Slashdot Mirror
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?"
is the one that you carry with you.
for a photography newbie, i'm of the opinion that the specific camera doesn't really matter. They're all more or less the same anyway. what's most important is finding one that you'll want to carry around with you and use. the more you use it the less newb you'll become over time. you'll learn things and by the time you're ready to upgrade you'll know what to look for.
"For I am a Bear of Very Little Brain, and Long Words Bother Me"
You have to understand that for some the gear itself is a religion. They own dozens of camera yet take no pictures. The brand is the thing. Even if OP wanted an SLR, Pentax makes far better entry level/consumer SLR's, and there are other companies as well. The mantra of CANON/NIKON is due solely to the fact they are the only two companies that make full-bore pro level products costing many thousands. Not that that should be relevant to someone wanting a consumer camera, but for the brand worshipers, having one of those two nameplates is the single most important aspect of camera ownership.
The problem with non-SLRs is that they seemingly all suck when it comes to turnaround time between pictures, and their autofocus is universally slow -- if you have ever had experience with manual focus. A decent 35mm film SLR from the 80s with TTL exposure control, IMHO, outperforms pretty much every point-and-shoot when it comes to how quickly you can retake a previously set-up picture. Most of them, at least with experienced operator, will outperform even starting from scratch (focus way off, aperture/iris way off, etc).
Entry-level SLRs seem to be really a class above point-and-shoots, especially that you regain control of the focus adjustment and aperture. This really is a make-or-break when taking multiple pictures of the same subject, like you often do (bits are cheap!).
A successful API design takes a mixture of software design and pedagogy.
Do not buy a DSLR unless you must have changeable lenses. Compare the weight of a DSLR to a fixed lens camera. The best camera to start out is the one that will always be with you.
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.
The trouble is that SLRs(while undoubtedly extremely capable) tend to suffer very heavily from 'the best camera is the camera you are carrying' syndrome.
By virtue of the more complex optical path, the modular lens options, and the various other bits and bobs that SLRs end up with, they get big enough that 'bringing the camera' becomes a decision, not an automatic thing.
With the fairly impressive capabilities of contemporary point-and-shoots(yes, admittedly, the capabilities of SLRs have enjoyed the same technological improvements, only more so because they have more space and a bigger budget), you really start to hit the wall of diminishing returns pretty quickly(It takes surprisingly few good megapixels to spit out a butter-smooth 8x10, and a 2560x1600 display is only a smidge over 4 megapixels, and those are $1,000+ Serious Screens).
There are some genuinely ghastly point and shoots out there, to be sure, and the weaknesses of the entire genre will start to bite if you need low light performance, run into situations where you need a somewhat atypical lens, or are really serious about your manual settings; but it isn't hard to get a ~$100 P&S that'll happy-snap just fine, or a 200-250 one that will have a nicer optics package, some of the more useful historically-SLR-only features not removed from the firmware(histograms, RAW, some manual options), and generally compete pretty well with the low end DSLR and shitty kit lens of the moment...
Point and shoots can't replicate the usability of an SLR either. The time between pushing the button and when the picture is taken is usually 4-10x longer.
Um, that's true of Pentax, too. The lenses that work with my K1000 (fully manual film SLR, production started in 1976) still work great with my K10D (digital, released in 2006). The newest lenses that lack aperture rings won't work with the manual body (at least not other than wide open), but that's true of Canon and Nikon, too. This also means that you can get some very good older lenses on eBay for very reasonable prices ($50-$100 each), as long as you don't mind some manual control (which is not that hard to learn -- before all of the automatic stuff came out, anyone who wanted to take pictures had to deal with it, and without even the benefit of instant feedback that you get now with digital). I haven't tried the entry-level Pentax dSLRs, but I've heard good reviews of them, and I can say that the mid-level is great. They don't make a "pro" level dSLR (in other words, full frame), but I don't think that matters much for most people. The one disadvantage of SLRs is that they're big. Even if you're just carrying the camera with a single lens, it's still going to be pretty bulky, weighing in at over a pound. Definitely not something you can slip into a pocket "just in case you want to take a picture". For that, I recommend something like the Canon S90/S95/S100, which combine a good lens and sensor with a small size and some optional manual controls (very useful as you learn more about photography and become smarter than the camera). They still don't compare to an SLR, but there's an adage in photography that the best camera is the one you have with you.
And these people need significantly different kinds of cameras.
People from the first group want fast shooting, small cameras with minimal fuss. 99% of these people buy point-and-shoot cameras. They might or might not be technical people. They will probably get their pictures developed at the drug store or just post them to their favorite web site. Red-eye reduction is more important to them than long zoom or the ability to manually do much of anything.
The second group want a zoom lens longer than the longest you have on hand. They want to take a picture of the nose hairs on Mount Rushmore and they want to count the feathers on baby bald eagles. They have plenty of time to get their pictures "just right" and they will pay more for professional grade media. 99% of these people buy DSLRs (or the closest things we had to them back then). You can sell a tripod to these people but they don't really care about facial recognition or red eye reduction because they aren't looking to take pictures of their best friends since they already know what they look like. These people are not necessarily anti-social they just see photography as being about remembering things more so than events.
So my advice is first figure out which group you fall into. Then you can quickly rule out a good chunk of the cameras on the market. And don't let someone tell you there is one camera that does both well, because that is a lie. There are small cameras with good zoom but they are nowhere near being equals to DSLRs, and no DSLR is ever going to fit into your pocket.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
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.