MarkBarbieri
Semi-retired
- Joined
- Aug 20, 2006
- Messages
- 6,172
My sister is thinking about getting a DSLR. She's been shooting with cheap p&s cameras and an old Pentax K1000. I talked to her briefly about it last night and promised some additional advice via e-mail. I thought I'd share my advice here. If you see anything wrong, anything you think I should have included, or just want to comment, feel free.
Here is some advice about setting into the DSLR world.
I don’t know much about lower end Nikon DSLRs, so if you go that route, you’ll want body selection advice from someone else.
For Canon, there are three cameras in their Rebel line. That’s their line of entry level DSLR cameras. Above that is the 50D and 7D, but I would recommend against either of those as a starter DSLR. They are better cameras, but it is difficult for most people to justify the extra expense.
The current Rebels are the T1i (500D), XSi (450D), and XS (1000D). At Amazon, they are priced at $699, $570, and $458 respectively. They all come with the same 18-55mm lens. The T1i performs better in low light. If you remember buying different speed films (100, 200, 400, etc), you’ll see the same concept in DSLRs called ISO. The T1i can shoot with equivalent of 100 to 3200 speed film. The XSi and XS range from 100 to 1600.
Another advantage of the T1i is that it shoots video. Shooting video with a still camera is awkward. It’s very hard to keep things in focus. The onboard microphone picks up lots of camera noise. The resulting video is relatively hard to edit. Still, it can be handy to have a video camera with you when the need arises. That isn’t to say that you can’t shoot some amazing looking video with a camera like this. It’s just very, very hard to do.
The LCD on the back of the T1i and the XSi are the same size. The XS has a slightly smaller LCD. The T1i has a much higher resolution LCD, but I wouldn’t put too much value in that. With no video capability on the others, you aren’t likely to need to extra resolution all that much.
Both the T1i and XSi can shoot about 3.5 pictures per second in burst mode. The XS is a bit slower at 3 pictures per second.
All three cameras can use a wired remote shutter release. The T1i and XSi support an inexpensive wireless remote shutter release.
The autofocus on the XS is less capable that the autofocus on the other two. While you may be planning to use manual focus, you’ll quickly find that less attractive than you think. First, autofocus lenses are hard to manual focus precisely than were manual focus lenses. Second, the viewfinder doesn’t have a split prism, so it is harder to tell when you are in focus.
So which should you get? If you want video capability, the choice is obviously the T1i. If you don’t want video, then you have to ask yourself whether they incremental improvements are worth the extra $112. I certainly wouldn’t make the choice based on the small resolution difference.
One thing that is very different from what you are used to is the sensor size. These cameras have sensors that are about 60% of the size of a piece of 35mm film. Imagine if you cut out the center 60% of all of your negatives and then enlarged them. The effect is the same. That means that your lenses seem more zoomed in (a 50mm lens on one of these cameras has the same field of view as an 80mm lens on a film camera). You don’t have quite the same control over depth of field (the ability to make things that are behind your subject blurry), but it’s close. You can get DSLRs that have sensors as large as 35mm film (called “full frame”), but they start at over $2,000.
Because the film is smaller, you can use smaller lenses. Canon calls their lenses EF-S when they are designed to work with their non-full frame cameras. Nikon calls theirs DX. You can still use full sized lenses on these cameras, but the EF-S lenses tend to be smaller, lighter, and cheaper.
Buying a camera is just part of the equation. You’ll also need to buy a bunch of other stuff to make it all work for you. You’ll need memory cards. You’ll probably want additional lenses, although most people accumulate these over time. You’ll also want an external flash. You might want a printer, but I doubt it. You’ll also want software for processing your pictures. I’ll cover all of these topics below.
You need memory cards. Without a memory card, the camera has no place to store the image. How much memory you need depends on whether you shoot RAW or JPG (I’ll cover that later), how many shots you take, and how long you go between dumping your pictures to your computer. In the early days of digital cameras, a lot of effort was spent getting the right amount of memory without buying too much because it was expensive. Now days memory is so cheap that you don’t need to worry about the cost much. I recommend that you buy a 8gb CF card to start with. They cost about $30. One 8gb card can hold a little over 2,000 jpg pictures or about 600 RAW pictures.
