What Digital Camera Should I GET?

**Shantih** · December 4th, 2006, 03:11 PM

I've got the Canon 400d with the 18-55mm lense for my birthday, getting it this friday. I'm hoping to use it for gathering my own references and if I prove any good at photography then that'd be grand

I do enjoy photography but whether or not it's my forté is yet to be decided. I managed to get it for £460, which I think is around the area of $1000USD.

**Danzap** · December 11th, 2006, 11:42 AM

I have a question.

I have been looking on some cheaper cameras for bout 600-900 € and they seem fine.
The answer i get in stores is that they are more for a amateur and they are good as a starterkit.

But i wonder if its worth to get a more expensive camera like my favourite Nikon D80 for in sweden 1150€.

If i buy a camera for 700€ and wanna have more out of it it feels a bit stupid not to buy a more proffessional from the beginning.
Wouldnt it be better to buy D80 then?

But would i notice that big difference?

**boogz** · December 20th, 2006, 06:39 AM

Originally Posted by Danzap

I have a question.

I have been looking on some cheaper cameras for bout 600-900 € and they seem fine.
The answer i get in stores is that they are more for a amateur and they are good as a starterkit.

But i wonder if its worth to get a more expensive camera like my favourite Nikon D80 for in sweden 1150€.

If i buy a camera for 700€ and wanna have more out of it it feels a bit stupid not to buy a more proffessional from the beginning.
Wouldnt it be better to buy D80 then?

But would i notice that big difference?

I'm going to add my 2 cents here, and although I'm not a pro, I have been working at a photostudio (for school, so I don't get really paid) for the past couple of months.

Here at work we mostly use a Canon Mark II 1D, though that's totally out of your price range, so lets forget about that for now. We also work with the 20D and we have 2 D60's here.

Forget about the D60, since it's slow, has bad quality and the white balance is way off. The 20D in my opinion is a great camera, has everything you need as long as you don't have to make HUGE prints. This camera costs around 1000 euro's, I think so that's pretty close to the Nikon D80 which brings me to my next point.

A similiar camera to the 20D, but cheaper is the Nikon D70s. A friend of mine has this camera and I can really recommend it to you. Great quality, great everything, except for that it has 6 MP, which is a little low if you want to do big prints (though if you want to do that you're gonna need more then double MPs, since there's little difference between 6, 8 and 10 MP).

The D80 is little better then the D70s, and even in some ways it's worse (shutterspeed and flashsync is a tad worse and the fact it uses SD cards instead of CompactFlash is in my opinion not so very nice, check comparison lists to see the differences), in any way you're better off buying the D70s (or better yet the D70, which is even cheaper, but has a slightly smaller screen. they've updated some settings for the D70s, but you can download an update so you have the same) and then buy some extra equipment like a lens, cards, backpack, etc.

Personally I have a 300D, but wish to sell this one so I can buy a D70, which doesn't have MUCH difference, but the small chances make it worthwhile for *me*.

Last but not least, try out a few cameras, hold them, get a feel of where the buttons are, see if it feels right, this is way more important than the slight difference in quality.

Anyways, hope this helps you find the camera you want, looking forward to hear which one you're gonna buy.

**Shaz666** · December 21st, 2006, 04:24 AM

hi

thats great advice

boozg

**Willem** · January 16th, 2007, 10:09 AM

Hi.

I'm also looking for a new camera. I dont need a professional camera, just something that works good, isnt too expensive, but has many adjustable things. Did some research, and i came up with the canon powershot a710 is.

product details for the camera:
http://www.canon.co.uk/For_Home/Prod...0_IS/index.asp

it looks like a good camera to me, and its within my budget. Does anybody know if its any good, or just a pretentious waste of money?
sure has the things im looking for, options, technical capabilities, and for a decent price (about 300 bucks).

if i shouldnt do it, let me know. if you have other suggestions of cameras i could look at, let me know. thanks for your time, and advise in advance.

