I've been thinking about replacing my 11-year old Konica Minolta Digital SLR for a few months now. The old camera still works okay, but it has issues that started to bother me more and more. The battery door opens on its own, which is annoying. If it hasn't been used for a while (e.g. a few hours), the first photo taken doesn't work and the camera has to be power cycled. There are other signs of wear and tear that all add up to a degraded experience. Sure, it works, but not as well as it used to, and certainly not as well as more modern cameras.

Last week I finally pulled the trigger and purchased a Nikon D5500. An incomplete list of the things this camera does better than the old one:

• The Konica Minolta has 6 megapixels, which is plenty for what I need. The Nikon, with 24 megapixels, probably has more than I need. However, digital sensors have come a long way in a decade. Despite the fact that the Nikon sensor pixels are smaller than the Konica Minolta's (both cameras have APS-C sensors), the Nikon sensor has much better low-light performance than the Konica Minolta.
• The Konica Minolta doesn't have a movie mode, while the Nikon can do 1080P at 60 FPS. I don't often take movies, but it's nice to have that feature there if I want it.
• The Nikon has much faster and better image processing. Of course, this is no Nikon D5 that costs $6,500, but it's plenty fast for my purposes.
• The Nikon has a touch screen that has iPhone-like swipe/pinch gestures, and touch-to-focus. As hilarious as it is to see my daughter try to swipe on my old camera, I like the idea of making photography approachable for her.
• The availability of lenses for Nikon cameras is probably unparalleled. This was a source of consternation for me – let me explain. I have a number of lenses for the Konica Minolta that aren't necessarily top quality, but they work fine. I have coverage from 18-500mm. In 2006 (shortly after I got my Konica Minolta, natch), Sony bought Konica Minolta's camera line, and continue to make cameras to this day based on that product line under their name. Sony still makes cameras that are compatible with Konica Minolta lenses (the A-mount system), but recently they have focused most of their innovation towards their E-mount system. I wasn't sure I wanted to stay with a system that (it looks like to me) Sony isn't focused on. Sony makes a line of very nice mirrorless cameras that only support the E-mount system. I thought long and hard about buying a Sony mirrorless camera (especially the α6500, $1400 for the body), but in the end I decided I couldn't justify spending that much money. With a Nikon, I can get a more reasonably priced body and gain access to a wealth of high-quality lenses.

• The Nikon can be controlled (in a limited fashion) from a smartphone or tablet over Wifi, which seems pretty useful.

Clever readers might wonder why I got a D5500 when Nikon has already announced the follow-on D5600? Well, the D5600 adds very few features over the D5500 (basically only Bluetooth connectivity and slightly better battery life), and I got my D5500 as a fully warrantied refurb for a significant discount. Clever readers might also wonder why I didn't get something like a Sony α6000/α6300 for $400/$1000? Basically, I had read bad things about the Sony menu system, the α6000/α6300 don't have a touch screen, and E-mount lenses are rarer and comparatively more expensive than Nikon equivalents.

Finally, here's a photo using the new camera from this morning's dog walk. I centered it on the iconic NCAR Mesa Laboratory building. Click for the full 24 megapixel size!

This is what happens when you give a camera to a three year old.

I've had my Motorola E815 phone for about a year. It has bluetooth, a camera, and other cool features, like many modern phones. Bluetooth enables you to transfer photos, movies and ringtones on and off a phone. All these things seem like a useful feature set for a phone. However, Verizon, the carrier for my current phone, disabled a number of bluetooth features, such as file transfer.

Why would Verizon intentionally cripple a phone? Money, of course. Turning off the file transfer abilities of a phone means that if I want to get the photos I take using my phone onto my personal computer, I need to use their not free services. Also, if I want to get a new ringtone, I need to pay for them (often over a buck for 30 seconds of music!), instead of uploading a simple, free, MIDI I found on the internet.

Ever since I got my phone, I've been aware that it is easily hacked to allow all bluetooth function, but it required a special USB cable. I never got around to buying the $10 cable, and hacking the phone, until now.

The camera actually takes farily decent photos in a wide range of light conditions considering it's just a pinhole lens. It also takes short movies, with sound. I can also upload MIDI sound files, or even MP3s, and make them my ringtone. I've always wanted to pull out my camera phone whenever I saw something cool, but never bothered because I couldn't get them off the camera for free. Now that I can, I'll be more willing to snap a pic of whatever.

Continuing on my previous post I'm posting some more photos with my new camera. This time I've made some 4-up comparison JPGs showing my new SLR versus my old pocket digital.

The main point of the comparison photos is to see how the range of lenses compare. I've scaled down the SLR's photos and cut the aspect ratio of the Canon's shots, so image quality is not the main focus of this comparison. I also didn't play with the advanced features of the SLR because the Canon doesn't have the range of variability like the SLR. But I did take photos in two different modes just to see if I could discern any changes.

Overall the lens supplied with the SLR has about the same range as the Canon, while the telephoto lens & 1.4x multiplier attachment goes where the Canon can't. I took the photos on a partly-cloudy day so the ambient light changed between various shots, which diminishes the comparison value of color & exposure. One thing that is clear is the Canon suffers from the usual problem of depth of field. Even when I'm taking a photo of something close, the background tends to be in focus. In the above photo you can see that the Canon does have the background out of focus somewhat, but not nearly as much as the SLR.

One thing the Canon has going for it is portability, so I don't think I'll be abandoning it yet. It still takes great snapshots, and sometimes all I want is a snapshot.

My father gave me for my birthday a shiny new digital SLR. It's a Konica Minolta Maxxum 5D digital SLR. I already own a Minolta 35mm film camera, so I have a few lenses and accessories that are compatible with the new camera.

I'm still playing around with all the fancy features, and I really don't know how to use it to it's full potential now.