Almost all entry level DSLRs can be bought with an inexpensive kit lens. These are all zoom lenses. They usually zoom from 18mm to 55mm. In film terms, that would be like having a 28mm to 90mm zoom. It covers everything from moderately wide angle to slightly zoomed in. If you recall, 50mm was your standard lens, which is in the middle of this range.
As a consumer level zoom, these kit lenses don’t have very wide apertures. That means that you can’t make the background all that blurry. You might want to supplement with a prime (non-zoom lens). Canon makes a very inexpensive 50mm f/1.8 prime. It sells for about $100. Remember, though, on a DSLR, that will have the field of view of an 80mm film camera. I’ve got one that I rarely use. You are welcome to take it out on an extended loan.
If you want something that matches your old 50mm prime, you’ll need a 30mm prime. Canon makes a 35mm f/2 for $320. Sigma (a company that makes lenses of other camera brands) makes a 30mm f/1.4 for $440.
If you want a longer zoom, Canon makes a 55-250mm zoom that matches well with the kit lens. It sells for about $250.
I’ve got an ever growing collection of lenses that you can borrow.
All of the cameras I mentioned above come with a built in flash. The flash on the camera is very close to being useless. If you absolutely must shoot something and it is too dark to do so otherwise, the flash can be useful. It’s also handy for taking pictures of people that you don’t like because it makes everyone look ugly. The problem is that it is small (small lights make for hard shadows), very close the lens (which causes problems with red-eye and unflattering, flat light), and fairly low power (limiting its use as a fill-in flash). They don’t put them on their more expensive cameras because people buying more expensive cameras generally know never to use the built in flash.
That’s not to say that all flash is bad, just the flashes built into the cameras. If you want to take flash pictures, you’ll want an add-on flash. These can be bounced against walls and ceilings, creating a much larger light. You can also use them with attachments that make them look larger. I have several flashes for when I want to use a multi-flash setup. If you’d like, you can borrow one of them to get a better sense for if you want a flash.
A lot of new photographers rush out and buy a photo printer. I advise against it. When you add up the cost of good photo paper and ink, you’ll find that it is cheaper to have someone else do your printing. This is almost always true unless you make lots of really big prints. I suggest that you try a few local printers and a few online printers and find someone that does a good job for a good price.
One of the fun thing about having digital images is that you have many more display options. You can get digital photo frames. They are like small picture frames that show a continuous slideshow of pictures. You can make your own books on sites like Blurb. The quality is very good the prices aren’t bad at all. You can display your pictures on your computer as a screensaver. You can display them on your TV. You can share them with friends online.
A big decision that you have to make as a digital photographer is whether you want to shoot in RAW or in JPG. A RAW file is roughly what the camera originally captures. It then processes it (sharpening, adjusting the saturation and contrast, reducing noise) and creates a JPG file. The JPG file is what you display on your computer or send to your printer. It’s a bit like RAW is your negative and JPG is your print. If you plan to do much processing, you are better off shooting RAW. You can make more adjustments to a RAW file than you can to a JPG file.
There are significant downsides to shooting RAW. The files are bigger, so you only get one fourth as many pictures on a memory card. They take more space to back up. You have to process them before you can look at them.
You camera’s buffer can hold fewer RAW files than JPG files. When you start continuously shooting, your camera starts to fill its internal memory faster than it can write pictures to your memory card. Once it’s internal memory is full, you have to wait for it to write the pictures to the memory card. You suddenly go from shooting 3.5 pictures per second to about one picture ever second or two. For comparisons, the T1i can shoot 170 jpg pictures continuously before it has to wait on your memory card. The XSi can shoot 53. The XS, because it has smaller files and shoots slower, can shoot continuously. Honestly, you’ll probably never shoot 53 continuous shots. That’s shooting 3.5 shots per second for 15 seconds. So they can all effectively shoot an unlimited number of JPG pictures in a burst. With RAW, it is a different story. The T1i can shoot 9, the XSi 6, and the XS 5. With the XS, shooting RAW works at only 1.5 shots per second instead of 3 shots per second. It’s pretty easy to hit those limits when you are shooting Allyson on stage.
You can easily switch from RAW shooting to JPG shooting. So you can do your artsy shooting in RAW and your casual shooting and heavy burst shooting in JPG.
The camera comes with the software that you need to convert from RAW to JPG. The software isn’t the best, but it gets the job done. If you shoot a lot and want to do some post processing, I recommend a product called Adobe Lightroom. As a teacher (or Allyson as a student), you can get an educational license (the software is the same) for $99. I think the normal price is $300.
