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SLR cameras

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beast5680:
which are good ones, what should i be looking for in one, might have something coming up for which i require one, i,m assuming they,re digital and the pics can be emailed etc? would that be right
thanks in advance  ( i,m a photo novice)

SteveGoodz:
Neal,

What are you planning to shoot with it? I only ask because a DSLR is not always the best camera to use ... and they're pretty damned expensive too.

At the entry level you can get a Nikon D40 kit with an 18-55mm zoom lens for about £250. The kit lens is really nice for close-up stuff but is a bit slow for action shots in anything but sunlight. Getting another decent lens is gonna cost upwards of £100 (and possible several thousands of pounds) no matter what focal length you want. My mid-range 70-300mm telephoto was over £300.

On the other hand, a point&shoot camera (Nikon Coolpix for example) will cost you less and come with a lens capable of higher zoom ratios than a DSLR one and you won't need to buy another to make the camera more versatile. Don't get drawn into the mega-pixel war - more is not always better - the more pixels you have the higher the picture "noise" (seen as speckling in the picture) will be for any given set of shutter speed/aperture/ISO settings. A 6Mp camera will let you print up to 20x14" easily and will have virtually no visible noise in pictures of that size.

No matter what camera you buy one of the picture format options will be .jpg and these can easily be emailed or included into web sites and, of course, printed on your inkjet or laser printer.

Unless you're thinking of taking up photography as a serious hobby (or even profession) then think very carefully before you shell out on a DSLR. If you'd like more thoughts then I'd be happy to share them with you  :D

beast5680:
thanks for the answer, what i may want it for is to take shots like you see in the landy mags when they chronicle a rebuild or a job on something showing step by step pics of something, i,m thinking of doing an article for a magazine but they recommend using a digital SLR camera to take the pics with

SteveGoodz:
Hi Neal,

Obviously, the shutterbugs that take pics professionally have VERY (and I do mean very) expensive cameras, tripods, lighting rigs and the like. This would cost you several thousands of pounds to replicate. I can understand why they would prefer you to use a DSLR for image quality the size of the pics they show in magazines doesn't really warrant it ... unless you've already got one.

A DSLR gives you a couple of problems for this type of photography. Firstly, getting the camera really close to the object to be photographed requires a special (spelled E X P E N S I V E) macro lens and even then you probably won't be able to focus closer than 5" (12.5cm). A standard lens - like the 18-55mm sold with the D40 - has a minimum focus distance of about 10" (25cm). Makes life really awkward if crawling underneath to take a shot.

Secondly, the field of view of DSLR lenses is significantly smaller than that of a p&s camera. You can oversome this problem, to a certain extent, by using a wider angle lens (more dosh I'm afraid) but then the object appears smaller and you begin to get distortion around the outside of the lens - straight lines appear curved.

To do what you're proposing with a DSLR I would estimate you'd need to spend about £800 - £1000 on a camera body, 3 lenses (wide angle, zoom and telephoto), tripod and head and flash gun. I hope they're gonna pay you well for this article  :D

A £400 point&shoot camera would do the lot, however, without any extras except a decent flash gun (maybe £100). How can a p&s do all this with a single lens? It's all down to angles and sizes. The pixels in a p&s camera are smaller and crammed together much tighter making the sensor array many time smaller than that of a DSLR - this is not all good by the way - and making the lenses smaller in diameter. A consequence of this is that they can provide wider angle lenses that are smaller in diameter than a DSLR equivalent and have much bigger zoom ratios - typically 24:1 against 4:1 for a DSLR. Be aware that most (if not all) p&s camera manufacturers quote their lens focal lengths as "35mm equivalents" to try to compete with the DSLR. Typically, a 15-400mm p&s lens is actually in the order of 1.4-40mm in reality but, because of the smaller sensor, etc., it looks like a 15-400 would on a 34mm film camera. Clever marketting  :)

Hmm, you might think from the above and my other post that I'm a p&s person but nothing could be further from the truth. I do own a p&s camera but whenever I want a quality photo (which is most of the time) I use a DSLR ~ of which I won more than one  :P My purpose in saying all this is to get you to think before shelling out on a DSLR that might not do what you want without a significant monetary investment.

Hope this all makes some sense  :D

gamekeeperjames:
canon 450 is an awesome mid range camera. really like mine

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