which digital SLR camera?

Hi peeps,

I've been looking at upgrading my Fuji Finepix 4900Z for quite some time & have finally decided that I have to upgrade.

I'm not a professional photographer, but do understand the basics & occasionally get some rather good shots.

I'm currently looking at getting the Canon EOS 350D, but want to know which lenses etc I might need. Sometimes I'd be doing photos at airshows (so a good zoom, with a sharp image quality), although most will be scenary or group / portait photos.

anyone got any comments / suggestions / places to buy etc

Cheers

 

well, some basic info, personally i would stick to either a canon (350D is the way to go tbh, i should have mine by the end of the week...hopefully ) or a Nikon, but what it comes down to is what feels more comfortable to use by yourself or whoever will be using it...easiest way to find out is just walk to your local jessop's or LCE and just try them both out...

lens wise, if you do end up going for the canon rember that any lens you see advertised (eg 80-200mm) rember to multiply the zoom on these by roughly 1.5 to get the actual zoom (eg the above lense on a 350D will be a 120-300mm lens).

with lenses obviously the more you pay the better the quality, but with canon lenses even the basic one that comes with the 350D is pretty good...personally i am going to try and see if I can replace the standard 18-55mm with a 17-85mm (also comes with Image-Stabiliser) but its quite an increase in price...i will consider getting a proper zoom lens (ie 80-200) but seeing as I already own a 28-105 I might not bother.

the one lens that I would definitly reccomend to get is a standard 50mm lens, as you can pick them up quite cheaply new, and even cheaper secondhand, and is great for getting very sharp photos and they tend to be quite fast too

I personally would reccomend sevendayshop for getting an idea of a price you are looking at. They also sometimes have camera's sent back, if faulty or unwanted, which are then sent back to Canon UK for a service, and come back with the full Canon warranty but are sold at cheaper prices

...anyway, just some food for thought...sorry I can't help you much with the other brands, but I have only been looking at Canon due to owning 4 other Canon models

 

Cheers for the info.

I was looking at ebuyer, but the 7dayshop looks quite good especially for accesories. They even have the ESO 20D for £880! (ok, so no lenses, but it's normally over £1000)!

The only downside is that these lenses are going to be bloomin' expensive. Well it's the same for any SLR camera, I suppose. Never mind - it's only money

 

well, you could always stick with the standard lens kit model till you save up more money and then buy a nice zoom lens and a 50mm

 

How bizarre I was actually looking at buying a 350D today too!

Been reading the reviews on it and it looks nigh on perfect for me.

Stevesdigicams review (link) is an excellent one.

 

I think this is the first time Canon got it spot on. As this camera is aimed at the hobbyist (if thats even a wordE) or enthuisiast, who wants to take the jump to a *real* digital camera (dSLR) without paying silly amounts of money...sure, if I had the money I would rather own the 20D, but then you are talking about a semi-pro camera that would only make sense if you used it on a daily basis and it would be used to recover the initial investment!

edit: for review/reviews check dpreview! also handy if you want to compare two or more cameras!

 

They've definatly got it very right, there isnt many things I'd spend £600+ on and this is so close to being one. Im just board of the inflexibility of a point-and-shoot digital camera, and will prob be able to borrow (maybe even have) my grandads lenses as he doesnt use his camera much anymore...

Sadly it looks like ill have to wait a few months as I got a holiday to pay for Id forgot about. *doh*

 

holiday and *doh* in the same sentence? surely not ...holiday are good things!

..especially if they are holidays in the states and you get to buy a new camera, namely 350D...

what lenses does your grandad own that he might let you have?

 

I read the review on dpreview & was certainly pretty impressed. It doesn't seem too far off the 20D (just a few features missing, but quality is almost identical).

I guess I just wanted to be sure that this would be the right camera for that sort of money. It's not often I'd spend near on £600 for a camera & then something similar on various lenses! (even my computer hasn't had that much spent on it in the last few years)! I wasn't sure if there was an Olympus or Nikon or even another canon that would be more capable.

Cheers for the advice Guys.

 

no worries! I would still say its worth checking with the actual camera in a shop such as jessop's etc, as it has happened that someone might not like the actual way the camera is laid out or the way its designed, but if you like that about the 350D then your set!

...ill let you know in a couple weeks time when I get back what I think of it after owning it for a bit...

 

Cool, I'd like to hear any feedback.

Just thought I'd post some of the pics I took over the weekend on the Fuji, in case anyones interested.

http://www.craigey.dsl.pipex.com/plane1.jpg

http://www.craigey.dsl.pipex.com/plane2.jpg

http://www.craigey.dsl.pipex.com/plane3.jpg

http://www.craigey.dsl.pipex.com/plane4.jpg

http://www.craigey.dsl.pipex.com/plane5.jpg

(most of the grain was from the Jpg compression, these are some of the better images).

 

nice...not much of a plane fan tbh, but i really like no.4

...just you wait though till you have a camera with a real lens

 

I got my 350D a couple of weeks ago and have been incredibly impressed so far. At the moment I'm still using the 18-55mm kit lens (though I have my eye on either the 17-85mm IS EF-S or maybe even a macro lens) and whilst I have no doubt that the camera is capable of significantly better images, it can already produce some very nice pictures. The main problem I find with the kit lens is not so much the quality, but the relatively small range of focal lengths I am currently confined to - there have been quite a few occasions when I have wished I had longer focal lengths available to me, and even a few where a wider angle lens would have been handy. That said, within the confines of my current lens, I haven't found anything that the camera doesn't do well – low light, sports (well, if you count ultimate frisbee and skateboarding as sports) landscapes and portraits are all handled beautifully once you have played around and found the most suitable settings. All in all, the 350D is highly recommended.

