Buying a camera

[Uncle Gripper]

http://www.argos.co.uk/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/ProductDisplay?storeId=10001&langId=-1&partNumber=5600917&tag=HP1_1cd

I have been thinking about upgrading my current Fuji digital camera, it has served me well, although is a wee bit slow and limited.  I have found this, seemingly amazing deal.  Anyone have any experience of the model?  

My credit card card is scratching at the inside of my wallet...

[sproggy]

*BUMP*

So...

Someone sell me a Digital SLR, no bullshit, I want to know which is the best on the market for less than £1k and why.

[mook]

I've just bought a Canon 20d, the kit comes with a EF-S 18-55 lens, I got it for £799 from a local retailer. Canon are bringing out a 30d, which is basically the same camera from what I can make out, but with a couple of improvements like a larger LCD screen and some techy things which I didn't really understand, so if you hang fire for a bit you could pick up the 20d for a bit cheaper than I did,  I'm an impatient cunt though and couldn't wait. I plumped for the 20d over the 350d just because it felt better in my hands, it's slightly bigger and made of some alloy or another rather than plastic and just seemed more robust to me, I don't think there's much between the 20d and the 350d otherwise. In the end I ended up spending just over a grand by the time I bought a 70mm-300mm Macro lens, a couple of UV filters, cleaning stuff, fast 1gb memory card and a decent Lowepro bag to carry the whole kit and caboodle in, and I've still got to buy a good tripod and remote clicker thing. I've had it just over a week and love it, still can't take a picture worth shit mind.

These people seem helpful.

http://photography-on-the.net/forum/index.php

[sproggy]

I've just bought a Canon 20d, the kit comes with a EF-S 18-55 lens

Cheers mook that's a really useful link.

I'm a great one for buying up obsolete gear, especially when the 'newer' model is basically just a rehash, which seems to be the case with the 30D.

[slim]

ladyslim's got one of those and they really are fucking amazing cameras. I'm afraid I'm too knackered to want to give an opinion now but I could ask her to tell you about it if you like.

It's like my 350D in terms of capabilities, but it does everything just a fraction better - better battery, viewfinder, screen, controls, build, etc.

[Timmay]

That's how they should sell it

"The 20D: Like the 350D, only slightly better"

I'm loving my 350D still. Current project includes playing about with HDR techniques and Photoshop CS2. HDR output can be amazing - I only wish there was better auto-bracketing to help on the 350D (or most other digital cameras around at the mo)

[fanny splendid]

That's interesting, Timmay. Have you any examples of ones you've done?

[Timmay]

Not yet - I've only mucked about with indoors shots, and shots out the window so far. Not had a chance to get out into the countryside, with decent weather yet. Watch this space though...

[sproggy]

This multiple exposure technique sounds very interesting, I've done similar stuff with my point and shoot with varying degrees of success, but it is extremely labour intensive getting the layers to align correctly in tattyshop and the noise at higher ISO is a problem.  I can see the results being a lot better with a DSLR.

I'm liking the price of the 350D too.

[slim]

Yeah, it's just come down to under £500, hasn't it?

I wish I'd kept my PMs to tr, cos they had some stuff about the 350. It's an ace camera, anyway. Perhaps he kept them?

Cameraworld (where I bought my 350) has them at £500 with the lens.

[Timmay]

but it is extremely labour intensive getting the layers to align correctly in tattyshop and the noise at higher ISO is a problem.

You don't use different ISOs, you keep that the same but change the shutter speed. You should also set it to manual focus, so that it doesn't change from one shot to the next, causing differences that you don't want between shots.

As for the problem of getting layers to overlay perfectly, use a tripod when taking your shots.

[terminallyrelaxed]

I've just bought a Canon 20d, the kit comes with a EF-S 18-55 lens, I got it for £799 from a local retailer.

http://photography-on-the.net/forum/index.php

Fucking hell thats a good deal man, they've come down in price seriously. You're also lucky to get that price seeing as they've been destroying old stock of 20Ds in Australia, which is why I got my 350D rather than waiting to see if they'd come down in price. I'd waited to see if that happened with 300Ds and they came off the shelves to be replaced by the 350D at a higher price, so I wasn't taking that chance again.

Im glad other people are using POTN, I've found it absolutely invaluable and spend most of my time there looking at pictures now.

[terminallyrelaxed]

I don't think there's much between the 20d and the 350d otherwise.

Well, the 20D is a 1.3 crop and the 350D is a 1.6 crop (how much of the image in the viewfinder is picked up by the sensor), thats the telling factor, so you'll get a lot more out of your lenses with a 20D than a 350D. After that theres just a few more bells and whistles, I think the 20D can take eight consecutive (motor-drive-type) shots whereas the 350D can only do three, something that matters if you're a sport of wildlife photographer but not much otherwise. Its also 2 more megapixels than the 350D but that makes fuck all difference to anything really.

