Tag Archives: point-and-shoot

This post is for all of you out there who own or have ever owned a digital camera that everybody calls a “point-and-shoot”.  It’s digital, but not an SLR nor is it a “prosumer” camera (well, not really).  It’s a camera that we carry in our purses (I do), use on vacations, take various and sundry “snapshots” (as opposed to “serious photography” – hah) and own when we maybe can’t afford a SLR (although those things are coming down in price).  It’s the kind of camera people own when they don’t think they are very serious about photography and don’t want to involve themselves in the post-processing of their photos.  It’s the kind of camera that alot of (sometimes snooty) photographers pooh-pooh over.

OK, granted, SLRs definitely have better resolution, more lens choices, and alot more bells and whistles for a photographer to play around with, but I am here to tell you that you can get beautiful images from your point-and-shoot.  That fact was made crystal-clear to me when I attended a half-day seminar in Houston hosted by Nikon about 5-6 years ago.  The speaker (a well-known photographer whose name I absolutely cannot remember right now) had a 16 x 24 enlargement of a turtle taken with a 3mp camera he once owned.  I don’t know what kind of post-processing magic he used to get the size and resolution he got with that enlargement, but the fact that the image was captured using a point-and-shoot was what got all of the attendees’ attention.

I owned a sucession of point-and-shoot cameras long before I ever could afford to purchase my first digital SLR.  My very first digital camera was an HP-brand 2mp point-and-shoot and was my first foray into digital.  After that, the only time I ever used film for any further length of time was when I went into my medium-format phase.  After my HP camera, I bought a couple of Minolta Dimage point-and-shoot cameras between 2002 – 2004.  The images below are from those two cameras.  Of course, a little freshening up with some post-processing was applied, which doesn’t hurt a point-and-shoot image, by any means.  Oh, and (the 2004 images, anyway) look quite nice as 8×10 framed photos, btw.

If you like these images I shot using those early digital cameras with resolutions between 3 & 5mp, just think of the kind of images you can capture with today’s point-and-shoot models!