Jpg file from Huawei P30-Lite smartphone camera
Toronto. As Alanis Morissette sings on her 1993 album “Jagged Little Pill“. The irony is that the camera with the highest Mpx in the house is a P30-Lite smartphone by Huawei with a 27mm (equivalent) ASPH f/1.8 24 Mpx rating. The more expensive P30 and P30 Pro models have cameras boldly badged as “Leica” who collaborated with Huawei on this line. With a regular price of about $470 in Canada, it cost me zero dollars with a 2 year $40/month Canada wide voice and messaging service contract (before taxes and discounts). The camera has AI to determine the scene and many other options. Leica digital cameras and Leica lenses are of course in the many thousands of dollars prices these days.
I bought my first digital camera back when they were pricy, awkward, and incredibly low resolution. My very first camera was a Chinon ES-3000 from the mid 1990s. Highest resolution was 758×504 pixels (about 0.3 Mpx). No preview screen. Windows only. And glacially slow downloads. My first shot was Larry Boccioletti as he stepped downstairs at our store in the Kingsway.
I bought my first decent digital camera, a Nikon Coolpix E900s, the year we had a terrible snow storm (about 1999). The 900s jpg only camera was 1.3 Mpx and a delight to use. It was followed much later by another Coolpix, the E990 at about 3 Mpx – also jpg only. Both Coolpix cameras were consumer models and suffered from poor hinge design. The batteries and springs slowly broke the hinge rendering the camera useless unless repaired.
My next camera was a Sony F828 with a massive Zeiss zoom lens and a crude electronic viewfinder. The F828 at 8 Mpx has a RAW option but the buffer is too small and it takes ages in RAW mode before it is ready for the next shot. I still use it as a back up camera today.
When Sony entered the mirrorless arena, I bought an NEX-5. Finally, I had a camera that was suitable for shooting and downloading in RAW format. And when Sony came out with a decent high resolution viewfinder and RAW files, I moved to an NEX-6 at the amazing resolution of 16.1 Mpx.
One night Ed Warner noticed that my battery died before our speaker finished his presentation. Next meeting he donated to me a spare Coolpix P7000 camera and a spare battery. We were both puzzled by the camera doing a factory reset after swapping batteries. I later discovered Nikon uses a tiny battery SOLDERED to an internal PC board to hold time, date, and custom settings, when the regular larger battery is swapped out for charging. When the internal battery dies a $$$ trip to Nikon repair is needed! Or you can reset time, date, etc after each external charge like I do. This Coolpix is ergonomically comfortable to use unlike the models marketed immediately after the 990.
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