By simply going through two or three pages worth of posts on doesnttaZtelikechicken, it is immediately apparent that the quality of our photos runs the gamut from reasonably good to pretty lousy. The good shots resulted from a confluence of good lighting, interesting subject matter, steady hands, and a good photographic tool. Remove any combination of these, and bad shots resulted.

Lately, some of our friends as well as readers have been asking about the camera used for some of the better shots, and I thought it may be illuminating (heh heh) to write a short post about the tools we use for taking photos. Since this article isn’t directly related to food, we thought it would be appropriate to come up with a new category for this post. After throwing around several ideas, we’ve decided on “Life & Style”. We envision this as a category for us to post non-food articles that are nevertheless still related, directly or indirectly, to all matters culinary.

Our Sony DSC-T3 is the camera that produces most of the photos on the website.

Two examples of photos taken with this camera include (i) the images in this post and (ii) the images in this post. The T3 is a great camera in good light, with a sharp lens and an imaging engine that produces pleasing colors. However, its lack of image stabilization, coupled with a slow lens (f3.5 at the short end), means it is not very good in low-light situations. With this camera, we have to use the flash when taking photos in restaurants, which produces images that look very harsh. Still, this little camera is very well built and very portable. Its size makes it unobtrusive when snuck out for quick shots, which makes it a very people-friendly camera. We’ll most likely be using this for quite a while to come.

The Nikon D70 is the tool that can consistently produce the best-quality images.

So far, we have only used it to take photos for one post. The kit lens (18 – 70mm, f3.5 – f4.5) is not fast but it is quite sharp. The camera also produces decent images up to ISO 800 (and up to ISO 1600 if resized for the web), so it is flexible even in challenging lighting situations. This is our travel camera, but it isn’t one we bring to restaurants. It is just too big (we like to travel light when eating out), too unwieldy, and too attention-grabbing. Thus, we take our hats off to Ben@Chowtimes and Kim@imonlyhereforthefood for having the persistance to document their dining adventures with their respective DSLRs.

This isn’t a camera obviously; it is my personal cell phone, a Samsung U900 Soul.

Aside from being a global phone (I plug in a local SIM when I’m in Europe or Asia and I’m good to go), it is also equipped with a 5 megapixel camera. This is the tool I use to capture images when I’m away on business, or when we don’t have our other cameras handy. Some decent examples of photos taken with this can be found in this post and some subpar examples in this one . It isn’t the best photographic tool by far, but it is also the one that is constantly by my side, and in a pinch, it can be called upon to do the job.

And finally, here is the latest addition to our kit bag – the Canon G10.

Equipped with a relatively fast lens (f2.8 at the short end), image stabilization, and usable ISO 400/800, this camera is quite capable of taking photos in low(ish) light situations. We’ve only had it for a week, so we haven’t gotten it completely dialed in yet. The first three photos in this post, as well as the first and last photos in this post were taken with this camera. We were comparing this camera with the Panasonic LX3, which has an even faster lens, but the lack of availability and higher price of the LX3 meant we bought the G10. We are looking forward to taking more photos with this camera. Hopefully, you, our gentle reader, will find them pleasant to look at.