which camera?

I own Nikon, Canon's and Olympus M 4/3 and use them for all sorts of things like some others on here. My Nikon APS camera and a couple of lenses is currently on Ebay hardly used as it's always been my 2nd one. I'm not trying to sell it here. I also have a Nikon 1. Interchangeable lenses with an even smaller sensor than M 4/3.

My advice would be buy Canon APS especially for a beginner because it's hard to go wrong and which one you buy depends on budget. All of their DSLR's are well thought out from a handling point of view but facilities get fancier and more complicated as the price goes up even to the extent of a full frame sensor which just means that it's the same size as the old 35mm frames. Personally I wouldn't get to carried away on wanting one camera over another because it has more pixels. There are penalties.

I mostly use my Olympus M 4/3 gear and the Nikon 1 for quick snap shots of say shots I post on here. At the low price end I suspect a Canon 100D would be a good camera to start off with. I and some others use it for macro work and it does have sufficient controls on it to be able to set as needed pretty quickly - just about. In this price range that aspect is often lacking.

The 100D can be bought with an 18-55mm zoom lens and they also do a 55-250mm lens with image stabilisation. I feel IS is important in that focal length range. Both are relatively cheap. It's possible to spend rather a lot on lenses. Those 2 lenses can cover a lot of different types of photography and could be used with other Canon APS bodies. Really when talking cameras it's best to mention budget. If taken seriously people do eventually outgrow the cheap end and prices rocket.

Micro 4/3 is attractive in several respects but to get the best out of means learning rather a lot about post processing. This is true to a certain extent with all of them but M 4/3 is probably a more extreme more often. My M 4/3 gear is all Olympus - In my view Panasonic is crap That's how most people talk about cameras.

There is a good photography forum, cambridge in colour. There are a number of pretty good photographers on there and it can be a good place to pick up post processing. Talking cameras though can get rather frustrating but people would want to know budget.

I'll PM you as to where I would buy from. I'm not keen on mentioning good sources on the web in case it upsets their business.

John

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When I first became a trainee newspaper reporter in 1958, our photographers carried either a Speed Graphic or a MicroPress - enormous cameras which, I believe, originally used glass-plate negatives, although ours took big frames loaded with sheet film. From the weight of the kit in its case, press photographers tended to develop one stooped shoulder. Right until the advent of digital photography, 120 film transparencies (2 1/4 in. square), as would have been taken with Clive's Rollei or Hassleblad, were preferred for magazine colour work.

I'd recommend a Nikon D7200 + 18-135 Lens. As with everything it always pays to go and see, hold, try out anything before making a purchase.

Ed.

Hi again Norman

You say

" I would never dream of joining a CAMERA club. I enjoy "photography". Back in the 60s I went to a local camera club meeting as they had a famous "art" photographer giving a talk. I was bemused by all the questions about his camera and technique and nothing about the pictures. I never went there again."

I think you were unlucky

In over 16 years of camera club membership I have never experienced this ( although I have heard of other clubs who may operate that way!).

We have a program which, typically, includes :-

Visiting speakers talking, typically about :- Landscape photography, Night + Macro photography, Wildlife. Tutorial / practical evenings on HDR, e-books, studio work (+ practical with very patient model!), critique evenings. 4 internal and 4 external competitions per season.

The emphasis is always on the image and the ideas and, apart from those members I have been out shooting with, I don't have a clue what equipment they use.

What the club does provide is stimulation with new ideas and, although competitions are a rather weird concept ( quality apart - is a picture of a car "better" than one of a pretty model ?) a reason to strive always to achieve the best.

I will agree with you that ultimately the only important thing is the image and, whilst equipment is central to this, far more important is the idea.

Norman

Got my better half a Fuji S1 recently and she's over the moon with it

Water resistant, dustproof, 50x zoom, 1cm macro, battery lasts all day and some of the pictures she takes are amazing

A great semi-serious camera if you can find one, around 260 bananas

I used to be in a camera club a long time ago. When talks were given there often would be a few questions about the equipment used. This was in film days where there wasn't anywhere near as much scope for post processing as there is with digital and in some areas equipment did have more bearing on the quality of work the camera could produce but even then various film processing techniques could make a lot of difference to the final result.

