with having to recharge.
Mearth
18 years ago
I bought a kodak last year and my research indicated:
-spend your money on megapixels if your style is casual, you'll being taking pics on-the-fly and for all around flexibility
-spend your money on zoom if you are a more meticulous type likely to spend time setting up your shots
-If you have lots of money, buy high pegapixels and broad zoom options

I bought megapixels and couldn't be happier. I can crop and zoom and end up with a striking photograph selected out of an ordinary snapshot. Definately suits my style.
strachan13
18 years ago
Tried out different brands of digitals, and liked the Fuji line the best, for the fabulous greens it produces. I shoot garden photos to accompany stories about various plants and landscapes, so I'm looking for colour as much as camera performance.
David5B
Original Author
18 years ago
That's wonderful thankyou all for the information. DG
toyon
18 years ago
If you want an idea about how well the Olympus cameras work:

http://images.sacramentocity.us/flora/

Olympus C-740.
David5B
Original Author
18 years ago
Wow, nice pics indeed. Thanks.
Terri_PacNW
18 years ago
I just got a Konica Minolta DiMAGE Z20.
I love it.
I've just started playing with the Macro feature when playing in the garden. I took this this evening on the Macro feature. Cool huh?

Here's my first Daylily to open. Taken tonight too.
buyorsell888
18 years ago
I use an Olympus C-750 Ultra Zoom and highly recommend it.

Has a 10x optical zoom and 4 megapixels. Fully automatic, partially automatic or fully manual as you prefer.
LauraBC
18 years ago
My only suggestion to add is get one that you can use good rechargable batteries in. My DD's Kodak uses rechargeable AA's and they barely last for 30 pics. We have a Sony DSC V-something which has little square batteries that last for hours and hours and hours of photo taking. (I know this isn't technical knowledge, but honestly what do you expect for 4 am?)And it takes fantastic pictures.
David5B
Original Author
18 years ago
Thankyou all for the great ideas. And terrific pics, too.

I've started small with a Canon A520
and battery recharger and bigger memory card,
now, I have to weed the beds.

cheers David

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