I noticed monsieurcoffee took some great still photos at the Canadian regional - sharp, no blurring, not using a flash (that I can tell) and the color balance is excellent.
What still cameras did people use at regionals? what worked well for you?
I used a digital camera last year, and everything came out blurred or underexposed (small flash).
This year I took a Pentax SLR with f1.7 50mm and f2.8 135mm lenses, and my monster flash unit. Iwas able to take photos without the flash in the pits and on the field, with the lens opened all the way using ASA400 Kodak print film.
Using the big flash unit I could take flash photos up to 40 feet away (but I dont like the way the background is always dark in flash photos in an open arena). You can see some of my photos in the Canadian regional section of the photo gallery. I scanned them at 600dpi and tweaked the color balance best I could.
What did other people use? what worked well for you?
Team 341 used a assortment of cameras- including two Sony DSC-P8’s, a Sony DSC-P10, and a Nikon Coolpix… All worked great and allowed for instaneous usage of pictures- we just uploaded them on a mentor’s laptop and displayed some on our big screen in front of our pit…
This year I took a Pentax SLR with f1.7 50mm and f2.8 135mm lenses, and my monster flash unit. Iwas able to take photos without the flash in the pits and on the field, with the lens opened all the way using ASA400 Kodak print film. **
steals your camera and runs away with it
I want an SLR soo badly…But no…I just have this stupid little point-and-shoot. It sucks.
I’ll have my new Sony DSC-f717 for nats. I juss got it AFTER chicago midwest. Its soo cool
Quality-wise, so far its amazing. If you feel like downloading 1.77 megs and want to see a gear out of a SigmaC@T 108 UCF transmission, then you can see some of its great quality.
…and that’s with horrible lighting conditions (my room). Its got great color and lighting correction, not to mention amazing autofocus even in the dark. Definetly cool.
However, some of them were taken by Vicki on our team for scouting; I just uploaded them. She has a Canon digital camera and they’ve got nice lens. If you go to www.orbitreview.com/~temp/639movies and follow the links to an apache directory for pics, those are hers. I spent most of the time in the pits and didn’t take too many pics after the build season.
But also, I do take photos as a hobby and I can say that digital cameras for robotics isn’t a bad choice. My Sony will get to 1/200th of a second for those fast and hectic autonomous modes and the picture comes out great…
Pic I took and like of us up top with partners… lezze… this was a 166 point match.
My digicam is a cheapo Olympus C-100 (I think) 1.3MP. It’s decent when the robots are moving really slow. Bad shutter speed. It works quite well under those bright lights with no flash. There’s no optical zoom and it takes quite a while (~10 seconds) to write to the flash memory. The pics tend to be a bit grainy…but what can you expect from a lower-quality camera? It works great for what I want it for.
My dad’s digicam is a nice Nikon Coolpix 880 3MP. 3x optical zoom, I think. It works quite well. Large, colorful, and sharp pictures. It works great in-doors with no flash and semi-decent lighting. Beautiful camera.
My Minolta SRT 200 (SLR) worked great with a 1/1000th shutter speed with the aperture about halfway open. No flash. I didn’t use it this year…too much of a pain to get decent shots. I don’t think auto-focus was around (or popular) in the late 60’s when my camera was made. Hehe. I think I have a 5x zoom, a telescoping lense, and a wide-angle lense. (My dad used to be an avid photographer…we have a darkroom in the basement and a whole slew of cameras…antiques, classics, and new!)
