Help me pick a camera

Discussion in 'Detailing Bliss Lounge' started by Nica, Sep 27, 2007.

  1. Nica

    Nica Banned

    For the longest time I've been just a point and shoot type of person now and now I've now passed the point and shoot and now actually care and I'm starting to educate my self as to how to take better pictures. Now it's time to upgrade the camera and just wanted to know what opinion you guys had on cameras.

    Here is what I want the camera for:
    1. Take good quality picture with sharp colours
    2. Need something that will reduse those shaking moments, you know avoid as much as possible those blury shaky pictures
    3. Will not be printing or blowing up pictures to builbords or anything like that but something reasonable
    4. I will require something that can do Automatic pictures (for those days that I feel like point and shoot and not sacryfise quality) but most importantly I will require lots of user control but easy to control as well
    5. If at all possible it would be great to get a nice lense, at the beggining I wouldn't want to get a bunch of lenses. Have one and stick with it for a bit then upgrade the lence when ready

    Well look forward to the feed back and thank you in advance for the feed back.
     
  2. pirex

    pirex DB Certified Dealer

  3. Calgarydetail

    Calgarydetail Getting to know Detailing

    i would look into a sony slr. ithas an anti shock, anti movement thing in it. It really helps with the shaky hands. i have a friend who has one, he said it has somthing that protects it from getting dust in it.
     
  4. Nica

    Nica Banned

    pirex - thanks for the link buddy, the cannon sounds like a good camera. But the lence thing, I haven't made it to the lence part just yet. I don't understand why you would need different lence's.

    CalgaryDetail - I grew up with Sony and my mom has a Sony camera and it's actually a deasent camera. I remember reading a bit on the shaky hand feature on it and it got my attention actually but the more I re-search Cannon and Nikon the more I see there advantages. But for now it's re-search and lots of reading lol.
     
  5. sneek

    sneek Nuba Guru

    Sony'd tend to have terrible white balance settings on Auto. Cannon XTi or Nikon D series is the way to go.
     
  6. Nica

    Nica Banned

    Thanks for that feed back sneek, that's what I wanted to know about Sony. I've read some good things and mostly bad things on Sony's cameras...well bad becuase profesionals tend to lean more to Cannon or Nikon. My friend said the same thing you said about Sony so that's two people.
     
  7. sneek

    sneek Nuba Guru

  8. Nica

    Nica Banned

    That's not a bad camera there sneek, but I'm not a big fan of Samsung though. I it's coming down to either a Cannon or a Nikon. My friend that is a profesional photographer has Nikon and says really good things about it, oh he was telling me that if I go with Nikon to recude the shaking I can just pruchase a special lence that has a built motion reduction. Still not sure though, because if I purchase a camera yet another thing I need to spend time re-searching and learning how to use lol...at the moment I got lots of things on the go and I'm running out of time...I need to clone my self a few times then I'll be set hahahahaha,

    Thank you for the link though.
     
  9. D&D Auto Detailing

    D&D Auto Detailing DB Forum Supporter

    Here we go....

    Canon XT, Xti, or 40D. The XT and Xti are both great entry dSLR cameras. Very easy to use, yet it will produce professional pictures when used correctly.

    You need different lenses for several reasons. First off, it all depends on what you're planning on shooting. Lenses have different focusing lengths (focal length), aperture, glass, image stabilizer, focusing motors, etc., etc. Ill go into more detail about this later, we need to learn some terms first!

    Aperture- this is the opening in the lens that controls the amount of light it lets in, as well as depth of field, or whats in focus. Lets take the Canon 70-200 f/2.8L IS lens (IS stands for image stabilizer). The f/2.8 is the maximum aperture or widest aperture the lens is capable of. Notice how the lens only gives a f/2.8 aperture. Well this means that you can shoot at that aperture no matter what focal length you're at. This has a lot of benefits. On being that it will allow you to shoot at a higher shutter speed, because that hole will always be wide open. Now, lets take the Canon 100-400 f/4.5- 5.6 L IS. Notice how it says f/4.5- 5.6, this means that as you increase focal length (go from 100- 400), you're aperture will go from f/4.5 to f/5.6.

