Happy Faces Sushi Art

I’ve gotten a few questions from friends who are about to have kids on which camera is best for taking photos of their kids.  As an amateur photographer who wants to be able to capture great moments on a high quality digital camera (and also has video capabilities), I highly recommend the Canon PowerShot G9.  I think I bought it at around HKD $3000, but you’ll have to check the stores yourself for sure.  That’s a ball park figure.

For starters, this camera is almost a cross between your light-weight rinky dink digital cameras and the great SLRs.  It weighs 320g (or 11.3 oz) and is compact enough to carry in your bag (with a case).  The battery life is pretty good.  On a fully charged battery (and it comes with a desktop charger), you can take about 250 shots. 

It’s packed with 12.1 mega pixels (pretty good) for taking those huge children photos and comes with a 3.0″ LCD screen at the back.  The other great thing is that unlike SLRs, you see (on the LCD) what you take before its taken.  Meaning, if you’re on any of the manual modes and you play with shutter speed or aperture, you’ll actually see the exposure of the photo (which is great for the amateur photographer).

With 6.0 Optical Zoom, it’s great for zooming in for both photos and video (which isn’t always available on the rinky dink digital cameras).   The video size (on standard) is quite large (about 2 minutes will give you a 100MB size file), but the quality is very, very good.

There are also 25 shooting modes (like indoor, sports, kids, water) for those who don’t like manual settings and an auto ISO setting.  So in short, there are many automatic modes, including a fully automatic mode for the unfamiliar (or lazy) photographer. 

Since I’m just starting out with photography, I do try to use the manual settings (especially with Vanessa running around, I need a high shutter speed) and it has given me great shots (like all of the photos I’ve got on this blog – click around and you will see!).  The greatest are shots taken outdoor with fabulous lighting – the camera is able to capture movement, colour and most importantly, the action and smiles that Vanessa and Victoria have while being kids.  These are the moments that you won’t be able to capture again and in my book, the more pictures, the better because hey, it’s digital after all!