Thomas Locke Hobbs

Currently near San Francisco

My Digital Cameras

I have two digital cameras, pictured above; a Canon Digital Rebel and a Minolta XG. The Rebel is currently about $800 and the Minolta about $180. The Rebel is for pictures I care about [mostly portraits]. I can make enlargements up to 12"x18" that look spectacular. The Minolta is my go-anywhere camera that fits in my pocket.

Using a Digital SLR like the Rebel, which is the cheapest one available, is like driving a Porsche. It's an absolute pleasure to take pictures with and the images themselves are of superb quality--near equal to film but with all the advantages of digital [instant feedback, no processing costs, custom white balance, and changeable ISO settings]. For anyone who's interested in buying a digital camera and is looking at the more expensive, so-called "prosumer" models I'd recommend spending more to get this camera. There's a discontinuous jump in image quality, design and control with a Digital SLR and everything else below it.

I thought I'd use the Minolta more. It's always with me but I rarely take it out. It's nice and sleek but I've found my picture taking to have grown more deliberate [arranged photo sessions] rather than spontaneous. Still, it's good to have and it's a lot better than a shitty phonecam [which will someday be OK, just not yet]. I wish it ran on AA or AAA rechargeable rather than a proprietary one. I like to have all my gadgets running the same type of batteries. It makes the "recharging" lifestyle a little easier to manage.

For this blog, most of the photos are taken with the Rebel, altho I shrink the images so severely that the difference is hardly evident [altho any picture with a narrow depth of field [blurry background] was definitely taken with the Rebel as the Minolta's lens is too small for that effect]. The Paris Pictures were all taken with the Rebel while Portugal was all done with the small Minolta.

Thursday, December 30, 2004

Portraits 2004

The link above goes to a page with all the portraits I've posted to this blog in 2004.

Tuesday, December 28, 2004

Will

This is my brother Will. The picture is from back in February. My mom pointed out that I haven't posted any photos of him on the blog, so I dug thru my files and found this one which I quite like. I recall Will's comment that posing is like going to the dentist.

Sunday, December 26, 2004

For more about me, please go visit my old geocities page.