(yeah, i know i could look at nikons and stuff, but to get the kind of camera that im looking for, the price would be twice as high. since its for an amature who likes to take nice pictures, i figured this'd be nice...)

**mobble** · January 22nd, 2007, 10:01 AM

I made the mistake of buying the panasonic lumix 5megapixel camera. takes OK shots but the battery is ratshit and night time shooting has a 2-second delay. I've got a nikon film SLR but would like to get the D70 or D80 body and use my old lenses, mainly the 24-50 zoom. Someone told me that the new lenses for the D70 and 80 (18-70 and 18-115 I think) work better for digitals than the older ones, or rather that the older ones don't perform as well. Any ideas on this???

**tiefight** · January 23rd, 2007, 12:26 PM

First off: This is my first post on this forum, so..you know. Howdy

.

Secondly: I've owned a nikon D70 (original, not the D70s, though there is little-to-no functional difference) for about a year and a half and thought I would throw in my twenty-two cents.

Right out of the gate, I'd like to throw out http://www.dpreview.com as a great place to and pour over the specs and sample shots once you get your target narrowed down to a shortlist of cameras. It served invaluable to me when I was in the same boat.

For recommendations, I can also highly recommend the D70/D70s. As far as the D80: while I agree with boogz that the D80 isn't enough of a step-up to warrent me replacing my D70 and buying new, if I were buying new today I would likely move on to the D80 rather than opting for the older D70/D70s. I have two reasons:

1) The larger Megapixel size. Not a huge deal, but would be nice to have.
2) The better viewfinder. This, in my opinion, is the big reason to go with the newer model.

The viewfinder thing likely isn't as big a deal to some people, but it is something I consistently notice when switching from my D70 to an old nikon 35mm SLR (which typically had huge, bright, lovely viewfinders), or to a D200 (which, while not quite as nice as the old 35mm viewfinders, is still a signifigant improvement over the D70). From what I understand, the D80 uses the same setup as the D200 for its viewfinder.

As far as cameras outside of the D70 vs. D80 debate: Canon has some nice offerings, and I have friends who love theirs, but I have never used one enough myself to give advice one way or the other. Pentax as well has some good deals at similar price points but, again, I've never used them enough to give a strong recommendation.

Originally Posted by mobble

I made the mistake of buying the panasonic lumix 5megapixel camera. takes OK shots but the battery is ratshit and night time shooting has a 2-second delay. I've got a nikon film SLR but would like to get the D70 or D80 body and use my old lenses, mainly the 24-50 zoom. Someone told me that the new lenses for the D70 and 80 (18-70 and 18-115 I think) work better for digitals than the older ones, or rather that the older ones don't perform as well. Any ideas on this???

Yes, some of the newer lenses for the dSLR line of cameras won't work properly on old film cameras. This includes any Nikkor lens listed with a "DX" or most any third party lens that says it is "specialized for digital", "for use with nikon's digital line", or other such specifications.

What this basically boils down to is that the CCD chip that actually senses the light on a Nikon dSLR is smaller than a 35mm film frame. "DX" lenses only throw a spot big enough to cover the CCD chip and, as such, won't actually expose the entire frame when used on a 35mm film camera. This also means that lenses have a "crop factor" when comparing how they function on most dSLRs versus how they function on a 35mm film camera.

For example, the nikon line of dSLRs have a 1.5x crop factor. This means that a 50mm lens on a nikon D70 will act like a 75mm lens on a film camera (i.e. your nikon n80).

As far as old lenses working correctly on the newer dSLRs, Nikon actually does a pretty good job at making everything compatible. There are some limitations, but they are mostly to be expected (i.e. you won't get proper metering when using a non-cpu lens). A full compatability chart is available here.

**tiefight** · January 23rd, 2007, 12:45 PM

Originally Posted by Willem

Did some research, and i came up with the canon powershot a710 is.
...
if i shouldnt do it, let me know. if you have other suggestions of cameras i could look at, let me know. thanks for your time, and advise in advance.