 

thats good to hear!

got any sample shots for us to look at?

 

I'll select a few of the better ones and upload them tomorrow sometime - I'll post the links when I do.

 

Well, the Digital Rebel XT is a pretty bullet-proof camera, but I really do like my Nikon. Depending on what you get, you'll want some varying lenses, because the 18-55mm lense just don't really do what you want them to do, especially if you're taking pictures of stuff that's far away, like planes in the air.
Canon Rebel XT:
28-200mm Lens
35mm Wide Angle
Nikon D70s:
28-200mm Lens
35mm Wide Angle

The Nikon lenses are almost always cheaper and in my opinion, they have better features and loads more scene modes.

 

i have a canon 300d kit for sale for $650

 

hi dude,
love those pics! have you got this weeks issue of amateur photographer? they have a digital SLR special, worth a read.

personally speaking, i would get jessops to do a price match. its always nice to have a shop to go back to in case of issues. oh and avoid photo optix!

as for lenses, check this site http://photodo.com/nav/prodindex.html
they show you mtf graphs for lenses which essentially show resolution, contrast and light drop off on a lens. to make it nice and easy, they give an overall lens quality figure! when you look at this, you will see that the 50mm 1.8 (which is cannons cheapest) is also a very sharp lens! great for portraits.

the other thing to remember about lenses is that the more you ask it to do, the worse the quality. sigma/tokina/tameron 28-200/28-300 are plain rubbish. they save you changing lenses but they have slow focusing, a slow aperture so its harder to get a fast shutter speed to avoid shakes and lots of distortion. canon 28-200 isnt much better but costs about 380!!!

if it was my 380, and i wanted a long lens, i would consider a 2nd hand canon 70-200 L f4.
pros, great image quality, well built, fast silent auto focus. its white and makes you look like a pro! (not the type that hang around street corners!
cons, as its f4, it dosent allow as much light as a f2.8 so you get slower shutter speeds.

or a sigma 70-200 f2.8
pros, great image quality, fast focusing. well built. as its a F2.8, you can use a sigma 2x extender and it becomes a 140-400 f5.6 and with the 350d 1.6 magnification, it becomes a 224-640!
cons, ummm cant think of any!

 

shambla
Thanks for the info, would love to see the pics, when you've got time to post them.

padrejones2001
Thanks for the links. The graphs make comparisons a lot easier & any lens advice is always apreciated!

fartonmyyear
Sorry, I'm only looking at the 350D at the moment, but thanks for the offer.

slaw
Thanks for the link.

As silly as it sounds, being an amateur photographer, I've never actually read the magazine amateur photographer! I tink in this case I might make an exception & start buying it!

I didn't know that Jessops would price match internet stores. If they will then your right it might certainly be the way too go. I seem to spend a fair bit of time / money there anyway!

I hadn't really thought about 3rd party lenses, but if it'll save me a bundle, without loosing too much in the way of quality, then I'm all for it.

 

OK, I have uploaded a selection of photos that I have taken with my 350D over the last couple of weeks, which can be found here (assuming the link works correctly):
http://www.streamload.com/Shambla/EL/OOZ6FQ7JME/350D
I have tried to include photos with a relatively wide range of subject matter - unfortunately I couldn't find any low-light shots, as the only ones I have taken were test shots of nothing in particular and I must have deleted them. I have had to resize the images from their original resolution of 3456 x 2304 to 1600 x 1066 to avoid using up too much of my bandwidth - if you want a particular image at its original resolution just let me know. Most of the images aren't anything special - I certainly don't view myself as a particularly competent photographer, but then that's to be expected as it's only relatively recently that I have started to get really interested in it. Aside from the first few taken in Rome, they are mostly just me and my mates messing about in the sunshine we've had over the last week or so.
The settings used for each photo are viewable using any image viewer which can read the EXIF data embedded in each image – irfanview with the EXIF plug-in (available from the home page) for example. One final thing to bear in mind is that a couple of days ago I noticed that the default parameters (e.g brightness and contrast) the 350D uses when creating the JPG files from the camera’s sensor output boost the brightness, contrast, saturation and sharpness to mid-high. Since then, I have set the camera to completely neutral parameter settings and think that this produces more natural looking images, which I personally prefer. All the uploaded images were taken before this discovery, and therefore use the default parameter settings. If anybody has any other questions about either the pictures or the 350D just let me know.

Also I just had a couple of things to add to Slaw’s comments about lenses:

I would certainly agree that you cannot expect a lens to do everything well, particularly at the cheaper end of the spectrum - good quality lenses are expensive to make, regardless of their complexity (take a look at the prices of Canon’s L series prime lenses for example) and when you factor in a wide-range of focal lengths and systems like Canon’s image stabilisation and USM systems, the prices can get incredibly high. If you can get hold of a 70-200 L f4 for a reasonable price secondhand I am sure you would be very impressed (there are a load of reviews here), but I think you would still pay a fair amount. Also bear in mind that the 350D uses a reduced size sensor relative to 35mm film (as do the 20D and the 300D) and as a result the effective focal length of any lens you use is actually approximately 1.6X the physical focal length (as Slaw mentiioned) - this means the effective focal length of the 70-200mm would be about 112-320mm. I guess you could view this as either a good or bad thing, depending on what your needs are. It would certainly be handy for doing photos at airshows (as you mentioned in your first post), wildlife photography or probably even portraits. However, I would imagine that the minimum effective focal length of 112 is significantly too long for the lens to be useful for either landscape or group photography in most situations. If this forms the majority of your usage, you may well be much better off investing in a higher quality but more direct replacement for the kit lens - personally I am very interested in the 17-85mm EF-S lense (here), which also has Canon's image stabilisation system.