In a bid to clean up parts of the house we deci­ded to rum­mage through our attic to make space for more boxes of things we don’t really need but like to keep. We remo­ved some old boxes and loo­ked through them, most of it was junk. Door hand­les, screws, locks, metal brac­kets, paint brushes, wall­pa­per, bro­ken things and lots of dust. Howe­ver we did come across a bag con­tai­ning two large rolls, upon clo­ser ins­pec­tion they were my Dad’s old pos­ters. These pos­ters look pretty darn cool and I’m trying to value them at the moment.

My cat lot­tie and some spring flowers

This is really just me tes­ting out my new Flickr account and its inte­rac­tion with blog­ger. This is my cat in my gar­den during the unna­tu­rally hot March heat wave.

As I made known a few artic­les back, I purcha­sed for myself a Sony Cybershot DSC-P93 5 Mega­pi­xel camera for about £220 from ama­zon. It was a toss up bet­ween this camera and the Nikon 5200. After rea­ding reviews and com­pa­ring pic­ture qua­li­ties, I made the infor­med deci­sion to purchase a Sony.

My girl­friend, Samantha, has since bought the Nikon and I have been able to more tho­roughly com­pare them. Here’s a sum­mary of my findings:

Bat­tery life: The Sony can last at least three times as long as the Nikon, the bat­te­ries are also chea­per and easier to replace. There is also an option to use nor­mal AA bat­te­ries if neces­sary. When on my trip to Italy the fai­ling Nikon bat­tery was supre­mely anno­ying, par­ti­cu­larly on a day out in Flo­rence. You need a spare Nikon bat­tery in order to not be afraid of fai­lure, and they cost £30 com­pa­red to the Sony £7 for two sets.

Fea­tu­res: The Nikon has lots more one click set­tings, e.g. sun­sets, pro­fi­les, etc…, howe­ver all their options, set­tings and chan­ges are buried under menu after menu and take a short while to change values. The Sony has quick on screen chan­ges just in case you need to take a pic­ture quickly – e.g. pic­ture qua­lity, white balance, iso level – sim­ple and effec­tive. When it comes to one click set­tings, Nikon is king, yet in com­pa­ri­son of manual set­tings the Sony has far more avai­la­ble options, e.g. more manual aper­ture levels and a much wider range of shut­ter speeds (30 seconds lon­gest com­pa­red to 4 seconds).

Howe­ver, the most impor­tant fea­ture of all is pic­ture qua­lity. I heard reports of Nikon pic­tu­res being too fuzzy and unde­fi­ned. In a direct com­pa­ri­son on a site this was clearly noti­cea­ble and highly influen­ced my deci­sions. What that com­pa­ri­son DIDN’T show was the colour cap­tu­ring abi­li­ties and satu­ra­tion levels of the two came­ras. The Nikon cap­tu­res the ima­ges with much more vibrant colours, they look nice and full of life. The Sony ima­ges, although loo­king “life like”, don’t give a good loo­king image (in com­pa­ri­son) – the ima­ges seem dull and life­less. Not the grea­test com­pa­ri­son, but:

Sony:

Nikon