Recently my family and I went to Bend, Oregon to do some cross-country skiing and snowboarding. The first day at Mount Bachelor it snowed most of the day. The next day we had five inches of powder and sunny skies. It was going to be a perfect day to take pictures. We were headed out for a ten mile cross-country ski trip. I knew it would be a drag to take along my big digital SLR camera. So, I clipped on my trusty little Canon PowerShot point-and-shoot camera. Below are some of the pictures I shot that day. You can see a whole album of the pictures on my “Latest Pics” page.
Now, I had my iPhone along, but that wouldn’t have given me the kind of quality I was able to get with my Canon. It got me to thinking that the battle of megapixels has pretty much been won. Even cell phone cameras can give you a couple of megapixels – enough for decent on screen resolution. What we really need to be concerned about is creative controls- how well can we control the exposure and focus? What’s the quality of the lens and how does the camera do in low light? Cell phone cameras don’t give you almost any control, while digital SLR’s give you a great deal. If you want to use one in the great outdoors, you put your camera (and sometimes yourself) at risk. So that’s why I use an inexpensive small camera while running or skiing.
I’ve held my camera in my hand on several road races, including the Portland and Austin Marathons. In some of the events the race organizers have posted my pictures on their web site. Here’s a couple of examples of my “in-race” photos:
So you serious photographers might want to think about bringing a point-and-shoot camera along on your more active activities and you cell-phone photographers might want to consider bringing along a “real” camera.
Monday, February 7, 2011 at 11:55PM 
