Comments on: Photo Project: Buying an SLR

By: kyussmondo

kyussmondo — Wed, 30 Mar 2011 15:50:03 +0000

Back in October I treated myself to a Nikon D5000. I’ve learned so much by just getting free lessons off the web. Reading the manual helps as well. Once you understand what you are trying to achieve and how to change the settings in the camera then it is just a case of practice.

Try shooting in RAW. You can get good JPEGs out of the camera but I much prefer playing with each image for 2-3 minutes really making my images pop with loads of colour and contrast. I personally use Adobe Lightroom 3.

The 18-55 lenses is good to get started, although I think a super-wide angle like the Sigma 10-20 is a good lens to have with landscapes. If you take pictures of wildlife it is also good to have the telephoto. You could get 70-300mm although personally I would get the 28-300mm. It is a lot of lenses and a lot of money however it can take the place of 2 or 3 lenses. Not only that it is a full-frame lens so if you do decide to get a D3 or D700 in the future then this lens will be still good. The only down size is that it is not a F2.8 lenses meaning it you want to shoot concerts or sports at night then this lens wouldn’t cut it.

I agree. Don’t go out and buy over expensive bodies. The D300 for example is a nice camera but uses exactly the same sensor as the D5000 which is 2-3x cheaper. The D300 is just made out of metal which is good for a pro who uses their camera all day every day, but for most people the plastic body is more than strong enough. Then work your way up to full-frame like the D700 or D3S which are about £1,700 and £3,500 respectively. Full-frame is a big leap, the larger sensors give much more quality and much wider dynamic range and allow you to shoot handheld in low light without losing quality. The key though first and foremost is invest money in lenses.

For me a good place to start is the Nikon D3100 which will set you back about £450 with the 18-55mm which is more than enough for most people. Around £900 you can get the D7000 which is another amazing camera. Once you get up to that kind of money though of £1000 then you should start asking yourself whether you should just stump up another £500-£600 and go full-frame and get the Nikon D700 or Canon 5D Mark II. However once you start getting full-frame bodies then you have to start buying full-frame lenses. I mean the Nikon 70-200mm VR II is £1,500, the 24-70 is £1,200 and the 14-24 is £1,200, so £5,500 later, add in tripods, filters, software then you are talking well in excess of £6,000. But if you are a pro or you have that kind of money to throw around then go for it and you will not be disappointed. I can only dream…!

By: John Hesp

John Hesp — Sun, 31 Aug 2008 16:29:23 +0000

Another DSLR newbie here. It was something I had been considering for a while, and occasionally chatted to a pro acquintance about. In early ’07 he started raving about a lens he’d just got, and which he thought would suit me – the Nikon VR18-200. The RRP of the lens alone was more than I wanted to pay for the whole camera. His advice was to get the lens and the cheapest body – the D40. “The lens should last tens years if you look after it, but you might want to upgrade bodies several times in ten years”. In the end I managed to get lens and body for less than the RRP of the lens.

The point of this rambling tale is that his advice was to get the lens you want and then find a suitable body to match. That advice worked very well for me – I can’t imagine that there is as big a difference between bodies as there are between lenses. But on the other hand you do have to know what you want from a lens to go this route, something I’d decided on whilst using point & shoot cameras.

By: Ian

Ian — Sun, 31 Aug 2008 10:11:01 +0000

Nice write-up Andy. I agree that for me best feeling cameras in the hand are the Nikons; I’ve owned several over the years and can highly recommend them. For the last few months though I’ve been using a Canon G9 (a compact), I find it gives me everything I want for about 95% of the shots I take; low distortion lens with almost no CA right across the range, plenty of MP for those poster shots you mentioned, fully manual controls (albeit they’re a little more fiddly than an SLR esp. when wearing gloves) all in a far more compact and lightweight package than an SLR. For walking I find it ideal. Of course I’d like it to be a few hundred grams lighter (no suprises there!) but I carry it on the shoulder strap of the rucksack for easy access, something I missed with a SLR despite trying all kinds of carry system, and I carry a mini tripod in a front jacket pocket – an ultrapod II – for taking shots and video without removing the rucksack. Low light performance is, as you’d expect with a compact, not brilliant; I keep it below ISO 400 for reasonable quality. For home / indoor shots though a bounced 580EXII stops that being a problem.
I just wanted to let people know that if you want creative photography there are more options available now than just DSLRs. DSLRs might be faster, bigger and better in low light, but like with megapixels if you don’t need them than what’s the point. Cheers Andy, keep up the great blogging!
Ian

By: Martin Rye

Martin Rye — Sun, 31 Aug 2008 00:03:31 +0000

I got the D40X – compact and I’M just getting my head around using it. Andy’s teaching is going to help big time.

By: paul

paul — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 17:52:15 +0000

How it handle/felt

Is what lead me to buy my NIkon D50, I had a play with the Canon 350D at the time, but the Nikon just felt right, even though I was upgrading from a Canon G6.