Slashdot Mirror
Digital 35mm SLRs?
pipingguy asks: "Canon has released the first(?) 'low-priced' digital 35mm SLR with interchangeable lenses with the Digital Rebel. I've owned a few digital and non-digital cameras over the years (and am by no means a photography expert), and most annoying was the lack of manual zoom and focus, not to mention the barely-noticeable millisecond delay between button click and shutter closure. Can any owners of this and other digitals provide some opinions on how this new model compares to the more expensive digital 35mm's and typical $300 SLRs? Is it time to buy?"
This camera looks like a good deal - it's just the Canon D10 with a plastic body and some firmware downgrades. Suppose it's possible to hack the firmware back up to the D10? Also, first post!
My uncle was a die hard film person... but always enjoyed playing with digital... just never in his studio.
However, in the last 12 months he has converted his entire studio over to digital. His work still looks great... even blown out huge.
Anybody other pro/semi-pros out there made the switch?
Does everybody agree that digital is as good as film now?
Davak
P.S. I own the predecessor to the 10D, the D60, and it is an excellent camera. I highly recommend a DSLR, but be prepared...photograph is an expensive hobby!
There ain't no rules here; we're trying to accomplish something.
... instead of the people who would really know.
The image quality of prety much all the digital SLRs is very nice. Including the Digital Rebel. The focus time and shutter lag compaired ot the non SLR digitals is also very good (I have the now very old Canon D30, and while it has more shutter lag then the current digital SLRs it is low enough to get pictures of flying birds, or jumping dogs which I found really hard to do with compact digital cameras).
The digital rebel however suffers from being inteonally cheapened. It still takes great pictures, but if you had intended to use the camera in "manual mode" where you control both the shutter time and the apeature you'll find Canon decided to only put one dial on the camera. You have to switch between the two controls with a small button (there is also no way to assign auto focus to a button other then the shutter button). That's a royal pain if you ever get to a situation where you are smarter then the camera's light meter (and you'll run into them, digital cameras have less exposure latatude then print film, think of them more like slide film).
It also has cuppled the exposure mode and auto focus mode with the shooting mode. They took about 4 things that their other cameras let you set independantly and merged them into one thing and gave you maybe 12 choices, so a bunch of the combinations are not possiable.
Basically if your film SLR is a rebel you won't feel constrained by the digital rebal. If your film camera is an Elan you will be frustrated. If your digital camera is the point and click kind, then you will either be delighted or confused. Or both.
P.S. remember the camera is only the start of the spending :-) Lenses are very important. In fact the Digital Rebel's imager is better then most lenses. If you buy the DR and slap a $400 75-300mm USM-IS f/5.6 lens on it you won't get pictures nearly as sharp as the 300L f/4 lens...unfortuantly that lens costs quite a bit more then the camera. I strongly recomend at least one fast fixed focal length lens, the 50mm f/1.8 is in expsnave (under $100 used I think). It will show you how sharp your pictures can be, and more importantly it will let you get some natrual light shots where most zooms can't.
The advantage to one of the digital SLRs versus pro-sumer models is no shutter lag. My 10D is very quiet and takes the picture when I press the button, not several ms later like my Olympus 3040 used to do.
As the proud owner of a Fuji S2-Pro, I can say I love the DSLR concept. When I got my first SLR almost 10 years ago, I lamented the lack of a digital SLR and since then had been searching around for a good D-SLR. Last year, they finally came within reach, but I had to save up for awhile to be able to afford the $2000+ pricetag.
I can honestly say that i went from taking 60 photos per month with my old 35mm SLR to taking 100+ per week, all without any processing costs.
The most important things to consider are:
1) battery life - Your photo shooting is usually limited by the battery life of your camera unless you shoot in super-high resolution or RAW modes.
2) memory size - Buy as big a memory card as youcan afford. Size does matter. I LOVE to take advantage of the RAW shooting modes, but the photos are dozens of MB each.
3) memory speed - when shooting bigger files, you will notice the speed of your writable media. You can fill up the buffer of modern DSLR cameras fairly quickly in rapid-shoot mode (unless you have a Nikon D2 with the 40-shot buffer).
But overall, I prefer Nikon lenses (Nikkor is really nice), but Cannon is quite nice too. And for the price you can't beat this new DSLR.
