I’ve been thinking about it and there are two kinds of pictures I want to take. I want to record events that happen to me so I can share them with others and I want to take pictures that look cool. In general the recording of events doesn’t have to be perfect and are totally unposed. The cool ones would be posed or at least carefully composed, and lighted.

Now when you start thinking about cameras you find you need two different kinds of camera. For recording you need something that will be there when you want to take the pictures. There are certain minimal standards you need, but the important thing is you have it when the event happens. For me the perfect camera for this would be a 1 megapixel camera phone. The current 640×480, infinite focus, flashless camera phones don’t do a good job recording. Maybe better than nothing, but not good enough. But they would be there because I carry my phone with me all the time. I’m not sure I would carry a little camera around all the time. Though there is a chance I might start wearing a fanny pack so I could carry my gun and if so I’d have more space for something like a digital camera.

An example of recording was my motorcycle class. It would be nice to have pictures of us all standing around in the rain. I think it would say more about the class than my whole blog entry.

Now if I want to take great pictures that I’m going to pose and light I need a camera that will let you mess with all of the photographic settings and let you see what you are going to get as you are composing. Traditionally this has required a SLR. Now a days digital cameras have view finders that let you see what you are going to get, but most point and shoots don’t give you much control over exposer etc. So I’d still want an SLR.

I mostly blogged this because I want to remember it, but if anyone has something to add feel free to comment.