Introduction
First of all, for those who don't know yet. I am a newbie and aspiring Photographer hailing from the Philippines. I have already made several photography post here on Hive but I have been using my handy Oppo A92 smart phone.
Honestly it was a great start and taking photos using my smart phone. It is both fun and frustrating at the same time. Our phones have gone a long way since the first ever phone with cameras began. And to be honest photos taken from smart phones nowadays are great. It is lightweight, pocketable, handy, easy to use and the photos it takes are reasonably good.
Limitations of Smart Phones
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Now while smart phones are great, like all other high-tech gadgets nowadays it comes with its own limitations. The following are some disadvantages that I have experienced using my smart phone:
- Zoom - Now this might be the most obvious limitation of smart phones. While newer smart phones today boast a zoom capability of x30 zoom but the reality is it's just marketing. While it is true they can zoom x30 but the picture you will get will most like be a horrible one full of noise and distortion.
- Moving Targets - Smart Phones does have the capacity to shoot moving targets but their actual use is quite limited. Like if you are shooting a cat running around or a bee flying then you will most probably get a blurry photo instead of a clear one.
- Manual Controls - Having no manual controls over the 3 kings of Photography (Shutter Speed, Aperture and ISO) or commonly known as the "Exposure Triangle" will make it much more harder to take photos of a lot of different scenarios such as taking pictures in low light situations or if you want a Bokeh Effect on your photos.
- Overall Picture Quality - Photos taken with smartphones does look great, but it really can't take a candle to digital cameras. The reason for this is the small sensor size and small lenses of smart phones. Digital cameras are bigger than smart phones for a reason. Bigger sensors and lenses would equate to a much better overall photo.
- Professional Feel - For me this is probably the biggest disadvantage of a smart phone. First, I would like to look and feel like a professional photographer. You can't achieve that with just your smart phone. If you trying pointing your smartphone at some random people to take a picture, you will get into trouble most of the time. But if you do that with a digital camera, most of the time they won't care to bother.
Advantages of Smart Phones
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These advantages are from my own personal experience and should not be taken as a fact. I am not a professional photographer. To me these are the advantages of Smart Phones / Mobile Photography:
- Macro Photography - The reason for this is that most entry level digital cameras are mostly point and shoot cameras which means the lens is built with the camera like a smart phone. The problem is that most of these camera don't have much to offer when it comes to macro photography. There are options open though but you would need to spend hundreds of bucks more which is not really an option if you are just starting out in photography.
- Battery Life - With smart phones, you can take pictures all day long without worrying about your battery being drained. Obviously this will depend on what smart phone you have but the 5,000mah battery from my smart phone is quite capable enough to let me shoot all day long.
- Advanced Artificial Intelligence - While digital camera manufacturers have integrated new cameras today with Artificial Intelligence, it is still not quite on par with smart phone. Although photos taken by smart phones is most likely to be a hit or miss, but I find it that my phone "sometimes" takes photos better than entry level digital cameras.
My Decision to Buy my First Ever Digital Camera
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As I have already stated above the advantages and disadvantages of using my smart phone from my personal experience. The more I want to take pictures of the things that I love the more I understand that I really need to either buy a smart phone with a better camera or just get myself a digital camera.
To be honest, my budget was kinda tight but my guts is telling me to buy me a digital camera. One of the reasons that I decided to buy one was so that I can learn the ropes of Photography. I have read a lot of things about photography but learning through reading and learning through experience are two different things.
So instead of burying myself in thought all of the time, I just said to myself "buy one" and we shall see and so I ordered one online. There are so many cameras to choose from but I found something that fits my budget and fits my needs. I also chose this camera because there is an extensive YouTube Tutorial video series on how to use this digital camera properly and how to get good pictures out of it.
Say Hello to Panasonic Lumix DC FZ80
According to Panasonics Website, this camera boast a x60 Optical Zoom, 4K Video Recording at 30fps, 4K Photo Burst Mode, 4K Photo Record Mode. All of these specs combined to make one heck of a Nature/Wild Life digital camera. Just judging by the specs of this digital camera it looks quite impressive on paper.
When I received a text that day that my digital camera would arrive, I was super excited. Finally I can get better photos starting that day. But things never really work as you have hoped for. First I had no SD card, my phone doesn't have one either so yeah the excitement just dwindled down extra hard. Nevertheless I am happy that it already arrived.
The next day I bought a cheap SD card on our local marketplace. It is an SD card not really suitable for 4K Video recording but as long as I can take pictures then I don't mind. I will just have to buy a proper SD card for this baby in the future.
Now that I have an SD card, put it in the camera and now it's time to set it up. I was watching YouTube videos on how to set this baby up. It took me a few hours to do it and it's already night time. But at least the digital camera is already ready to go 😍. Now I'm excited for tomorrow oh yeah...