Based purely on the dpreview.com specs and write up, it looks like an excellent little camera for the price. It will likely have a bit of a learning curve when compared to the less feature-rich point and shoots, but that isn't all a bad thing (should give you some room to grow and play around).

**supermark** · February 1st, 2007, 10:49 PM

Im thinking about getting a canon power shot s2 is or a Canon EOS Rebel K3 35mm SLR Camera with EF 28 to 90mm II USM Lens(not digital)

Which one would you get? Im in between right now and I could go either way,but im leaning towards the power shot, because devloping the photos will cost me alot of cash(at this point).

**klips** · February 2nd, 2007, 06:05 AM

I've decided that once I get my next lens (50mm 1.4) I will stop buying pentax. The reason for this is simple, and that is they have no pro model released and there is nothing on the horizon indicating that this will change any time soon. I am very happy with my istDL, but I figure that if I'm still snapping away when I wear out the body (I'm 1/5 of the way there in 6 months, but this is accelerating assuming a 35,000 shot life) and after this I will be going nikon, as the colours are amazing and they aren't canon (I have an irrational dislike for canon, based solely on the number of cameras they sell

).

**Festival Bobcats** · February 6th, 2007, 07:32 PM

Though I love cameras and have been wanting a new one for quite a while, I'm a complete newb to digital SLRs. After looking around this thread and researching review sites, I went with cheapest and highest quality I could get. I ordered just the body of a Canon Rebel XT and a 28mm - 80mm Canon EOS Rebel 2000 lens. Good choice?

**Looped_Warrior** · February 10th, 2007, 05:51 PM

Im a big fan of the rebel line and have been for a long time... all i hear are good things about the rebel's... so i would go ahead and say yes.

**ambidextros** · March 16th, 2007, 09:27 AM

i recently purchesed a canon powershot g7 which is a brilliant camera. the only draw back is high noise above 800 iso. it's a compact (sorta) camera and has an awesome 6x zoom ~300mm equiv. and a bigish lense for a little rectangular jobby. I love its manual controls, best i have every seen on such a small camera. i.e. a dedicated ISO selector and a MF wheel.

its kinda heavy for such a small camera but its pretty sturdy too.

about 550USD

**DeakinLane** · March 21st, 2007, 05:37 AM

I have a Nikon D40 DSLR with the Nikon SB400 flash and I love it thus far. It's my first real camera and don't know much about any of it to say the least, but for the price it is killer.

First off, I recently got a contract and eventually will be shooting some things a little bit further away (aka a runway shoot). Though the Nikkor 18-55mm lense is doing the trick now for my general shooting, it's a must to upgrade asap. I read that the D40 actually does not have the connection to use the camera's AF motor so I need a lense that has the AF motor built in (aka Nikkor lenses). I was wondering if anyone had a suggestion for a great lense for this very occasion, but very very reasonable in cost.

Second...I am really going to need some kind of rotating flash bracket for portrait shots. I have no idea where to even start looking. Any help or suggestions of what else I may need to get my hands on would be fantastic.

**boogz** · May 4th, 2007, 09:13 AM

In response to tiefight (I know, I'm a bit late, but found this thread while searching on google

), the reason I told him to buy a D70(s) is because it's a hella lot cheaper then the D80. In that case you can buy another quality lens and other equipment.

Of course, you've made a good point, the bigger viewfinder is a *really* big plus. I really miss that from the old SLRs.

**Brett Bradford** · May 25th, 2007, 02:21 AM

Hello... this is my first post and I am brand new to this website.

In regards to cameras, in the past 5 years I have owned...
Olympus E300 & E500
Canon 10D & 20D
Nikon D100 & D200
and finally, my Pentax K10D

I went through those essentially trying to find my personal "perfect" camera. And I finally found it with the Pentax K10D... and I really thought it was the D200 Nikon for a long time. The Pentax just seemed to have (a) a better, more "hi-def" image quality, an absolutely superb and intuitive (read "faster) control layout and (probably most importantly) an AMAZING in camera image stabilization that works on any lens I attach to it, even 30 year old manual K-mount lenses. I have never been more pleased with a DSLR in both image quality and usability. With the expansion of their pro line of lenses this fall, I feel that this is one of the most underrated systems available under $2000. I cannot stress enough how much more of a usable creative tool this camera is with the image stabilization technology built into it... it opens me up to using natural lighting in situations that used to require me to bring some form of flash/strobes.

