Photography - Best Camera

[Catwoman]

Am learning how to take photographs - not, not the 'here's me in front of the Taj Mahal, there's you in front of the Taj Mahal, oh and here's you and me in front of the Taj Mahal' type but the 'daaarling look at that stunning composition I nearly had a heart attack when admiring your depth of field' up my own arse arty type.

So need to invest in a good solid cheap and unbreakable camera to practise with. If anyone knows anything about cameras would welcome some advice, particularly regarding the best of the Canon EOS range (might be called something different over there, like 'Elan' or something).

Will hopefully try and post some 'holiday snaps' (phrase used with churning in stomach) soon for you to rip to pieces with your punishing but informed artistic criticism, but in the meantime if you have any views (he he) or ebay recommendations would love to hear them.

[Kitsune]

Canon EOS range

Well, there's your first mistake.

Kidding. A lot of people get real religious about cameras and I've found it helps to not restrict yourself to a specific make. How manual do you want it to be? Will you settle for manual focus? My favorite for learning SLR was my old Minola X700. You could beat that camera and it refused to die. That, and its cheap, the optics are decent, etc.

[jinx]

Originally Posted by Kitsune

Kidding. A lot of people get real religious about cameras and I've found it helps to not restrict yourself to a specific make.

I learned SLR on a little tank of a Ricoh my parents bought me in HS. Wasn't eos expensive and takes great pics. I got lazy and haven't used it in years though - just digital snapshots now.

[glatt]

I'll third the manual camera opinion. You will learn a lot more using a manual camera, and they are like tanks too. You should be able to find cheap used one everywhere. For me, it's an old metal bodied Nikon FE built like a tank. It is manual focus. You can choose the aperature, and the camera sets the shutter for you. Or you can easily override the camera, and just use the meter to do it all yourself.

If you get an automatic everything, you aren't really going to learn what a camera does and how it does it. Sure, composition is very important too, but knowing what a camera can do for you is key to artistic shots.

[Kitsune]

Sweet, Glatt -- Nikon FEs are very nice, indeed. I don't have too much experience with them, but I can say that their cousin the FM2 can take some wonderful shots. There's also a bit of satisfaction in knowing that the battery isn't required to take a photograph, either. Amazing engineering on those cameras!

Alas, my current camera is a Nikon D70. I gave into digital after the processors kept screwing my film up and the expense of film became too great. Damn, how I miss it, though. Especially black and white!

[glatt]

Yeah, I switched to digital too. It's just so much cheaper, and when you take 1000 shots a year compared to 100, you are probably going to have some pretty good ones in there.

With the all automatic digital camera, you can focus on being creative with the composition of the shot, and hope the camera exposes it and focuses the way you want. It's frustrating giving up that control to the stupid camera.

[Catwoman]

Originally Posted by Kitsune

Canon EOS range

Well, there's your first mistake.

Just heard from a photographer that it was the best range... but you're probably right, I'm already being pretentious about it and I don't know anything about it! Doh!

Originally Posted by Kitsune

How manual do you want it to be? Will you settle for manual focus?

No, want it completely manual, want to learn as much as possible. Don't trust machines or automated systems.

Originally Posted by glatt

knowing what a camera can do for you is key to artistic shots

Yes, this is the bit I need to learn about. Any tips on blurred backgrounds, light tricks, perspective etc are welcome!

Originally Posted by Kitsune

Alas, my current camera is a Nikon D70. I gave into digital after the processors kept screwing my film up and the expense of film became too great. Damn, how I miss it, though. Especially black and white!

Yes, I refuse to get digital. Want to stick to tradition. And would love to become proficient with b&w, it is classy, distinctive and can create just the right tone... except b&w film is very expensive. Or I could always recolour it in photoshop...

Any idea on cost? Most half decent ones are going on ebay for about £100 ($160). Think I could get a cheaper one that is just as decent?

[SteveDallas]

Ehhh..... I can set aperture and shutter speed in my sleep. But focus can be very finicky on some SLRs. And even when you're taking "artsy" shots you sometimes want or need to shoot quickly. I wouldn't turn my nose up at an autofocus unit as long as it has manual override.

But as far as all-manual goes, I learned on a Pentax K1000 that I still have, though I don't use it much. I'd say that's a great choice if you can find one in good condition.

[404Error]

Originally Posted by Catwoman

...Yes, I refuse to get digital. Want to stick to tradition. And would love to become proficient with b&w, it is classy, distinctive and can create just the right tone... except b&w film is very expensive...

Cat, I wouldn't be so quick to dismiss digital if I were you. I swore by my Cannon AT-1 SLR that I've used exclusively for 24 plus years, and it still takes very impressive pictures, but a few years ago I experimented with a cheap digital because of the ease and compatibility with computers. I have since moved up to a higher end Olympus C-8080, probably a little out of your price range, and it takes wonderful pictures! Learning on a traditional film camera is good for gaining knowledge of photography in general but if you consider the cost of film and processing, not only B&W but color too, digital is far cheaper in the long run. Like Glatt said, you can shoot thousands of digital pictures for practically nothing. Compare that to if you had to buy all that film, especially when maybe only 10% of the pictures will be 'keepers'.
Now that I'm more experienced with the digital I find I can be more creative with it as far as tweaking the pictures myself as opposed to relying on the photo processing lab to do the job. And it is possible to change color pictures to B&W in a good photo program like Photoshop, something you can't do readily with film.

[Catwoman]

Hmm. You have made me think now. The initial cost of a digital does put me off, but hadn't really thought about it long term, and if I'm going to be taking lots of practice (read: crap) shots then I might as well get something economical. Plus although I may like to think of myself as an original hardcore film elitist in reality I am but a child of the millenium, and so must keep 'with it'. I just can't afford hundreds of pounds... ah well I'll keep looking for a bargain. If Hendrix started with a $5 guitar I can certainl start with a 40 quid camera...