Testing Out My Newly Found Partner
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Yesterday morning I was so excited to use it so I brought it with me to my suppose to be Sun Rise Photography session. I woke up early, got my things and myself ready and went to our local wharf. Only to find out the super thick rain clouds right above my head. Still I tested it out, got some shots with it and the excitement just vanished. The shots were horrible, there were too much noise and the images were dark. Heck my phone gets better shots than this...
When I went home, I researched what happened and a very newbie mistake I made. Ok so I did understand the concept of the 3 Kings in Photography (Shutter Speed, Aperture and ISO) but actual experience is really quite different. Not to mention I lacked a certain equipment to take better shots in low light situations which is a "Tripod". Taking pictures hand held with a shutter speed of more than a second is way harder than I had expected (noob alert).
Still I didn't lose heart and tried to do some more research on "Exposure Triangle" and after an hour or so went outside to find some targets for my beloved partner.
My First Target Has Been Spotted "Bulingit"
Okay, I went outside my house and tried to look around to find some potential targets and after a few seconds I found one. First target was our neighbors dog called "Bulingit"or "Dirty" in English. I remembered asking why the heck did they named him like that a year ago and the owner said "because he looks dirty when I got him" 😂
Anyways you are my first target of the day "Bulingit" so be a good little doggie and do some pose for me okay baby? That's my boy! Good doggie 😻
All of the photos above were taken as raw and then I edited the photos using RawTherapee. Well I just adjusted the highlights, shadows, contrast and saturation a little bit. I'm not a pro in doing finishing touches on raw files since it is my first time doing this after all. I just followed some YouTube Tutorials and poof.
It looks good to me though, what do you guys think? Is it good, average, meh or perfection? I would appreciate it if you would comment down below what you think about my first victim of the day 😁
My Second Target Neighbors Cock
Now this cock right there gave me a hard time. It was moving around so much that it was actually kinda hard to get a good shot at him since I had to zoom in quite a bit just to get a good shot at him. Luckily he got curious and looked at the camera so it was worth it. Sadly I only got one good shot at him, after a few tries my hands got tired holding the camera 😰
My Third Target Rain Droplets
After I took a shot at my second target the cock, it suddenly rained. I waited for an hour before the rain stopped so everything outside is wet. I looked around my mothers garden when I found these rain drops still stuck in the middle of a leaf of an Elephant Ear Plant.
It looked like a good target to practice some low range telephoto close up shots, so I took a crack at it.
These pictures really looked nice to me as I can still see the crystal like reflection coming from the sky. This is probably my best catch during this test run.
My Fourth Target is Our Cellphone Tower
As you can see from the image above, I marked the tower with a red circle since it is kinda hard to spot. This was taken in the widest angle lens of this camera. The purpose of this was to test how the x60 Zoom will fare if it was used to its maximum range.
At 50% of this digitals camera max zoom range, the tower can now be clearly seen just above the roof. Now lets go max max max.
I'm sorry for that blurred black line cutting the tower. That is the wire that's blocking the towers view from the 2nd photo above. Anyways I think it is clear enough to see some details clearly. It is obviously not that great but it still looks good to me. I can definitely use this baby for birding and shooting from far away targets.
Now you might be wondering how far I was to the tower so I looked it up in Google Maps and measured it there. According to the screen shot I took above, I am roughly around 600 meters from the tower. That is quite some distance, although I'm sure I do more than this, since there are a ton of people using this camera to do more than 2 miles or 4 kilometers away from the target. With this camera I can now spy take a picture of people from a safe distance. I just hope they won't get angry to be my subject for my photographs in the future 😂
My Final and Last Target for the Day (*Drum Roll)
Sampaguita, Philippine Jasmine, or Jasminum Sambac is my Country's (The Philippines) National flower. I saved the best for last 😍. The Sampaguita is really a beauty to behold, especially when it is still blooming like the photo above. I'm just sad that I only got 1 proper photo of it though. I tried several times before I got the shot that satisfied me but after that... It started to rain once again so I had to take cover.
Final Thoughts
After taking the shots above, I'm finally able to understand a little bit on the 3 Kings of Photography. The photo's I have taken today may not be the best in the world but for me they are the best so far. This is a really good start for me, the more I shoot pictures the more I will learn through experience.
I know Photography is not easy and it takes a lot of passion and dedication to produce breath taking pictures. But I hope someday I will be as good as the others who started way ahead of me.
Any thoughts on the shots I got today? Feel free to comment down below. I would really love to hear your inputs, praises and maybe teach me a little bit of something as a newbie photographer?
Thank you so much for reading my blog! If you like my blog and photos, please do upvote my post and leave a comment. I would really appreciate it 😘. And if you want to see more posts like these or photos about nature, wild life and sun rise then please do follow me 😎