Mid Range DSLR?

A UV filter is not a "must". The sensor is not affected by UV radiation like film once was. All it will do is reduce contrast by adding another layer of unnecessary glass to shoot through and increase the chances of flare when shooting into a light source. Unless you are protecting against "something" (eg blowing sand, salt spray) it is advisable to keep it off.
 
thunderstruck! said:
The in-camera shake reduction system is very new and not particularly effective. If you want true shake reduction, buy a lens with it, not a body. Lenses like Canon's IS or Nikkor's VR are good, but the extra feature jacks up the price a bit. Also, see if you even need it. IS/VR does not help when the subject is moving. It can only be used for static subjects.
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I have the K100D, and I think the shake reduction helps a fair bit. It can't save a lousy shot, of course, and you still have to be careful, but every little helps. A shot that would be acceptably sharp with shake reduction turned off, would be perfectly sharp with it turned on. I fail to see how that's a bad thing.



Youri Carma said:
From my own photographic retouche, manipulation and tweaking experience it's nice to have the extra pixels. With the extra pixels there is less change of moire after noise reduction - sharpening - colorbalance, etc.... It is also more easy to make cutouts.

(snip)

Another nice thing to know is that even when you have purple fringing with 10mp it maybe still there but not noticable cause of the small pixels. :D
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Keep in mind that a 10 megapixel image is something like 3800x2600, while a 6 megapixel image is 3000x2000. Even though it's almost twice as many pixels, the extra amount of editing you can do is fairly limited.

Aditionally, I think the purple fringing is caused by the glass, not the sensor. Having more pixels just makes the fringing wider. Same thing with ISO noise. More pixels means more noise per pixel. I generally shoot at full resolution with my K100D, but I generally end up downscaling them.
 
Ok the purple fringing is caused by the glass or glasses since there are often more than one lens in what we simply call lens. But making the picture is a duo between lens and sensor so these two are tightly connected.

What I noticed was that on the higher pixelcamera's, I went from Canon Powershot G2 with 4.0 megapixels to the Canon Powershot A620 with 7.1megapixels, the purple fringing was still there but hardly noticable on higher resolution camera. You can check this yourself and take same pictures from the same branche camera from camerareview sites like "Steves" and find the purple fringing ............than this is exactly the point I made.

On a smaller pixel camera the noise get more divused by the sensor even when the lens is the same the sensor makes something diffirent from the lens information. On a higher pixelcamera the purplefringing information from the lens is much more sharpely recorded by the more pixel sensor.

Don't forget you are talking about a digital camera in which every pixel of the sensor has to decide digitally which color do adept to. For instance on the edge where colors are almost the same you can see the sensor's mistakes cause it didn't know which color to adept to anymore. If you have more pixels on that edge less pixels on the same area will make that mistake. So in fact you gain in sharpness much more to the lens capabilities which surpass that of the still "primitive"sensor.

So in fact your wrong even if the amount of noise pixels rises still the picture is sharper cause the extra pixels make also the defects like purple fringing closer to the edge so less or sometimes non vissible.
 
Seufari said:
well... I might be a bit shaky with a camera for a while until I get used to it. This is what it is for is it not?
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Here's something you have to realize about shake reduction. It's going to be degraded image quality because basically all it is is the camera trying to wiggle the sensor in step with your hand movements. It will produce much better results than handheld low-shutter-speed shots, but it's completely unnecessary if you practice good photographic techniques.

Here's the deal: Unless you've just had about 30 cups of strong coffee, your hands are not gonna shake badly enough to effect your image quality at normal shutter speeds (200 and up) which with DSLRs you can generally use anywhere that has decent lighting, or if you absolutely have to, with the flash.

But you're going to do even better than that because you want to become a good photographer. You're gonna go get a tripod. You can get lightweight little tripods for your camera that fold very small for transport and extend to 5 to 5.5 feet for use. Put the camera on the tripod and you've eliminated shake no matter what the shutter speed. This also lets you get a lot more creative with your shots (5 hour exposure of the night sky for the cool "spin" effect, etc).

For places where a tripod is impractical, you can get a cheap, lightweight, small, thin canvass bag. Fill it with styrofoam beads or some sort of beans - - or better yet if you can find a beanbag that's about the size of a pancake, use that. You now have a poor-man's steadybag which you can put on just about anything, stick your camera on top of it, and the world is now your tripod. I used this trick shooting stills with no flash in Carlsbad Caverns and came away with some incredible shots that I really oughta make into postcards some day.

I view image stabilization kind of like MS Bob. Sure it'll help a few people get around, but it's totally unnecessary and there are much better tools out there to accomplish the same goals.
 