Stewey
There are 10 kinds of people in the world. Those who understand binary and those who don't.
First, I'll preface by saying I'm a professional photographer. My wife and I shoot weddings & portraits, and a magazine photo here or there. We use the Canon 10D, which goes for $1500. It's got a 6.3 megapixel sensor, and we have no problem blowing up a large-fine JPEG image to 20x30 or even higher.
The digital rebel has the same sensor as the 10D, and the same digic processor, and you can find them for $800 or so. A LOT of the features are the same. The white balance settings, the shutter speed options, flash compatibility, metering modes, 7 AF points, etc. The main differences are in the buffer, and the construction. The rebel can only do about 2.5fps and a maximum burst of 4 shots, instead of the 3fps for 9 shots the 10d can manage. Having handled the rebel at the local camera store recently, I can also testify that the body does not feel NEARLY as durable as the 10D. The 10D has a magnesium alloy body that feels solid, and seems like it could take some punishment. I think the rebel was more plasticy. Eh.
Still, if you're an amateur photographer who wants an SLR I have to say the rebel is the way to go. It's got almost all the features of the 10D, but for a lot less money. Digital will completely change the way you shoot, too...I never ever ever want to go back to film.
Oh, and some other companies have cheap SLRs out there...Fuji has a cheap DSLR, and I think Olympus or Sigma or somebody does, too, but I've never been impressed with any of their products, or their lenses (Sigma lenses are horribly soft) and I only shoot Canon, so I can't really comment on those.
We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
Yeah, that's a pretty odd term. "Digital SLR" is better, since the sensor usually does not measure 35mm. The exceptions to that are Canon's 11-megapixel EOS-1Ds which costs about $8,000, and Kodak's 14-megapixel model which costs about $5,000 (but had a lot of problems and delays and generally gets worse reviews than the Canon).
Digital Rebel is 22.7 mm SLR. Canon 1Ds is 35 mm SLR. But 1Ds is not 'low-priced'. It costs $7,999.
Her sister owns a Canon Rebel 35mm camera, and my wife has been a die-hard film person. In the last week, she hasn't touched our 35mm camera.
The digital rebel can use all the lenses, filters, tripod, flash, etc from her 35mm, takes amazing pictures, and is SLR. (she wouldn't touch a non-slr camera)
The auto-focus is great, the shutter speed is better then any other digital camera we've played with (and very adjustable). Manual focusing gives her all the control she'd normally have.
It snaps shots a little slow, about 4 in the first two seconds, then one a second after that, but for a digital at 6.3mp that's not too shabby.
In my opinion, this is *THE* digital camera to buy right now... and at the rate I'm going at, I'll need to buy a second one since my wife won't let me have time with ours.
You can find a decent review of it here.
Digital cameras are still relatively expensive, compared to their film counterparts:
Basic compact ~ $300 vs. $50
Basic SLR ~ $1000 vs. $300
What you gain though, especially once you leave the basic end of the market alone, is a fast, self-guided education in photography.
I bought the Sony DSC-V1 (a $600 higer-end compact). By that point, you're getting in to a camera which can just point and shoot but also lets you manually adjust apperature and shutter settings, add on flash units, etc. And the thing is, if you have any kind of an interest in photography, you will start playing with those settings.
I'd borrowed a film SLR from relatives in the past. I blew through about a dozen rolls of film and had next to no idea what I ended up with.
With digital, I blow through about fifty shots in a half an hour, reviewing each one as I go and, with the LCD review screen, learning a little bit more about how to improve the next shot. Then I end up ditching the thirty or so that didn't work and repeating. By the end of a session, I know I've got shots which really captured the depth of field I was after, that framed the subject well, that had the balance of light across the scene that I wanted, and so on. I've also probably stumbled on a couple of shots I didn't even expect.
Most importantly though, I've learned to take risks that I would never have done with film. While my wife drove tonight, I was shooting the sunset almost as fast as I could get shots off. I would never have even tried it with film - what kind of idiot would use an unstabilised setup in a moving vehicle on San Diego's bumpy freeways? With digital, it didn't matter. Worst case, I wasted a bit of time, blanked the memory stick and recharged the battery. As it happened, I got the most incredible sunset image I've taken yet.