[terminallyrelaxed]

I wish I'd kept my PMs to tr, cos they had some stuff about the 350. It's an ace camera, anyway. Perhaps he kept them?

St Slim's Letter To The Ephesians

Hey Slim

If you don't mind my asking, what did you pay for your 350D, how long ago was it, did you get any lenses or other stuff with it and have you bought any others separately since? And how is it?

Hallo!



As for my 350D, I paid £649 for it, including an 18-55 lens. This was at CameraWorld (the site/shop I plugged to mook) and they were doing it a full £100 cheaper than anywhere else I could find. I notice it's only £619 in Jessops now, so it might be even cheaper at CW.

I haven't bought any lenses since, although ladyslim has. She's got a macro and a telescopic lens, one Sigma, the other I'm not sure. Both are fantastic quality and great fun. I want to get a ~£300 Sigma lens which is 35-200mm (or something similar) because I miss the long zoom capability of my Minolta and don't want to carry a fucking great tele lens on me all the time. The quality is slightly lower apparently (one trades off for the other so I'm told) but it's still, according to the nice man, "very good" quality.

It's fucking great, is how it is. I wish I'd been able to afford to get one straight away, the controls are easy and extensive. You can tell the difference in build quality from ladyslim's 20D, such as the case feeling more plasticky and such, but the CCD sensor is the same 8Mp as hers.

The optical viewfinder is a little small if you're long sighted as I am, so I have to wear glasses to use it and focus well, but that's really my problem not the camera. The LCD is good although I don't use it much. The picture size/quality is fantastic - I was really shocked at the clarity and colours you can get with it.

Erm, what else? It has 5 programmable memory states for your favourite types of shots, so you can pre-program for, say, sunny day landscape and get all the settings the same with the preset. It's shutter speed is just fucking phenomenal - advice is get a really good CF card so it can keep up - quicker than I'd ever need.

It's just fucking great. If you're thinking about it, and you can afford it, I'd say do it and DO IT NOW! :)

Cheers,
Ginge

[terminallyrelaxed]

TCurrent project includes playing about with HDR techniques and Photoshop CS2. HDR output can be amazing - I only wish there was better auto-bracketing to help on the 350D (or most other digital cameras around at the mo)

I haven't tried that yet but sGu on POTN has just done a nice one outdoors. Doesnt the AEB on the 350D do three shots? Chosen exposure and one on either side? What do you mean by better, do other cameras have the option of taking more than three shots? Or more options for the alternative exposures? I'm just curious, I always end up doing my bracketing manually, I tried to use the AEB once but must have mis-read the manual, I think its just easier to chimp and shoot the brackets yourself.

[sproggy]

The optical viewfinder is a little small if you're long sighted as I am, so I have to wear glasses to use it and focus well, but that's really my problem not the camera.

Ginger and a speccy twat, it just keeps getting worse ;-)



You mentioned memory cards.  Are they still commonly available and what's the maximum size for the Canon?  My Olympus uses Smartmedia which is pretty much obsolete now, so I want to avoid that little problem again if possible.

[terminallyrelaxed]

I don't know what the maximum size is, I forsook size for speed, if you are taking multiple action shots, you can't hang around waiting for the shot to be written to the card. I got a SanDisk Ultra II 512Mb, anyway I got lucky because there was a deal to get a 256Mb card free when I bought the camera, but they were out of stock (due to Canon's massive advertising campaign for the 350D) so they sent me a 512Mb instead, also SanDisk but not Ultra II. They are up to Ultra III now I think.

[Timmay]

After that theres just a few more bells and whistles, I think the 20D can take eight consecutive (motor-drive-type) shots whereas the 350D can only do three, something that matters if you're a sport of wildlife photographer but not much otherwise

I don't have the exact number, but holding down the button, my 350D will do about 9/10 before it pauses for a second or two, and then does a load more. Depends on the size and quality of the photos you're saving, and the speed of your memory card. Just looked it up actually, and it's supposed to be able to do up to 14 shots in a row, but again, I guess that's dependant on picture size/quality. The 300D would only do about 3 I think.

I haven't tried that yet but sGu on POTN has just done a nice one outdoors. Doesnt the AEB on the 350D do three shots? Chosen exposure and one on either side? What do you mean by better, do other cameras have the option of taking more than three shots? Or more options for the alternative exposures? I'm just curious, I always end up doing my bracketing manually, I tried to use the AEB once but must have mis-read the manual, I think its just easier to chimp and shoot the brackets yourself.