Then comes composition and subjects etc.

These days people see wonderful pictures and expect to buy a dslr and produce the same results. Forgetting composition etc it really isn't as simple as that. Digital photo's can be changed dramatically via post processing and it's not that easy a skill to pick up. This can cause people to think that they will get better results by buying more expensive equipment. If only it was as simple as that. It is to a certain extent as far as lenses go but most images finish up so small compared with their full original size that they might have been shot using almost anything. Good job too as it makes the hobby more affordable. The cheaper lenses and even many of the expensive ones will show flaws when pixel peeping. In fact these days some cameras are using pixels that are so small that the lenses can't really resolve to that level. It saves them fitting an anti aliasing filter over the sensor.

There are some excellent tutorials on cambridge in colour on just about every aspect of photography. It's aim in life is to be a learning site. Best not to let it all over whelm you though but the answers to most questions are there and if not there is the forum. Lots and lots of PhotoShop users though. Posting photo's on there can be very useful. People might download them do some pp on them, repost and tell you what they did to them. That can be very useful. A few people like me do PP jpg's and only work from raw only when needed. Most work from raw. Personally I feel that is a sort of snobbery but each to their own etc.

John

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Fifteen years ago I was constantly being told the mantra that for publication jpegs were useless, and that you should always get uncompressed TIFFs or ideally RAW images.

I can confidently state that EVERY image in MEW passes through being a jpeg on its way to the printer

The difference is that these days you can set the quality threshold - many older cameras used to pump up the compression to fit more images on tiny memory cards. RAW or TIFF come into there own when you want to do significant post-processing, but for 99% of ordinary seeing the difference between a JPEG at high quality setting and a TIFF is hard.

That said, if you upload a jpeg to a site that uses excessive compression to reduce bandwidth the effects can be very demoralising!

By the by, advice for anyone offering images to MEW is leave the images as close to how they came from the camera (and don't put them in Word or let apple-products embed them in an email - both can spell death to quality and resolution).

John

I don't see why you consider working from RAW to be "snobbery" ?

My cameras all produce RAW files and I import these to Lightroom for storage and processing. The RAW file contains all the data and , following processing , the image is converted to the appropriate format for the desired output. (Lightroom always retains the original RAW file and this can be processed in different ways as many times as you wish). The old argument against RAW was that files are big ( 20 meg each on my camera) and this was an issue in the early days when storage was a problem. As it is now storage on memory cards and hard drives is cheap - so why throw away information?

Norman

Some compacts have pumped up the compression so much that if the image is looked at full size the detail isn't really there at all. Just looks like it is when it's reduced.

The usual argument on dlsr's for using raw is bit depth. They record to either 12 or 14 bits where as jpg's are 8 bit. The camera software maps the bits off the sensor into the jpg's colour space. Some even offer several different curves for doing this. Some people say that they don't want the camera to do this because they want their own arrangement of this and other similar factors. Few of these realise that cameras often do offer various options in this respect. Some argue that resolution is lost in jpg's. It is really but often this needn't prevent pretty extreme post processing to correct the curve the camera used. Not always though. Some people worry about quality factors when jpg's are saved - that's the degree of compression. Providing that is set at a level which doesn't alter the byte count of the original images by much further post processing wont be a problem. 1/2 it or anything like it and it will cause problems. I usually shoot jpg fine plus raw so that raw is available if needed. Ideally I also look on dpreview to see what the camera's colour curves do to the dark end. That is the tricky aspect of digital cameras as they have no where near the dynamic range of our eyes and often areas that looked fine by eye need bringing up. The other tricky aspect can be the bright end - if that's clipped off it's gone for ever and no amount of post processing will bring it back. Exposing that end correctly can make the dark end darker.

John

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My Nikon Bridge has a cunning mode called 'active d-lighting' (sic) that compensates for the loss of dynamic range at the top and bottom when converting to 24-bit. I've only used it a few times on backlit subjects and it works really well despite the cheesy name.