You can get the same education with film, from an instructor. No doubt an instructor can teach you many things you'd never have learned by yourself. But a simple question for the slashdot readership: Who taught you the software you use professionally? I'm guessing the typical slashdot-type much prefers tinkering with things and finding out for themselves and that's where digital offers itself much more freely than film.
It's more expensive to start. Once you start adding camera accessories and good photoprinters, it gets expensive fast and it works out about the same to print (save you only print the perfect shots, you can review on the computer or LCD). What it does though is give you much more freedom to explore with faster feedback. To me, that's been worth every penny and it's worth the several thousand I'm budgeting for in several months time as the freedom and education of cheaper digital has convinced me I want to try more and more still.
Now that the Digital Rebel is on slashdot, surely firmware hacks are on their way. Heck, it's only a matter of time before someone is running a linux server on it. But seriously...something that has not been mentioned is the included lens. The digital rebel comes with a specially designed 18-55mm zoom lens. The kit with this lens is $999. DSLR 101: in most digital slrs, the image sensor is a little smaller than a 35mm negative. So when you use a lens built for a 35mm camera, the focal length is effectively multiplied by 1.6, as the edges of the frame fall outside of the sensor and get cropped. So the included 18-55mm lens is equivalent to your typical 28-90mm zoom lens that comes with film rebels. It is also specially designed for the rebel and won't work on the 10D. A lot of people may point out that the 10D is better and only few hundred dollars more, but people should remember that the cheapest canon lens that is equivalent to the 18-55 is the 17-40L...at $799. So Digital rebel kit = $999, 10D "kit" = approx. $2299. That's not a small price gap. Of course, if you never shoot wide angle, it doesn't effect you.
Surely the image array isn't 24x36mm?
Click, click... no, it's 22.7x15 mm. Roughly comparable a half-frame 35 mm camera.
That means that no lens is going to have the same coverage on this camera as it does on a 35 mm camera.
Canon says "Focal length conversion factor: Equivalent to approx. 1.6x indicated focal length compared to 35mm format." Your 50 mm. lens will act like an 80 mm; your 35 mm like a 56... and if you like to use a 28 mm on your film camera, you'll have to shell out for an 18mm to use on this one.
It works in your favor for telephoto lenses, though.
It also means that for the equivalent angle of coverage, this camera will have a greater depth of field. Nice for some things. Not so nice for others, e.g. portraits.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
bottom line: dont buy a digital SLR, unless you really need a SLR.
I think in part you're right.
You need an SLR camera if you want to:
1) Shoot in dimly lit conditions (i.e. f/1.2 ISO 1600) without a flash and use the results for anything serious.
2) Be able to get a nice, shallow depth of field (i.e. blurred background) with good bokeh (pleasing "blur") for portraits or graphic shots.
3) Shoot wildlife or other "field" shots involving long telephotos or extreme lighting or weather conditions with any kind of sincerity or usability.
4) Shoot action of any kind that might need the likes of continuous tracking focus, zero shutter lag, and the ability to fire off shots in sequence just as fast as you can hit the shutter.
You do not need an SLR camera to:
5) Shoot the kids' birthday parties.
6) Take pictures of your pets.
7) Take vacation snapshots.
BUT... with that said... If you know how to properly use an SLR camera, know something about photography, and you have quality lenses, your results in the case of #5, #6 or #7 will be much better with an SLR than with a point-and-shoot.
Do be aware of the quality lenses caveat, however. Far too many amateur SLR users, film and digital, see the camera body as the "real" investment. They drop $1000 on a camera body and then go to their local camera store and buy a plastic 24-300mm zoom for $80.00 and wonder why the pictures look like they were taken through a dirty window in a rainstorm.
So I suppose corollary to your "don't buy an SLR unless you need one" post is "and don't buy an SLR unless you can afford lenses that will do it justice because a camera body can only capture what the lens shows it."
If you can't afford to spend significantly more on your lenses than you did on your SLR body (whether film or digital), you will definitely get better photos with a Sony digicam.
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
The big advantage of a digital SLR over a point-and-shoot like the A70 is in the chip. A 10D at ISO 800 looks about as clean as my S40 at ASA 100.
