Compact Camera Delight
Portrait shot with a Canon A640 Compact Camera: 1/40s f8 ISO100 jpg format
For 3 years, from 2006, I decided to only carry one compact camera with me for my everyday use while going out with my Essential Photography Class students. This was both a challenge and a reasonable choice.
Photos Franc Peret (Canon A640)
This choice was a challenge as many person consider a small sensor camera not being good enough to deliver an interesting result. I proved it wrong on many occasion and I am still delighted to re-discover the shot I had done at that time with this type of underestimated camera.
I personally consider this choice of “limited” camera perfectly accurate as I wanted to prove to my students that, in term of creation, the photographer matters more than the gear, as soon as he gets control over it (ISO, Aperture and Shutter speed).
This portrait had been taken during one of my street photography class in 2008.
I was with a group of students outside Shanghai Main Train station looking for portrait of people without being noticed.
Perfect cameras to capture genuine expression
With my compact camera, a Canon A640, it was a piece of cake as I was using the flipping screen of my camera to compose my shot without directly looking at my subject, thus I was able to be really close to the person I wanted to shoot without having his natural expression changing.
I took this picture at ISO 80 (the lowest of this camera as outdoor light was good enough) and set up my aperture at f8 to get more depth of field and as much detail as possible.
My Shutter speed get down a bit too much (1/40s) but we were both stable. I took another shot at f5.6 to raise one stop the shutter speed (1/80s), but I preferred the first shot as his facial expression was much more interesting.
Bigger is not always better
As a conclusion, it is always interesting to go against mainstream ideas to be creative.
For example, a large majority of people thinks that bigger is always better.
Great, just lets go for a smaller camera to challenge this conviction and to see what’s happen.
And I discovered strong points form that type of camera which helped me to be always ready to grab instant and genuine facial expression: compactness, flipping screen, convenience of AAA batteries and great colors and resolution of the jpg straight out of the camera.
Good enough for my teaching
In the ppt of my photography class, I am using lots of pictures I had taken with that compact camera, and I never had a student telling me: “How come you shot that picture with a compact camera?”
Nobody never mention about this as it is impossible to notice a difference for that type of use.
Here are some more pictures I had taken with the canon A640 or its predecessor (A95) in China and Japan
Unfortunately, i had to stop to use this marvel because its battery consumption got crazy due to an electronic problem which is too costly to fix.
This line up of camera does not exist anymore which is a big mistake form Canon.
Since then, I switched to Panasonic Lumix M4/3 series (GH1 to GH4) and Nikon1 to continue with my personal shots using smaller package.
Franc Peret is teaching Essential Photography Classes, Advanced Photography Workshop and Film Making Classes in Shanghai
