Always have a camera on you

There are days I feel my D80 would be an encumbrance to carry around. On a night into the city for example, I would have more fun if I didn't have to worry about a camera. You should always bring a camera though.

Last night, I left my D80 at home and brought my old Canon SD110 along. The SD110 is a neat camera that fits into a small Lowepro pouch. Use it without flash and some results can be surprisingly good -- the truth though is, I never knew how to use it properly in the past until I started playing with the D80. I have always used it the way it was marketed -- point and shoot. The camera will figure out everything for you -- almost everything.

So here were a couple of shots I took. The shot outside the bar was untouched. It was fairly sharp (and this was handheld) and a bit noisy, but it turned out quite colourful. The shot was taken in auto mode at 5mm f/2.8 at 1/8 seconds. ISO was auto -- no idea what was actually used.

This bar (not the Rhino lounge above) was quite dark. The original shot was darker than what is shown -- I increased the Gamma values and the contrast a bit. I should have overexposed the shot but being that it is a compact camera, its manual settings were not as easy to change and so I did not even think of overexposing the shot then. The shot was taken at 5mm f/2.8 at 1/8 seconds. It would appear then this was the limit of the camera. It increased the aperture to the maximum at f/2.8 and the best it can shoot at was 1/8 seconds.

The bike shot, well, is a little washed out. It had to be taken with flash, but the point was, I would not have been able to capture anything had I left both cameras home. That bike didn't need a chain. It was entombed in snow and ice!