 BetterPhoto Member |
what camara would be good to start with? o.k. I have been interested in photography since I was old enough to click the button. I have a camara but its nothing special. I woul like to know what kind of camara would be good to really start getting involved in photography. Thanks Katie
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Ken Pang |
It really depends on how much you want to spend, and what kind of photography you want to do. Without knowing any of that, I would say that a Canon EOS 30, or a Nikon F-80 would be good middle-high end cameras to start with. It has enough features to keep you creative (I'm assuming you have real intent to persue this, since you've had an interest in it for so long) but does not have those "professional" features that you pay a mint for, but will probably never use (EG, 10 frames per second winding colour matrix metering, 1/250th flash sync speed, computer uplink, etc) I would also suggest that you start off with a cheap lens, say a 28-70 f/4-5.6. These are so cheap, they are almost disposable. The quality is usually still better than a point and shoot, but when you get experienced enough to appreciate the extra sharpness and contrast the better lenses provide, you won't feel you are wasting a lot of money when you dispose of the old lens. Does that help? Ken.
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doug Nelson |
You deserve a responses from a cheapskate, too, if price is a concern. The closet shelves of America are full of 70's single-lens-reflex cameras with lens quality that rivals anything out there today for a lot less money. People like me brought Nikons, Canons, Minoltas and Pentaxes back from the far east, many hardly used. You have to learn photography to use these, because they have manual focus and you set the shutter and aperture yourself. If you have a few hundred to invest, Ken gave you sound advice. I only question the cheap zooms. Some are of miserable optical quality. If you'd start off with a 50mm or a 35, you'll have a useful lens with decent sharpness you won't have to throw away. Here's a best-kept secret: Canon made a little rangefinder camera in the 70's with a non-removable lens and partial automation in the exposure. You must focus on the subject. It's the Canonet QL17 G3.Here's the kicker; the lens on this little guy is of very high optical quality, AND it can be had for 2 figures on ebay. Cameraquest.com has more information.
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Jaymes R. Stuart |
Get a digital. For decades, Photography has been run by Experts who preach what f stop and fill ratio and Circle of Confusion to use and then charge us a mint to develop our lousy shots to prove we don't know what they're talking about. Are you really going to blow thousands of dollars on film and "photofinishing" proving to yourself what a crappy shooter you are? No, you're not. This is the biggest reason film cameras end up in a drawer for 20 years. That's what they're counting on. You'll buy a camera then go away. Fight back and go get a quality digital: Nikon 800, 950, 995, or Oly 3030, and a couple of cards. Eat the cost. It sets you free from the Bloodsucking Vampire Photofinishers. Add an Epson printer ($150 or so) and blast away, hitting every button you find to see what the hell happens (and expanding your right brain). Shoot everything. Try everything. You run the camera -- it doesn't run you. Stick the results on your puter -- instantly -- and be ruthless in your editing. Chuck the crap out and go and shoot more and better. It's FREE -- and so is your mind! One BRILLIANT 8X10 made by your own hand ($1.50) versus 24 crappy machine prints ($10). You do the math. Karl Marx was an idiot but he did say "own the means of production". And he was right. No, you will not get 60 lp/mm resolution or whatever the geeks say is minimally acceptable this week. But you will have a hell of a lot of fun and a big book of prints to show whoever you have to show -- and they will be YOUR OWN, and you WILL KNOW HOW YOU MADE THEM. Digital rulez -- The People are taking back photography.
PS Go rent Ollie Stone's Natural Born Killers.
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doug Nelson |
In a partial paraphrase of the warden in "Cool Hand Luke": What we have here is a healthy dialogue. I think you can have image quality AND digital convenience, and combime the two any way you want. Don't think you're gonna get out of learning shutter speeds and f-stops by going digital. All the cameras mentioned have great flexibility, and control over exposure and depth-of-field. You'll get great results using the max resolution the camera delivers, which, these days, is pretty impressive. It makes no difference whether the dots that make up an image are silver halide crystals or pixels. If they're close enough together, the human eye will perceive them as continuous tones. Don't let that digital sit in a drawer, either.