This is a HUGE difference - every photographer (including the type who buy 35mm disposables) will see this difference, while hardly anyone will see a difference between 3 megapixels and 6 megapixels.
Plus, people who are mildly interested in cameras develop a liking for a particular camera, and having to switch to a new one is an akward progression.
I've had a Canon 10D for a few months now. The camera is absolutely superb -- I even have a 36" x 48" print of one of the shots I've taken with it hanging on my wall, and it impresses people when I tell them it was shot digitally.
That being said, I've found one major drawback: sensor dust. On one trip, I shot an image at F/22 that had a lot of blue sky in it. When I got home, I discovered little black specks and what could only be a hair showing up in the image. Cleaned the lenses and the mirror, took another sky shot, same problem.
It turns out that the dust and dirt is on the sensor. I haven't had it cleaned yet (I hate to part with it for that long, and unless I'm shooting at high F stop settings it doesn't show up much), but rumor has it that doing it yourself is a big no-no, so I'm unwiling to try it. Plan to have this camera cleaned every few months if your'e in to serious photography.
In other words, you'll end up with higher maintenance in return for your phenomenal photos.
Personally, I'm happy with it -- but if you're picky and don't like having it cleaned a lot, you're in for a disappointment unless you're *really* *really* careful not to get dust in it.
--ZS
-- sigs cause cancer.
Now: Should you buy a digital SLR? That depends, I think, on how much you will shoot and what you will shoot. The two biggest advantages of a DSLR over a film SLR are immediacy and cost. The disadvantages are a focal length multiplier (in the case of the Canon EOS-300D/10D) and a high initial cost.
As with all digicams, you can see your results instantly, allowing you to check the shot and retry it if needed (and possible). One note though: a DSLR is a true SLR (single-lens reflex) so unlike a regular digicam you can't shoot using the LCD -- you'll have to use the viewfinder just like the rest of us. It's better for framing a shot anyway, trust me.
The focal length multiplier (1.6x in the Canon case) comes in handy if you're shooting through a 200mm lens -- it becomes equivalent to a 320mm lens. It's a bitch if you want to shoot wide-angle, though, as a 28mm lens becomes a 45mm equivalent.
The initial cost of a DSLR is high -- you've got a much higher cost to buy the body, and you've got to buy a memory card. However, the more you shoot, the more cost-efficient it becomes. Excepting the cost of lenses, which is the same for both film and digital SLRs, the cost after buying is 0. Film development isn't cheap, particularly not if you shoot thousands of shots a year.
So, if you're seriously interested in photography, it's worth it. If you're just shooting the occasional vacation or family event, it's not worth it. My D30 and 10D (had to buy it after I broke the D30 on vacation, but I wanted it anyway :) have served me well over the last 2 1/2 years, and I haven't looked back.
One final caveat: many people upgrade their photography hardware and expect things to magically become better. Pros do not have access to magical make-photos-good-now equipment that us mere mortals lack (though perhaps there's a Photoshop filter I'm missing?). To take photos like Ansel Adams or Galen Rowell takes talent, practice, and loads of patience. Good equipment can help make the task easier, but there is no magic pill.
I've been using a pair of Nikon SLR cameras since I took a photography class in college and got to use my parent's circa 1970 Nikkormat cameras. The "new" one was built at a point when auto-shutter speed was a novelty, but you still had to set the aperture yourself; the other one is fully manual. Learning photography on equipment like this really made me come to enjoy the balance among shutter speed, focal length, etc, and even if I'm just poking around I'd rather work with something like than any modern point & shoot.
On the other hand, I've got a little digital camera now, and the convenience of it does have a lot of appeal. I took this camera to take pictures of a Man or Astroman concert a few years ago, and it was very educational to be able to "shoot from the hip", get instant feedback on what was & wasn't working (hint: at a rock concert, there's plenty of light, so don't bother with the flash, and have fun with any camera shake you end up with). The picture quality might not be as great as film, but the flexibility is a gift in itself.
That has led me to start looking around for a new pair of SLRs, one film, one digital. Ideally, I'd like to be able to have the same set of lenses that could be mounted on both a film & a digital camera body, and since I've been happy with Nikon, I'd like to get their gear. But damn it's expensive -- the "low end" D100 lists from $1400 to 1700, and the high end ones -- which in some areas seem to have lower specs than the D100 -- can be more than double that price. Yow!
