 Choo Choo Love |
Looking for an SLR camera Hello: I am an amateur snap happy photographer. I became interested in photographing wildlife when I befriended some geese last year. I've been using an HP 435 3.1 MP with 5X zoom, basically a point and click camera, for close up pictures. For long distance pictures, I've been using a Bushnell binocam. I'm interested in learning to take more professional wildlife photos and I'm also planning to sign up for one of the beginning photography courses offered here and then going on to sign up for the wildlife photography course later. Can you guys please recommend a good SLR camera that will be good for wildlife photography? Please be easy on the terms as I do not understand things like aperture and shutter speeds and telephoto lenses. Can you attach telephoto lenses to a digital camera? Also, do you guys prefer to use a 35mm over a digital and if so, why? Thanks for all your help!
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Andrew Laverghetta |
Hey, Boring Saturday here at college. Thought I'd look around but here's my view on it. I think it would be really good to learn some of the terms. I will try to do my best really quickly. Aperture: like in your eye, the lens on a camera has a hole that closes and opens towards the center. the small the hole, the larger the aperture number, the larger the hole, the smaller the aperture number. Example: f32 is a really small hole and lets in less light. F1.4 is a very large opening and lets in a lot of light. Of course there is a lot of other numbers in between. Shutter speed is how long another door is opened to expose the film or the digil stuff in the camera. these can go from 30 seconds to 1 8 thousanth of a second on top of the line cameras. Telephoto lenses are basically lenses that don't zoom in or pan out. If you want to get closer you just have to move closer. Zoom lenses are the lenses that can let you stand in the same spot and either take a picture of a whole person or just their head. SLR cameras are mostly classified mostly by their ability to change lenses for a large variety of shots and being able to see exactly what you will take a picture of through the viewfinder. It's all done with mirrors. These changeable lenses can also have filters attached so you can get special effects. Filters are more widely used with 35mm SLRs than digital. 35mm SLRs can use a large variety of film and get give very big enlargemnts as opposed to some digital images. You can't very easily change films in the middle of a roll. Some 35mm SLRs are the Canon Rebel G or GII, Nikon N65, Konica Minolta Maxxum 50, and Pentax ZX-L. These are all around the bottom of the line but you can maybe check out www.ritzcamera.com because they have an easy to view way of checking out cameras and such. Digital SLRs may be better if you take a lot of pictures and don't want to dump too much money into photography after the origial purchase of the camera. Beginning digital SLRs are somewhere around or slightly under $1000. They take very good pictures and many things can be manipulated as you probably already know. You don't really need to use filters on the changable lenses because you can fiddle after you take the pictures on the computer. Only a few good digital SLRs are the Canon EOS Digital Rebel and the Nikon D70. All of these cameras are good for wildlife photography. Some may be slightly better depending on weather conditions where you are shooting. All these cameras can be bought with a lens but your best choice would be to buy a lens that said something like 70mm-300mm. The higher the highest number, the further it can zoom to fill the picture more with the animal or whatever you want to photograph. If you buy a Digital SLR the maximum zoom is actually further because of the size of the image sensor but I won't talk about that. If you want to do A LOT of wildlife photography, you could get a telephoto (almost like a fixed scope like I said before) that is around 300mm (millimeters of course). You would want to get a lens with a low F/ number if you're going to be zoomed a lot or want to "get close" without actually getting close. Remember, the lower f/ number, the more light will hit the film or the sensor(in a digital camera). You've probably gotton some blurry pictures back sometime or another even though it was in focus. That is because the shutter speed was too slow for how stead the camera was held and you shook the camera like all people do. Tripods are also something that you need for wildlife photography so you can use slower shutter speeds. As for prefering 35mm or digital, I only prefer digital if I can get a Digital SLR with changable lenses because the pictures are of better quality. Otherwise, my canon rebel GII is good until I can find around $1000. The cost of getting my film developed is getting unwieldy. I hope this helps. If you want to ask any more, email me at alavergh@indiana.edu.
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Choo Choo Love |
Dear Andrew: Thanks a bunch for your suggestions and advice on cameras and the terminology. You sound like someone who really knows photography and you could teach it! You made a difficult subject quite easy to understand. I'll check ritzcameras online and hope to narrow my search to one camera. Looks like I'll stick with digital as I'm used to it and I like to take hundreds and hundreds of photos! I'll spend a lot of money with film and developing if it's not a digital camera. Thanks once again. I really appreciate your help! Choo
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pcmlphotography.com - Pamela C.M Lammersen Contact Pamela C.M Lammersen Pamela C.M Lammersen's Gallery |
Hello Choo, try picking up some 'photography' magazines and read read read, you will learn so much from that. also by looking on this web site at the 'q&a' will help or other people's sites. Depending on the shots you like, will help determine what camera set up is the best for you but always learn both sides,i.e. digital and film, so you can form your own opinion. They both have their good and bad areas. I prefer film myself because I feel the art of photography is composing the shot before it is on the paper - it is so easy to have 'hind sight' and to change an image after it is made by digital but if it has to be 'fixed' then was it really what you saw in your head???? and ofcourse not everyone's idea of art is the same - it all comes down to what you like, so just keep experimenting and shooting and you will find what you like and where your nitch is. good luck - Pamela
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