[Kitsune]

My breaking point for going digital was a beautiful, cold morning along the East coast of Florida. A glow on the horizon, and space shuttle Columbia had lifted off on her second to last mission. I shot through a full roll of 36 exposures with my little X700 and was so anxious to get the images back. When I did -- half of the images had been destroyed because the developer had fed the negatives into the print machine with the emulsion on the wrong side, resulting in a massive scratch straight down the middle of the film. I can't even begin to tell you how furious I was and getting back my $.75/print wasn't going to get my pictures back.

What I miss about film: the ability to shoot true black and white, the ability to develop my own film (which is incredible amounts of fun when you don't fuck it up!), the ability to shoot infrared, and the feel of it. I also found myself taking a little more time on composition because I knew it counted.

Whats good about digital: I go out shooting a lot more often because I'm not so worried about the cost, I tend to get a lot more keepers because you're free to adjust settings and bracket a lot more on a single shot, and any hot/warm/dead pixels you might get on a CCD are much better than the dust, hair, and scratches you get on returned prints from film.

What I think sucks about digital: I'm afraid to change lenses because I *hate* cleaning the CCD and popping the lens off invites all manner of crud to invade. Even when you don't change lenses, it still happens. Over-exposing any bright areas can result in complete loss of detail that can't be regained -- you learn to underexpose if you question it. That little LCD screen on the back that shows you the picture you took? Never, ever trust it -- it lies! The price of equipment, and not just the camera because getting a flash that works with a digital set is a killer because you can't use a normal TTL. CCD size makes composition difficult if you intend to make prints -- the aspect ratio on all but the extremely expensive models isn't true 35mm, so you have to leave a lot more room for cropping to get it ready to print. (Another note: a 50mm lens equals about 70mm on most digital CCDs! I made a costly mistake, here.)

[glatt]

So with your Nikon D70, how easy is it to get the camera to do what you want? Let's say you want to take a silhouette of a person. Can you easily expose for the the background sky so the person ends up dark? My Nikon Coolpix 950 (which is now a dinosaur at 6 years old) will let you do that, but you need the stupid manual to figure out which buttons to push and knob to spin. Or if you want to change the aperature to mess with the depth of field, can you do that easily? Mine can also do that, but again, you have to push buttons and scroll through a menu and then turn a knob to select what you want. Also, what's the lag time between pushing the shutter button and the image being made? That's also frustratingly long on mine. Action shots are impossible.

My Coolpix 950 (Which was $1000 new) is great at snapshots and takes beautiful images, but forget anything creative. That's not true, you can have fun with composing the image, but that's about the only creativity you have.

Maybe I would completely embrace digital cameras if the camera was designed well enough to be fully automatic, or flip a switch and then use it like an old fashioned manual SLR.

[Kitsune]

So with your Nikon D70, how easy is it to get the camera to do what you want?

The controls are pretty much the same as a normal film SLR -- the body and controls are just a conversion from one of the older film bodies that I don't remember the model of at this moment. If you know P/A/M/S and can rotate two wheels, thats it. And, of course, its got all the funky "running man", "mountain and tree" modes, but I don't use them.

I had a Sony F717 before this as my main camera (which I still use and love), so I know how you feel. It was reasonable in that you could change the apature, shutter, etc, all manually, but it "felt wrong", maybe "kludgy", and sometimes you had to go through the menus to change stuff. The only complaint I have on the D70 is that it does not have the switch on the front to select to continuous focus like the D100 does, only manual and auto. Continuous is selected in the menu or with the, ugh, "running man" setting.

I'm not a fan of the "creative modes" on cameras.

Overall, I'd say that the D70 shoots and feels just like film, but you still have the be conscious that you're shooting in digital for other reasons entirely. Mainly the aspect ratio and focal length conversion for the CCD size. Drop by a camera place and pick one of the digital SLRs up and play with it -- I was surprised how well digital has adapted. For the graduation photography company I worked for, they said two years ago they didn't see themselves moving to digital anytime soon. One year later they had replaced all their FM2s with D100s, streamlined their process, and saved quite a bit of money. The change simply involved them dropping the film processing and switching to a another print shop.

[Carbonated_Brains]

I use a Canon AE-1, and last week I dropped it down a pile of rocks. It bounced from rock to rock down the 10 foot hill.

The camera was entirely unfazed.

[footfootfoot]

CAtwoman,
This is a can of worms you've opened up. All I'll add to the mix is that I've owned dozens of cameras in my life, from the minox subminiature "spy camera" to a few different 8x10 view cameras.

As for manual 35 mm cameras, you'll probably want to go used for the best built cameras. Pentax K1000 early pre-china are indestrucible and parts are easy to come by, Nikon FM, FM2, Nikkormat, Ricoh, are all good inexpensive cameras.(relative to Canon F1 or Leica M series)

A big mistake that a lot of people fall for is dropping a lot of coin on a body and cheaping out on the lens. I'd rather have a Leica Noctilux mounted to an oatmeal box (well, a really flat, dimensionally stable, oatmeal box) than the latest EOS with some aftermarket lens.

It really is all about the lens. And after that, it's about a flat film plane.
I own an EOS 1N, a Nikon FM, and a Nikkormat FTN. I sold both my Leica M3s. The EOS I got for a photo job I needed to do, and it had all the bells and whistles that I needed at that time. I rarely use it for personal work. I can shoot so much faster with the Nikon FM, mainly because the shutter speeds and f:stops are in very handy places. i.e. on top of the body near the winder and on the lens, where they belong, for the f:stops.

I won't even go into the digital thing except to say they are perfect for "This is me in front of the Taj Mahal etc etc.

Good luck.