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Ask Slashdot: Best Camera For Getting Into Photography?
An anonymous reader writes "I've managed to go my entire adult life without owning an actual camera. I've owned photosensors that were shoehorned into various other gadgets, but I've gotten to the point where the images produced by my smartphone aren't cutting it. My question: what camera would you recommend for getting into basic photography? I don't mean that in the sense of photography as a hobby or a profession, but simply as a method for taking images — of friends, family, and projects — that actually look good. That's a subjective question, I know, but I suspect many of you have a strong grasp of price versus performance. For example, when I'm picking a new video card, it's easy to figure out which cards are the best deals for a given price point — then I just have to pick a price I'm comfortable with. I figure a decent camera will run me a few hundred dollars, which is fine. But I don't have the expertise to know at what point spending more money isn't going to do me, as a camera newbie, any good. Any thoughts?"
Talking as someone who was heavily into amateur photography until a year or so ago, the main reason you see Canon and Nikon "worship" is because they are the only two manufacturers where you can start out with a very cheap DSLR at the low end, and migrate your way right up to the top levels in equipment without ever having to dump your current kit and replace it - you can achieve that steady progression by buying lenses and bodies individually, there is no point to reach where the previous level of kit won't work with the next.
It's really quite a nice position to be in.
this is the best advise i've seen so far... the best camera to start out with is one that will always be with you.
WTF moderators, why did this get a low score?
OP, unless you're dedicated to becoming a photographer and don't mind carrying around a DSLR all the time, you'd be better off carrying a small compact point-and-shoot camera. get something in the $200 range(8-12MP, 3x optical zoom) they're all pretty comparable, but i've always been partial to the canon xilim or canon powershot series. my criteria was a camera OS that was usable as well as quick and responsive. i've spent time in several stores testing various brands for what i felt were important features: power on to shutter ready; switching capture modes; the ability to turn off startup sounds/animations; size or a pack of cigarettes; sd card. once you've got narrowed you choices down to a couple/three cameras, go to http://www.steves-digicams.com/ and compare your impressions against someone whose tested many evices.
IMHO, if you want to learn how to take photos, you do it by taking pictures. don't get an DSLR. don't get a micro 4/3. you can graduate to these later, when your comfortable taking pictures. don't buy a camera that you haven't actually touched and toyed with.
1) carry a camera with you all the time.
2) take lots of pictures. if you get a one good picture out of 20-36 exposures, you're doing well.
3) not every picture is sacred. capturing the moment with all it's flaws is better than to miss the moment.
4) keep taking lots of pictures
5) don't be afraid to edit out crap images
6) learn the various functions of your camera(night shot, red eye/no red eye, flash/no flash, etc)
i take between 6000-10000 pictures a year(the camera is with me all the time). i replace my camera every year or so(depends on how beat up it gets).
and i get surprisingly good images from a stupid little canon powershot. i have a lot of reject images, but i also more than my fair share of keepers. eventually i'll get a fancier camera, but in the meantime i'm looking at a new refresh(canon s100 is looking sweet) for my daily shooter.
three can keep a secret, if two are dead - benjamin franklin
And the flip side is that the P'n'S that you bring to everything can never take a really decent photo.
Sorry, but utter BS.
I was once part of a photography club. The members would regularly have internal competitions. The winning entries were more often than not from high quality non-DSLRs. The photographers had years of experience, owned DSLRs, but ultimately found smaller cameras to be more convenient.
Technical aspects (camera features, optics, etc) do help, but they are merely one reason among many that you get good photos. Other factors are opportunity, photographer skill, and yes, the number of photos you take.
As someone once said:
Most of Ansel Adams's photos were crap. I know that because most of all photographers' photos are crap - you just see the good ones.
If you're buying a camera that will reduce the likelihood of you taking photos, then you're likely going to get fewer good photos than with an inferior camera with which you take a lot more photos.
To get to the rest of your comment:
The quality of the P'n'S image will limit what can be done, sometimes severely limit it. A DSLR camera will let you go further since the raw image is better.
Many non-DSLR's offer raw. This isn't 2001.
At this point I believe all DSLRs offer a .tiff or .raw format that the Gimp can work with, or an uncompressed .jpg format which is usually just as good as a .tiff.
First, almost all good point and shoots offer TIFF. When I bought my first digital point and shoot in 2001, all the "good" cameras offered uncompressed TIFFs.
But that's all irrelevent because: A TIFF format is almost useless. You simply have a huge file with no lossy compression. This does not give you the extra manipulation headroom that you get with RAW. The benefits of RAW do not carry over to TIFFs.
These uncompressed files give you all the detail that the camera actually saw.
Not true. Uncompressed TIFFs have less information than RAW.
Seriously, how did this comment get moderated up?
Beetle B.