Back in the film days, having a darkroom was a pretty big commitment. You had to deal with weird chemicals. You needed special equipment. You need a dark place to work. In the digital world, your computer is your darkroom. All you need is software.
Photo processing software ranges from free (Picasa, Gimp), to not very expensive (Photoshop Elements, Paint Shop Pro), to very expensive (Photoshop). Start with free or cheap and only move up when you see a need that justifies the higher expense.
In film days, it was easy to have a backup of your pictures. You just kept your negatives. With digital shooting, you need a backup strategy. If you just copy the pictures to your hard drive, you’ll eventually lose them when your drive inevitably crashes. My recommendation for a backup strategy is to make is simple enough that you’ll do it and to use redundancy. Don’t put all of your eggs in one basket. You don’t want a house fire to destroy all of your pictures. Some strategies include storing the pictures on your computer and on the Internet, backup up to an external drive that you keep at your office, or burning to DVDs that you store at the office.
As you accumulate pictures, you’ll probably want to put them online. There are several photo hosting services. There are several free, ad-based photo hosting sites like Photobucket. I don’t like them, but them I’m kind of photo snobby. I think that the best photo hosting site is Smugmug. It’s about $50/year. Zenfolio is also popular. Flickr is a great online photo sharing site, but it seems to be more geared towards sharing and discussing current photos rather than being a place to store your photo collection. One cool thing about most photo hosting sites is that they make it easy to order prints.
Well, that’s probably more than you want to know about the DSLR world. Feel free to ask any questions. I’ve been threatening to host a couple of intro photography classes for the neighbors. One of them will be focused on DSLRs and how to use them. If I get around to scheduling them, I’ll let you know.
Mark
I imagine that, given the number of Pentax fans here, that I'll take some flack for not recommending the Pentax series of DSLRs. I did not do so for a variety or reasons. The main one is that I have a ton of Canon gear and live a few miles away. It makes a lot of sense for her to buy a compatible system. She has only a 50mm manual focus prime and an antiquated zoom for her Pentax system, so she won't be leaving much equipment behind.
Here is some advice about setting into the DSLR world.
I don’t know much about lower end Nikon DSLRs, so if you go that route, you’ll want body selection advice from someone else.
For Canon, there are three cameras in their Rebel line. That’s their line of entry level DSLR cameras. Above that is the 50D and 7D, but I would recommend against either of those as a starter DSLR. They are better cameras, but it is difficult for most people to justify the extra expense.
The current Rebels are the T1i (500D), XSi (450D), and XS (1000D). At Amazon, they are priced at $699, $570, and $458 respectively. They all come with the same 18-55mm lens. The T1i performs better in low light. If you remember buying different speed films (100, 200, 400, etc), you’ll see the same concept in DSLRs called ISO. The T1i can shoot with equivalent of 100 to 3200 speed film. The XSi and XS range from 100 to 1600.
Another advantage of the T1i is that it shoots video. Shooting video with a still camera is awkward. It’s very hard to keep things in focus. The onboard microphone picks up lots of camera noise. The resulting video is relatively hard to edit. Still, it can be handy to have a video camera with you when the need arises. That isn’t to say that you can’t shoot some amazing looking video with a camera like this. It’s just very, very hard to do.
The LCD on the back of the T1i and the XSi are the same size. The XS has a slightly smaller LCD. The T1i has a much higher resolution LCD, but I wouldn’t put too much value in that. With no video capability on the others, you aren’t likely to need to extra resolution all that much.
Both the T1i and XSi can shoot about 3.5 pictures per second in burst mode. The XS is a bit slower at 3 pictures per second.
All three cameras can use a wired remote shutter release. The T1i and XSi support an inexpensive wireless remote shutter release.
The autofocus on the XS is less capable that the autofocus on the other two. While you may be planning to use manual focus, you’ll quickly find that less attractive than you think. First, autofocus lenses are hard to manual focus precisely than were manual focus lenses. Second, the viewfinder doesn’t have a split prism, so it is harder to tell when you are in focus.
So which should you get? If you want video capability, the choice is obviously the T1i. If you don’t want video, then you have to ask yourself whether they incremental improvements are worth the extra $112. I certainly wouldn’t make the choice based on the small resolution difference.