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Tony Peckman |
RE: Doug Oh my gosh. Doug's mention of the old Canonet is the camera I bought my girlfriend(now wife) in 1981. I'm the photographer in the family and always thought my wife got lucky and was incredibly steady because her shots always came out so sharp. We still have the camera but it won't take a shot. I think I need to check out the battery, but it was a great SHARP little thing. I never knew about the optics in it. Thanks Doug, now I won't put it on Ebay. I'll hold on to that baby!
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doug Nelson |
Good news, Tony. Some photo geek 30 years ago claimed that the Canonet's lens was every bit as sharp as the Leica equivalent 40-mm. If you want to revive this camera, the battery (1.35 volt mercury) is no longer easily available. Owners of Canon F-1's have the same problem, so you're in good company. 1.5v batteries will cause erroneous meter readings. Full-service camera stores may have the 1.35 battery from Varta or Wein, both European companies. Wein's phone number is (716) 328-7800, Varta's address is Varta Batteries, Inc, Elmsford, NY 10523-1202.
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Ken Pang |
We're somewhat off topic now, but I found Jayme's post rather amusing and had to enter my comments. It's like there's a conspiracy theory going here between consumers and the photographic industry. I do agree with most of what he says though, conspiracy theory aside. There are a lot of photofinishers out there that do poor quality jobs and don't accept responsibility. Like that roll I shot using an "L" series lens. The lens has an MTF of 0.95+ all the way through. When the photos came out unsharp, I pointed it out to them. They said it's likely my lens was dirty or it was a poor quality lens. If I didn't know better, I would have accepted their comments. I also agree that digital is great for practise. There is nothing like seeing the results immediately, so you can see what you did wrong or right, rather than wait a few days for the prints to come back. However, there are some down sides Jaymes didn't mention: 1) If you end up wanting the entire roll printed, you can expect to pay about $30, (paper + ink) for 6x4s. The same print costs about $10 here in Australia 2) Start up costs are high if you don't have a high performance computer, but want high resolution prints 3) If you don't learn about depth of field, circles of confusion, apertures, shutters, composition, lighting and all that stuff, you'll still be stuck at beginner for the rest of your life. You'll still be shooting hundreds of photos and picking out one or two that you like. You will never know what makes a photo good and bad. Remember that NOTHING changes about physics when you use a digital camera. Optics is optics. The only difference is how you get presented the end result - if you can get the effect you want on one camera, you can get the same results doing the same adjustment on the other camera. Personally, I have an unusual set up. I have a chemical dark room and a digital dark room. I still shoot 35mm, and develop them myself, but never have prints made. I scan them all in, archive them, and the good ones, I print myself. I believe I've taken the best of both worlds, but the set up cost is probably beyond the reach of most people (Since I work in the computing industry, I can get computing equipment extremely cheaply and also depreciate them on tax, so it brought a $10,000 set up within my reach)
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Jaymes R. Stuart |
This past Christmas two of my young nieces (20-ish) got Automatic Idiot-proof Guaranteed-Great-Pictures film SLR cameras (not from me). Proudly and with great reverence they showed me the terrific 28-80 zoom lenses, the nifty camera bags and straps, the complimentary rolls of film. But when I asked them to take a few shots of the family festivities, they both said -- oh, it's too complicated. We're going to take courses at the local college! So I handed them my unimpressive, toylike Oly C3000, showed them where the bang button was, and let them loose. An hour later they had filled two 64MB cards with images. We plugged the camera into the family TV and went through all 100 pics. The screen displayed aperture, shutter speed and ISO. We were all knocked out by the pics...fresh, silly, and uninhibited by "this better be The Shot...it's costing a fortune in processing!" As much as the age and mood of the participants would allow, we chatted about what was good and not-so-good about the pictures. They looked and they learned. The point? They made 100 images which they would never have made with their vaunted SLR's. They saw what they made immediately, and they were able to see what they did to make the pictures what they were. They were not intimidated by the Aura of Respect commanded by the Mighty Film Camera. Digital was cool, humble and operated on their level, and, perhaps most important, at their attention span. My humble submission is this: digital gets *more people* making *more images* and *teaches them more about photography quicker*, than film. Check out the shot. Jaymes
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