I have several black and white (a few color) images from it at my online portfolio...

http://www.brettbradford.com

In particular the desert road photos and any of the female modeling shots.

Anyhow, just something to consider. The quality level of this camera vs. the price is amazing, and I could not be more pleased with the results I'm getting. FWIW, the D200 Nikon is also a superb camera.... I just found equal or better image quality in the Pentax... the image stabilization feature though just won me over bigtime. Very effective and worth it's weight in gold.

**TheNightPainter** · May 27th, 2007, 04:02 AM

Originally Posted by moo

power shot g3 im kinda new.
psg3 is a very nice camera.

Noise on your posted image is terrible, especially on the upper edges of the sky.

I suggest to everybody to visit www.dpreview.com , there are a lot of test shots for each camera.

P.S. I think the professional minimum is Nikon d80, the casual

maximum is nikon d40

P.P.S. Never buy a camera from manufacturers that produces something else - like printers etc. Let the professionals do their best

**klips** · May 28th, 2007, 07:02 AM

Heh, try telling that to Canon. I'm sure that they can produce a damn nice camera (such as the 1DMkIII) and some not bad printers as well

**kischi** · June 1st, 2007, 10:36 AM

Brett does that mean, that you can use all the old lenses like from a Pentax KX or Pentax ME Super ect. ? That would be awesome! Because my mom is a really good hobby photographer and we decided to switch to a digital camera.

At the moment she has a old "Pentax KX" which has a great quality.
And for here it is important to use the old lenses and to be able to put her pictures on canvas 60cm/75cm. (oldschool stile is to enlarge the original photo to the size needed and than it's transfered with heatmethod or so on linen)
So my main questions are:
-can we use the old lenses on the Pentax k10d
-and is it possible to get the same quality by printing the pics on linen or make a 60/75cm photo of the digitals and do it the oldschool way.

Thanks in advance would be a great help.

**Brett Bradford** · June 2nd, 2007, 02:13 AM

kischi,

I'd recommend it even MORE if you already had an investment in K lenses. Yes, a ME Super and the KX both use K lenses, so yes, those lenses will be able to be used on the new K10D. And as I mentioned above, you will still have OPTICAL image stabilization even while using those older lenses, plus autofocus confirmation. And the optical quality of some of those old lenses are just supurb. Their new DA lenses (for digitals) are just amazing (though definitely not cheap).

Seriously, look into one. I am absolutely in love with it.

Or if you're a REAL pimp with money to burn, there's the Pentax 645 "digital". It will ONLY cost you right over $30,000... no, that's not a typo.

As far as the image quality on a linen, they've got printing technology down lately.... I know that even the Kinkos here offers printing on an obscene range of materials...stuff I didn't even know you could put a print on. Or, yes, a 60/75cm sized print and doing it oldschool is definitely a way to do it. Image quality should be superb... maybe even better as there is so much control/ease of use with digital images.... so it would be relatively cheap to do some experimenting for certain "optimizations" specifically for prints on linen.

**kischi** · June 2nd, 2007, 08:52 AM

Thanks Brett thats good to hear! You helped me really much with this quick response. Btw. very nice photos on your website. The Corvette and the road closed pic are great.
(Is it right that the "Samsung bla 10bla" is 99% the same as the "Pentax k10d"?)
Thanks again!

**klips** · June 2nd, 2007, 09:08 AM

Yes, samsung and pentax cameras are made in the same factory with the same mounts. The only differences are price and I think the menus and enclosed software are different, and possibly the grips are slightly different as well.

