There are photographers and there are photographers. And there are those who shoot thought-provoking photographs and won the Wildlife Photographer of the Year award.

If I had my way, I would put up a competition titled “Wildlife Macro Photography of the Year”.

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This is an unoccupied traditional house of the Rungus people of Borneo, called the long house. The round, gray object on the right is a satellite TV disk from which the long house residents get their daily dose of Hollywood and world pop culture.

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Boats and trawlers moor quietly near the Pasir Panjang ferry terminal, south of Singapore. Seen in the distance is an Apache combat helicopter, patrolling over the seas.

The helicopter had just flown pass when I switched on the camera. After the camera’s agonisingly slow start-up, I finally managed to frame this shot but the mean chopper had gotten away, leaving only a tiny spot on the frame, reducing the beast-machine into a mere dragonfly.

Would have been better if I had managed to capture the chopper as it was flying above the boats. It would have been dramatic… it would have been as though the Apache was preparing to rain fire on the boats and trawlers below.

But you can’t have the best of both shots, especially if all you’ve got is a point-and-click camera.

One day, I hope to shoot a picture of a Cougar helicopter — or any other combat-capable helicopter — patrolling over some boats over Malaysian waters…

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The PowerShot SX10 IS, one of Canon’s two mega zoom point and shoot cameras — the other is the PowerShot SX1 IS — is now available in the Asian market.

In Singapore it is priced at SGD769, about a hundred Singapore dollar more expensive than the S5 IS, the camera it jointly replaces with its much more robust cousin, the PowerShot SX1 IS.

I’m waiting with bated breath the arrival of the SX1 IS. I hope the price is within my means.

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I only have this one in my file. Click here for a pictorial list of the various species of the Nepenthes also known as the pitcher plant or monkey cup.

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Black is always a superb background colour for macro photographs as it makes the subject stand out within a frame.

Here in this picture, I used a black plastic hardcover of a “clear holder” file for the background, hence the yellowish reflection at the base of the paper clip.

This effect will not be achieved had I used other types of materials such as paper or canvas. Some photographers prefer to use black velvet as background, which is also an excellent choice.

Camera: Canon PowerShot G6, Exposure: 0.017 sec (1/60), Aperture: f/2.2, Focal Length: 11.2 mm, Exposure Bias: 0/3 EV, Flash: Flash fired, Image Quality: Superfine, Camera ISO: 50, Metering Mode: Evaluative, Focus Range: Super Macro.

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This entry, probably, is not for those with high purchasing power, who could afford to buy any one of those expensive DSLRs — and the flashguns and all the fancy lenses — without feeling a pinch on their bottomlines.

This entry, perhaps, is for people like me, who could afford an entry level DSLR like the Canon EOS 450D or the Nikon D60 but not the the lenses (I would require a close-up lens, powerful telephoto lens, etc, which are more expensive than the camera).

What I’m trying to discuss here is the issue of finding a right balance between the need to have a DSLR set, with all the lenses, and the reality of not being able to afford them.

To upgrade or not to upgrade to DSLR

If you have been using point-and-click cameras for sometime, chances are, you had, at some point of your photographic life, wanted to upgrade to a DSLR because of the versatility and the high image quality it offers.

But still, despite the satisfaction of being able to shoot with a DSLR — and believe me, shooting while looking through the viewfinder provides much more satisfaction than shooting while looking at the LCD screen with the camera positioned at arms’ length — if all you have for a DSLR lens is the kit lens, you would still lament the camera’s limited zoom capability.

On the other hand, there are already good point-and-click cameras which offer superb telephoto capability, such as the upcoming Canon PowerShot SX1 IS, Canon PowerShot SX10 IS, Olympus SP-565UZ, Casio EX-FH20 — and I’m sure Nikon will soon come up with its own model — all offering 20x optical zoom with image stabilisation.

Not only that you will be able to zoom very close to the subject — something you won’t be able to do with your DSLR if you have limited funds to invest in telephoto lenses — you will also be able to shoot in wide-angle, a feature only recently introduced in super zoom point-and-click cameras.

And if you invest a little bit more, you’d get to buy a tele-converter where you can double the optical zoom or a wide-angle converter to increase the wide-angle capability, of these high-end point-and-click cameras.

So, what should it be?

So, should you buy an entry level DSLR or a high-end point-and-click camera? This has been my dilemma for already a couple of years now.

At some point, I was ready to upgrade to a DSLR but then, suddenly, as though coming from nowhere, camera manufacturers unleashed their super zoom point-and-click cameras, leaving me unable to decide on whether to proceed with the DSLR I had in mind.

This should work for me

My solution, at the moment, is this. My priority is a camera that has telephoto capability. Obviously, I won’t be able to afford that in a DSLR. So, I’m going to buy one of the 20x optical zoom cameras, most probably the Canon PowerShot SX1 IS.

Then, later on, I would buy a DSLR camera to get a real photo-taking satisfaction.

So instead of a DSLR plus all the bulky lenses, my photographic equipment would be a DSLR plus a super zoom point-and-click camera. Make sense? No?

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