One thing that is very different from what you are used to is the sensor size. These cameras have sensors that are about 60% of the size of a piece of 35mm film. Imagine if you cut out the center 60% of all of your negatives and then enlarged them. The effect is the same. That means that your lenses seem more zoomed in (a 50mm lens on one of these cameras has the same field of view as an 80mm lens on a film camera). You don’t have quite the same control over depth of field (the ability to make things that are behind your subject blurry), but it’s close. You can get DSLRs that have sensors as large as 35mm film (called “full frame”), but they start at over $2,000.
Because the film is smaller, you can use smaller lenses. Canon calls their lenses EF-S when they are designed to work with their non-full frame cameras. Nikon calls theirs DX. You can still use full sized lenses on these cameras, but the EF-S lenses tend to be smaller, lighter, and cheaper.
Buying a camera is just part of the equation. You’ll also need to buy a bunch of other stuff to make it all work for you. You’ll need memory cards. You’ll probably want additional lenses, although most people accumulate these over time. You’ll also want an external flash. You might want a printer, but I doubt it. You’ll also want software for processing your pictures. I’ll cover all of these topics below.
You need memory cards. Without a memory card, the camera has no place to store the image. How much memory you need depends on whether you shoot RAW or JPG (I’ll cover that later), how many shots you take, and how long you go between dumping your pictures to your computer. In the early days of digital cameras, a lot of effort was spent getting the right amount of memory without buying too much because it was expensive. Now days memory is so cheap that you don’t need to worry about the cost much. I recommend that you buy a 8gb CF card to start with. They cost about $30. One 8gb card can hold a little over 2,000 jpg pictures or about 600 RAW pictures.
Almost all entry level DSLRs can be bought with an inexpensive kit lens. These are all zoom lenses. They usually zoom from 18mm to 55mm. In film terms, that would be like having a 28mm to 90mm zoom. It covers everything from moderately wide angle to slightly zoomed in. If you recall, 50mm was your standard lens, which is in the middle of this range.
As a consumer level zoom, these kit lenses don’t have very wide apertures. That means that you can’t make the background all that blurry. You might want to supplement with a prime (non-zoom lens). Canon makes a very inexpensive 50mm f/1.8 prime. It sells for about $100. Remember, though, on a DSLR, that will have the field of view of an 80mm film camera. I’ve got one that I rarely use. You are welcome to take it out on an extended loan.
If you want something that matches your old 50mm prime, you’ll need a 30mm prime. Canon makes a 35mm f/2 for $320. Sigma (a company that makes lenses of other camera brands) makes a 30mm f/1.4 for $440.
If you want a longer zoom, Canon makes a 55-250mm zoom that matches well with the kit lens. It sells for about $250.
I’ve got an ever growing collection of lenses that you can borrow.
All of the cameras I mentioned above come with a built in flash. The flash on the camera is very close to being useless. If you absolutely must shoot something and it is too dark to do so otherwise, the flash can be useful. It’s also handy for taking pictures of people that you don’t like because it makes everyone look ugly. The problem is that it is small (small lights make for hard shadows), very close the lens (which causes problems with red-eye and unflattering, flat light), and fairly low power (limiting its use as a fill-in flash). They don’t put them on their more expensive cameras because people buying more expensive cameras generally know never to use the built in flash.
That’s not to say that all flash is bad, just the flashes built into the cameras. If you want to take flash pictures, you’ll want an add-on flash. These can be bounced against walls and ceilings, creating a much larger light. You can also use them with attachments that make them look larger. I have several flashes for when I want to use a multi-flash setup. If you’d like, you can borrow one of them to get a better sense for if you want a flash.
A lot of new photographers rush out and buy a photo printer. I advise against it. When you add up the cost of good photo paper and ink, you’ll find that it is cheaper to have someone else do your printing. This is almost always true unless you make lots of really big prints. I suggest that you try a few local printers and a few online printers and find someone that does a good job for a good price.
One of the fun thing about having digital images is that you have many more display options. You can get digital photo frames. They are like small picture frames that show a continuous slideshow of pictures. You can make your own books on sites like Blurb. The quality is very good the prices aren’t bad at all. You can display your pictures on your computer as a screensaver. You can display them on your TV. You can share them with friends online.