**Brett Bradford** · June 2nd, 2007, 09:44 AM

What he said... Pentax makes the cameras for Samsung. The processing engines are different, software (not that I even use it), menus, and as mentioned, the grip (barely). However if you are buying a lens, only a Pentax branded lens will have their SMC (optical multi-coating) that is legendary in the world of optical glass. I also think (personal opinion) that when you wanted to sell it and move up when newer versions come out, a camera with the Pentax name will probably hold it's monetary value much better.

Pentax has some SUPER rebates going on now if you buy a lens or vertical grip with the body, by the way.

Oh and thank you for the kind words on those shots.... very much appreciated.

**Leukeh** · June 13th, 2007, 01:49 AM

Ok... I plan to buy myself a Canon 400D with the twin lens kit from here. Considering that most big name retail shops in my area are selling it for about $1500, I think it's a pretty good deal, especially because it comes with a 2gb card. My question is, if I want to do macro work is it worth buying some extension tubes at the same time (I can get a set of 3 - 9mm, 16mm and 30mm - for about $40) and use them until I can fork out $700+ for a macro lens or should I just not bother with them? I'd never even heard of extension tubes until I started researching macro lenses, so I'm wondering what their disadvantages are and if $40 is worth it. It does seem so because on the Canon site they have it for $160, and that's only one of them...

**FredrikHoeg** · July 3rd, 2007, 10:01 AM

Hello people

I'm new to digital photography, and my experience is limited to using my old Nikon 301 with two different lenses (55 and 135).

I have decided to take a year of digital photography studies as an off-year, and my camera budget is at around 1800$. After some research I landed on the D80 kit, as I was told that the Nikon lenses are compatible (though they only have manual focus) with new Nikon cameras. It's not the lenses that concern me though, even though my old ones are in pristine condition, it's only a saving post.

I'm mostly wondering about the best value:price:quality camera in my price range at the moment. Any takers?

Sincerely,
Fredrik

**chunkyostrich** · July 8th, 2007, 04:11 PM

I've been lookin' around for some cameras and I'm debating on the Digital Rebel XT or the Sony DSC-H9. I like to do a lot of macro shots, so that being said it would be great if you could give me your opinion on these two cameras.
Thanks

**martin_r** · July 12th, 2007, 09:50 PM

Reading reviews is a good way to familiarize yourself about a product you know nothing about and this is what I always do. My favorite site to visit is http://www.smartratings.com/photography/digital_cameras where compilations of expert reviews for various brands of digital cameras can be found. The thing I like about it is that I don't have to go from one website to another just for the purpose of looking for them because all are aggregated in one page already. Hope this helps.

**boutiquecraft** · July 16th, 2007, 05:32 AM

i like canon. it's colorful and easy to master it.

**Leukeh** · July 25th, 2007, 08:32 AM

Originally Posted by chunkyostrich

I've been lookin' around for some cameras and I'm debating on the Digital Rebel XT or the Sony DSC-H9. I like to do a lot of macro shots, so that being said it would be great if you could give me your opinion on these two cameras.
Thanks

I have the Digital Rebel XTi (most recent model) and it's a excellent camera... But to do some decent macro work, you're going to have to get a macro lens or some extension tubes. Either camera can do macro, but if you want to get really close, it's the lens that does it, not the camera.

Macro lenses are very expensive, even off eBay. I don't own one (yet!) because of the price, but I do have extension tubes which I picked up off eBay for about $35. They do an incredible job at bringing the subject closer, the only problems with the ones I have is that you can't auto focus or change the aperture of the lens. You can get extension tubes that can do it, but they're much more expensive. If you can deal with manual focus then it's basically fine.

The major reason a macro lens is much better than an extension tube is that you have a greater depth of field. Sometimes a shallow depth of field can be a good thing though, so extension tubes do fine, especially for an amateur like me!

**cannibalmushroom** · August 2nd, 2007, 12:35 PM

This might sound a silly question, but I hadn't figure out this one even thought I have used digital SLRs few times: do those objectives, which are made for digital SLR cameras, have an availability to change the aperture's size without using camera's options? I mean, are those digital objectives really so similar to those good old 35 mm camera's objectives?