    Shooting at the max aperture is referred to as shooting wide open. That hole in the lens is wide open, thus letting the max amount of light into the lens. Basically, the smaller the number, the wider the hole gets and more light comes in. Also, the lower the number the less that will be in focus. So if my aperture is set to 2.8, Im shooting wide open with a narrow depth of field. If I wanted to shoot a landscape, then an aperture of f/11 would be better because more will be in focus. However, since Im shooting at a smaller aperture, less light is being let in by that hole, so I have to adjust other settings. This brings me to my next term.

    Shutter Speed- The shutter speed is how fast the shutter clicks. The faster the shutter (higher the #), the faster the shutter will click, thus stopping motion. The lower the shutter, the more motion blur you will get. In order to get correct exposure, you must adjust aperture, shutter, and ISO correctly. So onto ISO.

    ISO- I dont know exactly how this works. But the higher the ISO, the more noisy a picture will be. But when you're in certain situations where light is low, you might need to increase ISO to get proper exposure. On the XT and Xti, you'll experience noise at ISO's over 400. This isnt good. On other Canon cameras, the more expensive ones, you can shoot at ISO 3200 and pictures will come out clean. Now you can use post processing to remove noise from a picture using a program called Noise Ninja.

    Light Meter- the cameras have a built in light meter which you use to figure out your exposure. It will tell you if the frame is over or under exposed. Basically, you want to set up aperture, shutter, and ISO so that the light meter reads 0, neither over nor under exposed. However, light meters in cameras can be different, so you will need to learn your light meter. Some will give you a reading of 0, but when you take the picture and load it on the computer it will actually be over exposed, and vis versa can happen.

    So heres an example of how to adjust these three settings. Lets say Im shooting baseball on a bright sunny day. I will set my aperture to max (wide open), this will allow me to use a high shutter, thus stopping the action. Now lets say my aperture is f/2.8 which gives me a shutter speed of 1/400. Now 1/400 shutter speed really isnt enough to stop action in sports. It should be at least 1/500. Since my aperture is already set wide open (hole is wide open letting most amount of light in), I cant open that any further. Looking at my light meter and I see its under exposed, and knowing a shutter speed of 1/400 isnt fast enough to stop the action, I need to raise the ISO. Some how this puts more "light" into the picture and allows me to raise shutter, stop action, and properly expose the picture.

    Now that we've gone over those terms, lets get back to why you need different lenses. First off, different lenses have different focal lengths. Some can only zoom in so far and some can only zoom out so far. So you need to know what you're going to be shooting and pick the lens with a proper focal length which will allow you to get close enough to the subject.

    Second, every lens has different apertures. Lenses for low light use will have a higher aperture (lower number such as f/1.8, f/2.8, etc.). If you are shooting in places where light isnt a problem, then you can get away with a lens that doesnt have an aperture like that. Instead something like f/4, f/4.5, or f/5.6 will be acceptable.

    Just like with anything else, you get what you pay for. Higher quality glass in the lens will cost you more. But it will produce better pictures. Canons top dollar lenses have have glass which is called L glass. So when you see an L lens, you can bet its a high quality expensive lens.

    Some lenses have image stabilizer (IS). The image stabilizer (IS) helps with camera shake and in low light situations. Or in lower shutter speed situations. One thing I forgot to say about shutter is that the higher the shutter, the more it will stop camera shake. The lower the shutter, the more change there will be of a blurry image do to camera shake. So when you take a picture with a low shutter, the shutter stays open longer. It stays open longer because it needs to take in more light since light is low. So low shutter speeds and holding the camera by hand dont work well. This is why you see so many blurry imagines when people take pictures in their garage. Blurry images can also be caused by other factors of course. But back to IS, IS does not stop action. It simply helps reduce camera shake, thus allowing you to shoot at lower shutter speeds without experiencing blurry images.

    Focusing motors- this is basically how fast a lens will focus on the subject. Some take a longer time then others, some are faster. In some cases its important to have a lens that will focus fast. Sports photography for example. But it isnt as significant during Landscape photography because its not like the land is going to be moving at a fast pace.

    The main thing you need to do is figure out exactly what youll be taking pictures of, then go from there and pick a combo that will meet your needs.
     