The idea behind IS (Image Stabilizer) is also with the "Snap Shot" digital camera's with more than average zoom capabilities like for instance the Canon Powershot S3 with 12x zoom (optic) to help the hand a little bit in the zoom mode. It seems the IS works nice.
 
Youri Carma said:
The idea behind IS (Image Stabilizer) is also with the "Snap Shot" digital camera's with more than average zoom capabilities like for instance the Canon Powershot S3 with 12x zoom (optic) to help the hand a little bit in the zoom mode. It seems the IS works nice.
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Yes, but we're talking about DSLR's, not point and shoots, which suggests the OP wants to go a step further in his photography. Real cameras do not do all the work for you ;)
 
I think you're overgeneralizing about the uselessness of IS. I do a lot of indoor candids, and I'd love to have an extra 1 or 2 stops of handholdability. I'll frequently end up shooting at ISO 1600 or higher, and if I'm using my 24-70 f/2.8 I'm often stuck at 1/30th or 1/60th of a second exposure times. Those will be too slow for the 70mm end unless I'm bracing up against something, so in that case the IS would help.

Bottom line is that you can't always use a tripod, and when you can't, IS will help.
 
I think VR (nikon equivalent to IS) can be useful at times, but I wouldn't rely on it too much. I would rather get a fast lens and use a fast shutter speed. However, sometimes that just isn't possible.

Here's a nice VR (70-300VR) shot. 1/10s (which is VERY slow for handheld, quite impressive).

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http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/readflat.asp?forum=1030&thread=21292290&page=1
 
shadowfax said:
Here's something you have to realize about shake reduction. It's going to be degraded image quality because basically all it is is the camera trying to wiggle the sensor in step with your hand movements. It will produce much better results than handheld low-shutter-speed shots, but it's completely unnecessary if you practice good photographic techniques.
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There are plenty of cases where shake reduction will help you, even if you're good. Suppose you're sitting on something that's moving, say an airplane. A tripod won't help you, but the shake reduction will help reduce the effects of the airplane's shaking.
 
Seufari said:
I have been reading about "slow" SD cards. Is this really something that I should be worried about? I can't really even see the "slow" card even being a problem.
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The only time a slow/fast card matters to me is when I am taking a sequence of shots. The faster you can empty the camera's internal buffer the faster you can shoot. Card speed matters for some people when they're copying images to their computers.

Here is a site with benchmarks for various cards and cameras.
http://www.robgalbraith.com/bins/multi_page.asp?cid=6007-7905
 
PS-RagE said:
A UV filter is not a "must". The sensor is not affected by UV radiation like film once was. All it will do is reduce contrast by adding another layer of unnecessary glass to shoot through and increase the chances of flare when shooting into a light source. Unless you are protecting against "something" (eg blowing sand, salt spray) it is advisable to keep it off.
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I see your point. It depends on what you are shooting. I am usually in the great outdoors, usually with my dog, usually going someplace I shouldn't be going with a $500+ camera kit. It is a must for me. I shoot with the only lens I have, and even though its a kit lens, it's easier for me to replace a $20 UV than a $1xx lens. I suggested it to seufari because until you get comfortable handling the camera, accidents are bound to happen. It's a decent insurance policy for the green shooters. And I haven't noticed any loss of contrast. Then again, I'm not shooting through a piece of field artillery either. ;)
 
mastercheeze said:
I see your point. It depends on what you are shooting. I am usually in the great outdoors, usually with my dog, usually going someplace I shouldn't be going with a $500+ camera kit. It is a must for me. I shoot with the only lens I have, and even though its a kit lens, it's easier for me to replace a $20 UV than a $1xx lens. I suggested it to seufari because until you get comfortable handling the camera, accidents are bound to happen. It's a decent insurance policy for the green shooters. And I haven't noticed any loss of contrast. Then again, I'm not shooting through a piece of field artillery either. ;)
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Might I suggest getting the Hoya Intensifier as a replacement for the UV filter. It is inexpensive as, well and it does enhance color and, is much clearer than the UV filters. I tend to find alot of UV filters have a violet cast to them or, a green cast depending on manufacture, of course. Also a polarizer is a great filter to have for bright sunny days, where you can get some potential glare and, wash out.
 
The D40 is a really nice camera, but be aware, the body doesn't have a focus motor, so older lenses will be manual only. I grabbed one to keep in my trunk...the "just in case" camera. I left a 55-200 lens on it and the tripod mount, so It's pull and shoot. The really nice thing, that totally sold me on this is the actual REAL 4 way RGB histogram built in. Makes it perfect for some field editing...much better than the older 1 channel joke in the DSLR's. (4th channel is luminance...) Never been easier to check white balance in the field.