I've been told that Nikon compatible kit is sold under a variety of labels, including Fuji, but I don't know enough about the compatibles to have made any decisions yet -- and from what I've seen, they're just as expensive as Nikon anyway. Does it make sense to go with someone like Fuji, or is the quality any better with "genuine" Nikon? (I'm a few decades behind on this stuff....)
I think the thing that scares me off so far is the durability, not just in terms of how rugged or useful the equipment will be in the future, but in the value. For example, the Nikon D1, from 1999, could do roughly 2.6 megapixels, as does the current D1H -- but that's barely a third of what the D100 can do, and the price is double the D100. Why that is isn't entirely clear to me, but it is clear that 2.6 mpix isn't a particularly big number anymore, where 5 mpix or 6 mpix point & shoot cameras are available for just a few hundred bucks.
++++
So there's the thing, in a nutshell: should it be assumed that the long term valuation of digital cameras, including digital SLRs, will have a trend like computers, in that you can always get a lot more capability for a lot less money than was available a year before? Or will these digital SLRs retain their value & utility better, the way the 30 year old traditional SLRs I'm using are still useful instruments today? I'm ready to get some of this new equipment, but the depreciation seems like it's going to be so steep that it still seems worth it to wait for at least a couple more years.
++++
At this point my hunch is that whenever Nikon upgrades the D100, I'll end up getting either the replacement model, or I'll try to find a closeout or second hand D100 hoping for a decent discount on it.
</rambling>
DO NOT LEAVE IT IS NOT REAL
You ask is it time to buy? Nope. Time to buy was a year or two ago, not because the cameras then were as good as 35mm film (they weren't, though the 1Ds is and in many ways the 10D/D60/D300 are close). But because the digital experience would change the way you to photography.
For a long time I advocated "shoot on film, but shoot like crazy because you will have to shoot a lot of film to match what you will pay in depreciation on your digital." That stopped being true a while ago.
Asking "Is it time to buy" is like asking, "Is it time to get a PC now?" Well, there are people buying their first PC today, and perhaps it is right for them as late adopters. But the truth is that even though today's PC is much better than yesterday's, and a digital camera will come out much better than the Rebel 300D in another 2 years, it is still time to buy, as it was time to buy 2 years ago.
Has it been over a year since you last donated to the Electronic Frontier Foundation
Since Feb. of this year I have taken 8k photos with my D60, compared to around 400 film photos. here are my observations:
NOw, with respect to your question.
Unless you are a serious photographer, you will "waste" your money in a D60 instead of a 300D. The reasons are many:
But on the other hand, there is one reason why I would buy the 300D:
Photographers will always tell you that the camera does not make the photographer. Also, that you should invest your money not in the camera, but in the glass. That is why the EOS SLRs do such a good job. Mount a 85 1.8 on either one of these babies and see for yourself!
There is something funny about this. In the past, owning a Leica was a dream for many, because of its price. Now even a Leica looks cheap compared to some digital models. These days I am not affraid any mo
"Professional" reviewers of photographic equipment are almost always far too positive. Among other things, they usually depend on getting free loaners to review, and if they trashed a camera in a review, they might not get more free loaners in the future. Some of the digital cameras I have had have been real duds, yet they all received reasonably good reviews.
And then you have the analog traditionalist nuts, the photographic equivalent of the people who claim that vinyl and tubes are higher quality than CDs. You can have a 48Mpixel camera and they'll still claim that some random 35mm film beats it.
And what does it matter anyway? Digital is just different from analog. If you have the money, give it a try and see whether you like it. If you don't have the money, don't even get started.
People tend to forget that a Film SLR doesn't depreciate as rapidly as a Digital and with good hardware like a high resolution negative drum scanner, you will get a picture quality that far exceeds a Digital. Technology is still far away for when digital surpasses film in sheer quality and resolution especially for the professional photographer. Digital's advantages however are that you can freely experiment taking photos without worrying about wasting film and developing provided you don't print most of your pictures (could get expensive printing). Still, a point hasta be made. Do you plan on being a "shutter bug" or no? I remember reading an article somewhere that if you don't plan on shooting in the thousands of pictures a year then your digital camera may not be worth it.