  10. Nica

    Nica Banned

    Wow...man here I thought cameras were simple. That is wicked information there buddy, seems like you know your cameras. Very good information, I'm printing this and putting it up on my fridge. I've been looking at Nikon, they got some nice cameras.

    So what lense and camera do you recomend D&D?

    When I finally make up my mind and done enough re-search on the camera I'll let you know just so you can give me some more guidance...sweet I look forward on getting my camera now...I can totally understand why people get hooked on purchasing lense after lense after lense...kinda like me purchasing detailing products :D

    But seriously, incredable information my friend just incredable. Thank you for sharing and I nejoyed reading through it all.
     
  11. richy

    richy Guest

    Carlos:
    Here's the camera that I will get. It has an amazing lens with a fantastic zoom, image stabilization, recognizes up to 7 faces to auto zoom on, red eye elimination while taking the shot, and in general some great features:
    http://www.fujifilm.ca/x15469.xml
     
  12. D&D Auto Detailing

    D&D Auto Detailing DB Forum Supporter

    No problem. I started writing and couldn't stop. All that info is just scratching the surface, hardly. There are SOOOO many more details to go over and research. The lens will depends on what you want to shoot. Do you have any ideas right now? Knowing what you want to shoot will also help you pick the right camera. Your buddy uses Nikon, so he will obviously lead you in that direction. But I suggest you talk to other Canon users and get their opinions too.
     
  13. Nica

    Nica Banned

    Well to be honest all I want the camera for is to take better pictures during/after detailing a vheicle. I guess I should also consider birthdays, special family events too hahahaha.

    My friend has both Cannon and Nikon, he tells me some things Cannon is good for and there are other things Nikon is good for lol he recomends I get one of each hahaha hes a funny guy though. Cannon is not a bad brand either, apperently from what I've found out so far, both Cannon and Nikon and well know for coming out with great variety of lenses....just from what I've read so far.
     
  14. sneek

    sneek Nuba Guru

    oh, if you need to take pictures of b-days and such get the Nikon D-80...the XTi has shutter lag IIRC.

    Oh if money is no object, i think that 99.99% of photographers agree with me on this one. The New EOS -1D Mark III
     
  15. D&D Auto Detailing

    D&D Auto Detailing DB Forum Supporter

    Well there have been focusing problems with the new Mark III. Im not aware of the shutter lag on the Xti.

    For detailing pictures you dont really need more then 10mp or a camera that shoots a lot of FPS (frames per second). Youll want a wide angle lens for shooting detailing pictures. Aperture isnt as important because you should be using a tripod in that situation.

    [​IMG]

    For pictures like that what youll end up doing is putting the camera on the tripod, close up aperture so everything is in focus (f/11), lower ISO to minimum, shutter will be REAL slow, and turn the timer on. Also make sure all the focus points are on. Id look into the Canon EF 17-40mm f/4L USM or Canon EF 16-35mm f/2.8 L II USM. I use to shoot my detailing pictures with a 28-90mm lens and found my self wanting to go wider a number of times. Ive been considering the EF-S 10-22mm f/3.5-4.5 USM for myself. Not an L lens, but has great reviews. Another good lens for all situations you mentioned is the EF-S 17-55 f/2.8 IS USM

    Check out www.fredmiranda.com and www.the-digital-picture.com for reviews on stuff.
     
  16. Nica

    Nica Banned

    Tahnks for the info sneek and D&D.

    The more I read on the camera's the more I learn but boy who knew cameras were so complicated lol :D
     
  17. distrbd

    distrbd New Member

  18. pirex

    pirex DB Certified Dealer

    I am getting a canon soon, the new EOS!
     
  19. eShine

    eShine Guest

    Carlos, I am not a pro at photography and made the mistake of buying a Camera that was aimed toward a Pro. All my pics were coming out crappy cause I could not adjust quick enough for the moment. The Pro-Sumer cameras also seem to lack in full auto mode. I now personally have a Canon A640 and is is great...for me. I just click the big button and get breat pics 99% of the time. It also takes decent video too.
     
  20. Nica

    Nica Banned

    That's my fear, that I get a really good camera with a bunch of bells and options and I wont be able to get good pictures because I won't be able to use the features....mmm...that's a good point Chris. Thanks for the feed back A640 huh...mmm...
     

Share This Page