Yeah, the 350D will do 3 shots, but that's not enough for proper HDR rendering really. Ideally you need at least 5, but the more the better really from what I can see. Apparently there is a Nikon camera (might be the D2H) that is user-definable up to 9 shots, but it's a proper PRO camera, like the EOS-1D. The real shame is some engineer in Canon could just open up the firmware for the 350D, change a variable from 3 to 5, and issue the firmware to the internet, and we could all update and be happy. It's as easy as that. But they won't, they'll make it a new feature in the practically identical 400D, or something.

As for the card size discussion, I use a Sandisk Ultra II 1GB card, and that works a treat. I know it'll support the 2GB model too, but I think the 350D can also use those 4GB Microdisk drives, so I'd guess up to 4GB is supported at least.

[slim]

Its also 2 more megapixels than the 350D but that makes fuck all difference to anything really.

Eh? Both my 350D and ladyslim's 20D are 8.1Mp, same dimensions to the maximum size shots and same resolution settings.

Edit: I echo the comments about size vs speed for memory cards - an Ultra II of a smaller size is a much better buy than an IBM 4gb microdrive because a slow card will seriously impact on the speed you can take shots at.

Doesn't sound that important unless you're thinking of movement work but I've found that I like to take 3-4 shots of a single scene with the focus ring turned ever-so-slightly either side of what I perceive to be the best focus, and it's served me well in terms of reducing the number of images I have to chuck due to poor focus. If you're trying to capture something immediate, the speed of those 3 or so shots can make a huge difference.

To clarify; I have no delay at all with an Ultra II in the camera, but with a standard CF card, it limits the speed of the shots as it writes to the card.



I would also like to ask sproglette to suck my sweaty ringpiece. Thank you.

[Lee]

Repost from my redundant thread...


Me and the frankly useless Oregon Scientific CardCam.

I've had this piece of shit for years now, and it's never been of any use, for three reasons:

a) The picture quality, as you can see, is piss poor.
b) The maximum picture size is 640x480.
c) No flash. The bright light you see in the picture comes from a lightbulb.

There have been so many opportunities where I've needed a decent digital camera, but it hasn't been available. So I've decided I need to get a new one. I don't really want to spend more than £100-200 on it, and it needs to have decent picture quality and flash. USB connection would be preferable, but is not a necessity. Can anyone recommend anything that might suit me? It's purely for personal use, so industry-standard stuff is not necessary. As long as it works, and does it alright, I don't care what it is. Thanks.

[Timmay]

http://www.cookdandbombd.co.uk/forums/index.php?topic=10918

[Timmay]

Oh I dunno. Digital cameras have reached the point of being non-specialist now - even my parents bought one the other day, without consulting me - so just go down to Argos, find one that looks nice and fits in your hand, and suits your price, and buy it.

At least you can take it back within 15 days if it's shit.

[iain]

I've had the Olympus e500 slr for about a month and im very satisfied with it. Here's a very in-depth review of it above which is worth a read, the guy knows what he's talking about. Fantastic deal going at dixons here http://tinyurl.com/h48vs the printer only does 6 by 4 prints but they're photolab quality and its free. Plus if you're a student you can go here http://www.spare-pair.co.uk/ and get a free battery and 512mb CF card on top of it all[/list]

[Timmay]

I don't really want to spend more than £100-200 on it

[mook]

Repost from my redundant thread...


I don't really want to spend more than £100-200 on it, and it needs to have decent picture quality and flash. .

The Sony WC5 is a bargain at the minute apparently for £149.99, 5 megapixels and all kinds of other bumpf.

[iain]

I don't really want to spend more than £100-200 on it

eh? not really his thread though, someone else started it. and ppl seem to be talking about things generALLY. just thought i'd share the deal....

[Timmay]

I know, I came across from the other thread, and saw your response which I thought was to Lee, not the thread in general.

Lee, what about the Canon EOD 1D? A snip at £3,000.

[mook]

I know, I came across from the other thread, and saw your response which I thought was to Lee, not the thread in general.

Lee, what about the Canon EOD 1D? A snip at £3,000.

Fucking hell Timmay, he said he wanted a built in flash. Really, tsk.

[sproggy]

There's one of those ^ up on eBum at the moment, the seller looks decidedly dodgy, so best stay clear I think.

[Almost Yearly]

Um, my 350D can fire off loads of consecutive shots can't it? Do you mean it can only do three in RAW or summat tr?

And this plastic build thing they keep banging on about in reviews - if I'm taking 200 shots, why the hell would I want to be holding a lump of die cast metal up above shoulder height? It's not like you want to be dropping any of these machines anyway, is it.

I'm dead happy with the 350D. I guess that's my contribution Marty.