A big decision that you have to make as a digital photographer is whether you want to shoot in RAW or in JPG. A RAW file is roughly what the camera originally captures. It then processes it (sharpening, adjusting the saturation and contrast, reducing noise) and creates a JPG file. The JPG file is what you display on your computer or send to your printer. It’s a bit like RAW is your negative and JPG is your print. If you plan to do much processing, you are better off shooting RAW. You can make more adjustments to a RAW file than you can to a JPG file.
There are significant downsides to shooting RAW. The files are bigger, so you only get one fourth as many pictures on a memory card. They take more space to back up. You have to process them before you can look at them.
You camera’s buffer can hold fewer RAW files than JPG files. When you start continuously shooting, your camera starts to fill its internal memory faster than it can write pictures to your memory card. Once it’s internal memory is full, you have to wait for it to write the pictures to the memory card. You suddenly go from shooting 3.5 pictures per second to about one picture ever second or two. For comparisons, the T1i can shoot 170 jpg pictures continuously before it has to wait on your memory card. The XSi can shoot 53. The XS, because it has smaller files and shoots slower, can shoot continuously. Honestly, you’ll probably never shoot 53 continuous shots. That’s shooting 3.5 shots per second for 15 seconds. So they can all effectively shoot an unlimited number of JPG pictures in a burst. With RAW, it is a different story. The T1i can shoot 9, the XSi 6, and the XS 5. With the XS, shooting RAW works at only 1.5 shots per second instead of 3 shots per second. It’s pretty easy to hit those limits when you are shooting Allyson on stage.
You can easily switch from RAW shooting to JPG shooting. So you can do your artsy shooting in RAW and your casual shooting and heavy burst shooting in JPG.
The camera comes with the software that you need to convert from RAW to JPG. The software isn’t the best, but it gets the job done. If you shoot a lot and want to do some post processing, I recommend a product called Adobe Lightroom. As a teacher (or Allyson as a student), you can get an educational license (the software is the same) for $99. I think the normal price is $300.
Back in the film days, having a darkroom was a pretty big commitment. You had to deal with weird chemicals. You needed special equipment. You need a dark place to work. In the digital world, your computer is your darkroom. All you need is software.
Photo processing software ranges from free (Picasa, Gimp), to not very expensive (Photoshop Elements, Paint Shop Pro), to very expensive (Photoshop). Start with free or cheap and only move up when you see a need that justifies the higher expense.
In film days, it was easy to have a backup of your pictures. You just kept your negatives. With digital shooting, you need a backup strategy. If you just copy the pictures to your hard drive, you’ll eventually lose them when your drive inevitably crashes. My recommendation for a backup strategy is to make is simple enough that you’ll do it and to use redundancy. Don’t put all of your eggs in one basket. You don’t want a house fire to destroy all of your pictures. Some strategies include storing the pictures on your computer and on the Internet, backup up to an external drive that you keep at your office, or burning to DVDs that you store at the office.
As you accumulate pictures, you’ll probably want to put them online. There are several photo hosting services. There are several free, ad-based photo hosting sites like Photobucket. I don’t like them, but them I’m kind of photo snobby. I think that the best photo hosting site is Smugmug. It’s about $50/year. Zenfolio is also popular. Flickr is a great online photo sharing site, but it seems to be more geared towards sharing and discussing current photos rather than being a place to store your photo collection. One cool thing about most photo hosting sites is that they make it easy to order prints.
Well, that’s probably more than you want to know about the DSLR world. Feel free to ask any questions. I’ve been threatening to host a couple of intro photography classes for the neighbors. One of them will be focused on DSLRs and how to use them. If I get around to scheduling them, I’ll let you know.
Mark
I imagine that, given the number of Pentax fans here, that I'll take some flack for not recommending the Pentax series of DSLRs. I did not do so for a variety or reasons. The main one is that I have a ton of Canon gear and live a few miles away. It makes a lot of sense for her to buy a compatible system. She has only a 50mm manual focus prime and an antiquated zoom for her Pentax system, so she won't be leaving much equipment behind.
), so I hope she's not overwhelmed with all the "intro to digital photography" information you packed into 2 e-mails. 
The good thing is that you provided her with unbiased photography information, and that when she starts reading about digital photography on her own, she will have heard all that stuff already from your e-mails, and it'll help reinforce that information.
I agree that this thread should be pinned up there as a "sticky".