 
I like my 18-55 lense. It was better than I hought, it would be. Dont have the 28-80mm myself so Im not sure about it. If you get the 28-80 then you would save $100 for another lense or an, extra battery or, SDCard. Not sure on what you have to spending so, I would go most bang for the buck myself.
 
I saw no need for the 28-80. The F speed is not all that hot, and the 18-55 with a 55-200 gives me a lens for just about anything.

The 18-55 is a nasty little lens. The manual focus requires turning the whole front of the lens assembly, and there's no distance scale. It works perfectly with a D series camera, but leaves black corners on my N80...NOT a film lens.

The best lens for a Nikon Digital is by far the 18-200 VR. This bad boy will focus from ~8inches to infinity. I have *used* one, and will own one shortly.
 
Not sure if this is going to help anyone or not, but I read through this thread a little when I was shopping around.

I picked up a D50 2 days before christmas and BOY do I love it! I went down to the local mall and picked up the kit with the 18-55 lens for $550. Not a bad price if you ask me.

You definately need to feel these cameras before you make a decision, as there is a size difference in the grips of the cameras that really plays a big part in comfort. My brother and I went to the store together, and he explained to me that the Rebel is more suited for women, or people with smaller hands, where as the D50 is more suited for men, or people with larger hands. Let me tell you this is DEFINATELY true. I was actually considering buying the Rebel until I got to play around with them, and the D50 just fits me so much better.

I also picked up a UV lens, as it just seems like a really good idea. Even if UV isn't a problem, or your shooting indoors or what not. God forbid there's an accident, what would you rather replace? a $20 filter? or a $200 lens?
 
If you want to protect the lens, don't get a UV filter. Get a lens hood instead. Cheap UV filters will just degrade IQ. Why spend hundreds of dollars on a lens to crap up the IQ with a cheapo filter. Bad idea, imo.

Also, don't know about the canon being made for women :p :p
 
haha I didn't say they were made for women, I just know that I have larger hands, and the Nikon fits much better in my hands than the Rebel does.

When we were at the store, my wife liked the Rebel better because it fit her smaller hands better.
 
RAA-Kr1cH said:
I just know that I have larger hands, and the Nikon fits much better in my hands than the Rebel does.
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That's what really swung me to the D50 over the Rebel - even considering I have a friend with a Canon who was willing to lend me lenses from time to time. I loved my D50. I gave it to my wife and I upgraded to a D80.
 
thunderstruck! said:
If you want to protect the lens, don't get a UV filter. Get a lens hood instead. Cheap UV filters will just degrade IQ. Why spend hundreds of dollars on a lens to crap up the IQ with a cheapo filter. Bad idea, imo.

Also, don't know about the canon being made for women :p :p
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A lens hood won't do anything to protect the lens...it just keeps light from coming in from the side. As for UV not doing anything, It does wonders for cutting glare out, and has no degredation that I can see. I have a UV filter on every lens I own. Cheap insurance, and it helps keep dirt out.
 
Here are some of my shots with my new D50. I only had a 64mb SD card for the first week so all of these were taken at the small and basic quality setting. I really enjoyed my first week with it and am looking forward to this hobby...

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PS-RagE said:
A hood will indeed protect the lens objective since you will bump the hood before the glass. I don't know about you, but I'm not about to put some POS $20 glass over a $2k+ lens.

http://www.earthboundlight.com/phototips/so-called-protective-filters.html
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The filter is only $20 because it doesn't do anything optically. Glass itself is a UV filter so they don't even have to use anything special for that. And since it's not a lens, it doesn't have to have special shaping ground into it. Just grind a flat piece of glass, polish the hell out of it, and stick it in a metal ring, and you're done. I have a $50,000 broadcast video camera and a $40 UV filter on the front to protect the lens. It's just smart economics. I'm not about to ruin a $2k+ lens on an SLR by getting it pockmarked by flying grit when I can save it with a cheap $20 filter that's easy to replace.

Image quality will not be degraded to a point noticible by the ordinary human eye.
 
If you're so worried about equipment damage, just take out an insurance policy. Then you're protecting everything against everything.

(Personally, I use a filter if I'm shooting anything or anywhere that the lens front element might be damaged. Otherwise I don't.)
 
Bingo! It costs me only a little over $300 a year to insure all my gear and that is full coverage that ranges from outright theft to "three stooges moments"
 
Yup. Now I don't worry about taking my camera everywhere. I can just enjoy taking pictures.

Insuring $3500 worth of my equipment with a $100 deductible only costs $60 per year. One good 72mm MC UV filter costs more than $60.
 
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