Wui-Ping Blog

Buying your first digital camera

1) You don't need very high megapixel
The belief that the higher megapixel, the clearer the resolution is not entirely true. That really depends on how big you wanna blow up your picture. If you are not going to print anything above 5R, then a 5MP camera will be more than enough. There can be only so much pixel to squeeze within that photography.
For eg. On a 3R photograph, a 3MP picture will look exactly the same as a 20MP picture.

2) Digital zoom is useless
Digital camera always comes with digital zoom and optical zoom. While optical zoom helps you to get a clear picture after you zoom, digital zoom doesn't. Digital zoom works in a way that it simply cut away part of the picture, then enlarge it. You can do the same on your PC, and get the same result of a digital zoom. So don't bother with how many times digital zoom it can perform. Disable the digital zoom function when you get hold of your digital camera.

3) Your lens is very important
Generally the reason why DSLR pictures look so much better is really because of the lens. It is very important, and good lens usually cost more than a normal DSLR camera. Generally speaking, small lens will never be good. That's why your super compact digital camera might just not make it. You might wanna consider picking up a slightly bigger compact camera with bigger lens for better picture.

4) Batteries
While lithium ion battery is long lasting, and can be charge in the camera. It doesn't provide much fall back capability. I recall my camera running out of power very fast, due to the very cold temp in Europe, and I couldn't charge my batteries as I am outside sight seeing. What save me is that, my digital Camera run on 2 AA batteries, which can be easily purchase anywhere.
Anyway, you can buy a charger to recharge those rechargeable AA batteries too, it can be as fast as 15min charge time. So if you buy a camera using lithium ion, you might wanna consider getting a spare set.

5) High ISO is not to be use
High ISO aka film speed is used to take photo without using flash under low light condition. So far, I have yet to see a compact digital camera that offer good quality picture noiseless with high ISO. Usually it start having noise above ISO400. So there isn't much use for high ISO, since the picture will be grainy.

6) Low aperture value
Usually that is never the selling point of compact digital camera. However, a low aperture value is really good to use, especially if it is lesser than f3.0. (Uses of aperture to enhanced your photo under next blog entry.)

7) Various modes, face detection, image stabilizer etc...
Really good to have, I guess most of the digital camera you see in market now already have those. Might wanna consider additional mode, aperture priority(Av) and shuttle priority(Tv) for added control.

posted by Wui-Ping @ 1:04 PM Comments: 0

Religion Demography

From https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/xx.html

Christians 33.32% (of which Roman Catholics 16.99%, Protestants 5.78%, Orthodox 3.53%, Anglicans 1.25%), Muslims 21.01%, Hindus 13.26%, Buddhists 5.84%, Sikhs 0.35%, Jews 0.23%, Baha'is 0.12%, other religions 11.78%, non-religious 11.77%, atheists 2.32% (2007 est.)

How come most Singapore christian had not even heard of Orthodox christian when 3.53% (around 250 million) of the whole world belong to that denomination?

posted by Wui-Ping @ 3:03 PM Comments: 0