Cameras

[MarkDennehy]

I borrowed a workmates Canon 450D this evening (there's a nice bit of grain in the ash I'm making into spars and I wanted a nice photo to show my sister, who the project is for, and the cameraphone just wasn't getting a clean image).
Holy carp.
I used to use a pentax SLR 30 years ago and had a nice digital camera myself about a decade ago, but things like the DSLRs were way out of my price range. Secondhand today, those cameras are now nice and cheap (£50 for a DLSR is cheap, come on, that's cheaper than the cheapest smartphone I own by almost a tenner), so I was thinking of buying one (hey, if you have kids, cameras are a wife-friendly purchase).
One photo with the Canon and I went off and bought one (not a Canon, a Nikon D70, but you get the idea).

Cameraphone:

Canon:

I mean, you know academically it's gonna be better but still. Wow.

 

[lurker]

Nikon is not a bad choice.
Cannon are an excellent photocopier manufacturer.

2nd hand cameras are a steal because the tackle tarts have to have the latest wizz bang

I have a camera/lens combo (Olympus) that was aimed at pros, 10 years ago it would have set you back a good £4K
I paid £300 about 4 years ago
I guess its worth quite a bit less now
The strange thing is, it still takes remarkably good photos well beyond my capability.

 

[Jacob]

Yep - thanks to gear freaks yesterdays top quality stuff is often very cheap. Mines a Canon 450d - £50 on ebay. You need to check the shutter count if you can.
My daughter (photographer) uses my first ever camera; Pentax S1a bought 52 years ago and cost £100 ish then!

 

[Racers]

I am a Nikon user and can recommend the free Nikon Capture NX-D editing software, its free and does most things that I need to do with a photo.

http://imaging.nikon.com/lineup/microsi ... /download/

Shoot in RAW not jpeg to get the benefit of Capture NX-D.

Pete

 

[transatlantic]

I have no doubt that the Camera phone won't be as good, but at least make it a fair test by taking the same shot!

 

[woodpig]

:twisted:

I have no doubt that the Camera phone won't be as good, but at least make it a fair test by taking the same shot!

My thoughts exactly!

I use a DSLR but I'm still surprised how good the pictures are from my phone sometimes.

 

[bugbear]

All the photos I post here are taken with a compact, P&S camera, not a DSLR.

BugBear

 

[MarkDennehy]

I have no doubt that the Camera phone won't be as good, but at least make it a fair test by taking the same shot!

I did, it was worse
Same photo, same time, same location (slightly different framing because of moving the camera to get the same object in frame, the canon had to be moved back a bit), no post-processing other than scaling the image down to 1200x800:

Cameraphone:

Canon 450D:

Honestly, I'm so impressed by it, I'm seriously considering comparing it to the D70 when the D70 arrives and possibly returning the D70 and buying my workmate's 450D off him as he's looking to sell it. I just need to find another workmate with an F-type nikon lens I can borrow for a day first

 

[Eric The Viking]

2nd hand cameras are a steal because the tackle tarts have to have the latest wizz bang.

You do have to exercise a bit of caution. I have a Canon 30D that used to be lovely. Sadly about four years ago it started to fail with a lot of noise in the blacks (speckles and later coloured streaks). No clever post-processing would fix this, and it was temperature sensitive (they have to make the things in black - why, oh why???).

Yesterday I heard my sister-in-law's fixed-lens SLR camera has acquired a very similar fault. A repair is probably a lot more than they're worth.

And lenses, nowadays being jam-packed with complex electro-mechanics, also fail often. There's a brisk trade on eBay in older "chemical camera" lenses that can work on modern cameras, as they're often better optical quality (and certainly more reliable).

I used to buy most of my camera kit secondhand - my best "chemical" bits were obtained that way. Nowadays I am very careful, but still make mistakes. For example, I have a 24-105mm Canon zoom of a new lightweight design, bought new. Honestly it's not very good optically. I can get good results with it, but it needs to be made to work - certainly not point+click. The worst thing is that the zoom doesn't track (the back-focus isn't consistent across the zoom range). This makes it almost unusable for video work, and yes, you can easily get snaps out of focus too.

My strong advice, after four decades of photography, is to check thoroughly anything secondhand, or be prepared to write off bad buys (e.g. from eBay). It's easy to check cameras and lenses - take your own card, and photograph some newsprint or your own test chart. Shutters still go weird, flash contacts fail, and so on. Cameras are not as strongly (reliably) made as they used to be - it's features over quality all the way now, unless you buy really expensive professional stuff.

That's not to say you can't get good results, but I think you have to exercise more caution than ever before as it's harder now to find faults as they're so much more complex.

I recommend having a look at Lensrentals' blog http://www.lensrentals.com/blog. They use huge quantities of kit, and used to publish a failure data spreadsheet annually (to the chagrin of some big-name manufacturers!). The owner, Roger Cicala, is highly respected, both as a technical expert and a fine photographer in his own right. And he has some clout: not many people place orders for top lenses 100 at a time! I've rented from them whilst in the US too, and the lens I used was nominally cheaper, but turned out to be better quality than the equivalent one I have here. I don't know of an equivalent business here*, but if such exists, it's a good way of finding out the good and bad points of kit before buying it.

Cheers,

E.

*It's not just a rental company - those exist here, of course - but Lensrentals are obsessive about quality and reliability.

 

[Racers]

I would stick with Nikon as the free editing software saves you from buying or paying monthly for Photoshop etc.

Pete

 

[RogerP]

I would stick with Nikon as the free editing software saves you from buying or paying monthly for Photoshop etc.

Pete

Gimp is free and just as powerful as PS

 

[MarkDennehy]

I normally just use Gimp for mucking about with images Pete (I haven't run windows in a very long time and photoshop is just massively overspecc'd for my needs).

 

[MarkDennehy]

Gimp is ... just as powerful as PS

Er, no it's not But it *is* good enough for 99% of people and I'm not in the 1%

 

[Eric The Viking]

I think he means "GIMP is just as productive as Photoshop", a sentiment I'd agree with!

E.
(my workflow: Aftershot--> GIMP--> Hugin (usually)--> Garden Gnome (usually) -> GIMP (again)--> done!).

 

[bugbear]

(my workflow: Aftershot--> GIMP--> Hugin (usually)--> Garden Gnome (usually) -> GIMP (again)--> done!).

That sounds pretty interesting.

BugBear

 

[Racers]

I do have Full Adobe CC (free from work) but rarely use it N-XD does most things I need.

Pete

 

[Racers]

Oops



Pete

 

[lurker]

2nd hand cameras are a steal because the tackle tarts have to have the latest wizz bang.

You do have to exercise a bit of caution. I have a Canon 30D that used to be lovely. Sadly about four years ago it started to fail with a lot of noise in the blacks (speckles and later coloured streaks).

As i mentioned, I have a proper camera (olympus) :twisted: so its unlikely.
I have never ever had problems with dust on my sensors either (for a very good technical reason).

 

[MIGNAL]

I don't have a mobile phone. A friend called the other day and just out of curiosity I got him to take a picture of a few objects, still life type. I was astonished at the quality of the pictures. What was more surprising was that he said it was a 3 year old smart phone, although at the time it was towards the high end. It may have been a Samsung, can't remember. We did take them outdoors, so I guess the amount of light was favourable.

 

[woodpig]

I think most camera makers have had their own software but Adobe LightRoom is probably more popular than any of them.