Neil

Here is my problem, I was brought up on film photography. I own a Contax II with an F1.5 Sonnar lens, arguably the best ever camera made (that will start an argument!) a Fuji GW690, a Nikon D1. But, a big but, my best pictures come from a cheap digital compact camera. The trouble is I love the mechanics of those old cameras. I have been on a waiting list for over eight years to have my Contax camera overhauled by the acknowledged expert in the world. Only two more years to go! Yes, I know that it is not economically viable, but it makes me feel good,.

I won't argue about the Sonnar. I have a Zeiss 135mm f3.5 Sonnar, even wide open it gives me pin-point stars right across the field.

Neil.

I found a review:

"Carl Zeiss Jena MC Sonnar 135mm f/3.5 showed outstanding performance in the lab. Images were sharp from corner to corner throughout the tested aperture range. More importantly, performance was even both in the center and around borders, which is a major benefit in any lens. Actually, the lens produced one of the most consistent results among medium telephoto lenses tested to date. With no peaks or dips in performance, the lens is capable of producing outstanding 19in and very decent 24in prints throughout tested aperture settings - quite an achievement even for a telephoto fixed focal. Conclusion? With outstanding results across the frame and across aperture range, this 20+ year old lens design still goes strong and would put to test any modern lens."

Edited By Neil Wyatt on 29/05/2016 18:40:35

Having had access to a lens testing station at Leica I always tested any lens I was interested in and the resolution variations are amazing. Lenses of world renown show center sharpness but fall off rapidly on the edges. Stopping down always helped, but film speeds were not that fast in those days and the older films showed grain. In the early 80's I was shown film used by the military and NASA that were grainless and they are now out in the open as you might say. Some of the claims made were spectacular as they were used in satellites for spying purposes. They also lend themselves to digitising reducing noise etc.

The Tessar lens always showed well as it is essentially the same lens front and back and can even be used as an enlarging lens. All Leica lens showed well with the larger aperture lenses even better. the mark of a lens is how it passes light and colour and of course the lenses used on Digi. cameras are different to optical cameras.

Older lenses now are showing cement deterioation as they were cemented with Balsam, this can show as yellowing or separation. Modern cements are cured by UV. Older lenses also affected by fungus, showing as etching on the glass surface. This can be killed off with Hydrogen peroxide about 6% strength.The metal parts need treating also.

Nick, I'd be chuffed to bits if I managed to take photos as good as these. I've seen many examples in books and the web of excellent images captured with with modest kit. What's the secret?

Cheers,

Dave

An attractive female for starters

I'll be interested in the answer to Dave's question too because given and G16 and the model plus the other things that will have been around wont just make pictures like these happen. Or much of Nick's work that is on the web as well.

John

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I suspect that the answer to Daves question about what is the secret of producing images like Nick is , in the words of Whistler :-

"A lifetimes experience" !

Norman

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**Facepalm.

Oh dear, oh dear. ............. Oh-deary-deary-me.

_____________________________________________

Just seen the questions. It's late now and off to bed. It will answer them in the morning.

Sweet dreams everyone, Nick

John

Are you are saying that you have altered Nicks image and reposted it? - if so I consider that pretty poor form.

Edited By NJH on 30/05/2016 10:02:05

Yes I have to illustrate a point for Dave. Basically when people look at shots it's nigh impossible to tell what has been done to them. If you open both shots in fresh tabs and click between the 2 you will clearly see the difference. The scope in this sort of direction is almost endless.

I doubt if Nick objects otherwise I wouldn't have done it. Very few people do providing there is some point in the modification. If he does no problem. It should be easy to remove it.

In this case he might tell us that settings on the camera produced the result. It is capable of doing a number of things. Or he may have done work himself or .............. there are a number of possibilities even that this is just what came out of the camera. I do doubt that though other than if it was set up to do it.

I doubt if Nick likes the result - I don't either but needed to show a very distinct difference. Even so giving how some screens are there is a slight chance that some might see no difference.

John

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