CAMERA OPTIONS: In 1888, George Eastman introduced the new hand-held Kodak camera with the slogan “You press the button, we do the rest.” That promise really wasn’t fulfilled until nearly everyone had a digital camera.
Today we have many options to choose from when considering a camera for photographing mushrooms. If all we want to do is point and shoot, we can do that. If we want to become more involved in taking photos, we can do that too.
The advantages of digital cameras over film cameras:
1. We don’t have to remember to buy film and decide which speed of ASA to get
2. We don’t have to decide what size prints you want or worry about how much it is going to cost us to shoot and print each photo!
3. We don’t have to wait for the results! We can see what our shot is going to look like before we press the shutter and afterwards we can immediately see and decide whether or not we got the shot we wanted.
4. We can retake the shot as many times as we need until we get it right. (Just takes a little patience)!
Our options: DSLRs like their film-loading forefathers, give the owner the ability to change lenses. The lenses are usually made of good glass elements compared with PS, which may have a plastic lens. DSLR dedicated macro lenses allow you to see details can’t see just being close up to your subject. (Good getting hairs on insects or fringed (fimbriate) gills). Lenses 90 - 100mm are considered ideal for mushroom macro photography. But you can also get great results using wide-angle and zoom lenses. Most importantly, DSLRs have larger CCDs to capture image detail. And they have the ability to capture images in RAW mode, enabling the photographer to edit uncompressed versions, rather than depending on the in-camera software doing it.
Today you can buy a DSLR that will take great pictures for you in Automatic mode, but you can also use it in semi-automatic and manual modes for more complete artistic control for between $500-$2,000 (prosumer) plus the cost of lenses. DSLR cameras with a resolution equal to film can be purchased for between $2500 and $5000 plus the cost of lenses. And the prices keep coming down for what you get.
Point and Shoot Cameras
PS cameras are very sophisticated these days, especially the most recent batch. Today you can buy a decent PS 7-12 megapixel camera for under $200. Their advantages include being lightweight, easy to carry in a pocket, and convenient in situations like club walks, where we may have to keep up with the leader and therefore don’t have the time to make detailed adjustments. The newest models are designed to give you a good photo under varying conditions – sometimes good enough to publish in a book. So I recommend everyone have one on hand for those times.
The main disadvantages of the PS cameras are the lens quality, the inability to change lenses, and lack of RAW image capture. Also, while some PS cameras enable us to manually control at least some aspects of the camera’s operating system, most are fairly limited to program modes. That means we have to accept what we get, or take lots of shots in hopes that a few will turn out better than the others. Also, you will not get the dynamic range of lights and darks that you will get with a camera having a larger sensor of the same pixel resolution.
Your PS camera instructions may say in macro mode it can take a photo of something as close as 1 cm away from lens, but that is at the widest setting under best lighting conditions. If lighting conditions are not ‘perfect’ your photo will be a blur.
Tip: Use the macro setting. But be aware that the macro setting has nothing to do with converting your camera lens to shoot macro. It doesn’t make your subject appear bigger .It just tells the camera you want to shoot closer than normal and to err on the side of a small (high number) aperture. This setting will give you a greater D of F than using a large aperture (small number), but to compensate for allowing less light to hit the sensor, the camera will raise the ISO. This may result in a grainy photo – noticeable if you want to print it at full resolution or crop it.