Digital SLR Newbie - Help me please.

[wollastonblue]

After a great year on the Severn Valley Railway and a little one that likes me to take him to see the chuff chuffs. I think it's time to upgrade from a Bridge camera to a Digital SLR. The problem is I know nothing about them or where to start.

 

I have looked a few cameras within my budget:

 

http://www.jessops.com/online.store/categories/products/nikon/d3300-digital-slr-in-red-18-55mm-f-3-5-5-6-vr-ii-lens-90109/show.html

 

http://www.jessops.com/online.store/categories/products/canon/eos-100d-digital-slr-in-white-18-55-is-stm-lens--90836/show.html

 

http://www.selfridges.com/GB/en/cat/pentax-k-s1-digital-slr-blue-soda_695-10044-PENTAXKS1BLUE/

 

I do like my gadgets in colours other than black.

 

What would people recommend for a beginner with about £300 to spend?

[beast66606]

Google "review camera model" (obviously actually putting the model into the search string)  and read about them - be slightly wary of sponsored reviews, anything too glowing or too damning should be largely ignored (unless all the other reviews agree)- this should bring out the good and bad points and then see if any of them are going to affect what you plan to do with the camera, for instance the Canon is a small body, meaning a small battery, meaning shorter life - but you could buy spares to overcome that one - but would need to cost that into your budget. The limited focus points may be an issue if you plan on photographing high speed things, but on the SVR you aren't likely to get any high speed trains !

 

Any of the three would make a perfectly acceptable camera but bear in mind at this price point the lens is also going to affect the quality of the final image and they won't stand up to huge enlargements.

[dhjgreen]

As well as reading the reviews, you should hold each of the cameras on your shortlist. One should feel right in your hands, buy that one IMO. All of your shortlist are good brands, every decision is compromise though, I chose a D90 as I could not run to a D200, so enjoy.

[KeithHC]

Go to a good independent Camera shop and try out several different models. My local shop in Dursley is agent for several of the major manufactures so you can try several different models. Also you may want to do a one day course. I did earlier this year and have not looked back.

 

Keith

 

Very happy Nikon user......

[mcowgill]

I second the recommendation to go handle a few different cameras.  

 

Back in prehistory I blew some of my student grant (those were the days) on a decent SLR to replace my Zenith, I went intending to buy a Pentax but the chap in the camera shop reckoned my hands were too large for it and got me to try a couple of others, all the controls on a Ricoh just naturally fell into the right place - Sold!

 

Martin

[jonhall]

I'm a Pentax K5 (previously K10) user, and the watch out is that if it isn't Cannon or Nikon, getting lenses can be difficult,  most camera shops hold C&N fit lenses and hence there is a bit of price competition, but Pentax needs to be special order and expect to pay RRP.

 

jon

[KeithHC]

Also you could consider looking at pre-owned as well there are some very good cameras out there as well again a good independent camera shop is good place to start

 

Keith

[Revolution Mike]

I would also suggest thinking about what selection of lens you might want in the future. Once you start buying lenses then you are more likely to be locked in to a particular manufacturer!

 

I bought my original DSLR (Canon) as at the time Canon (and other lens manufacturers) offered more options at various price points for lenses that I was interested in.  I'm now on to my second DSLR, but have spent more on lenses than the bodies!

 

Cheers, Mike

[bigP]

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[eastwestdivide]

If it was me, I'd ask myself why I think it's time to upgrade, have I got everything I can out of the bridge camera (i.e. how is it holding me back), and what would I gain from the SLR.

Might help to clarify the thought processes.

[wollastonblue]

If it was me, I'd ask myself why I think it's time to upgrade, have I got everything I can out of the bridge camera (i.e. how is it holding me back), and what would I gain from the SLR.

Might help to clarify the thought processes.

 

One of the main reasons for wanting to upgrade is the Bridge camera I have is very slow in capturing the shot I want. Especially when we have a charter through Kidderminster. I spent 30 minutes waiting for one to come through from Tyseley, and got very poor shots of the train at speed. I have even tried the sports mode with multi frame capture. Following this a brief discussion with folks was for me to upgrade to a DSLR.

 

It's becoming a bit of mine field with lenses and bodies. What lenses should I go for?

[4630]

. 

[KeithHC]

Just start off with what is called a kit lens. This is normally a zoom I can only comment on the Nikon but my first DSLR had an 18-75 zoom which I have used on three bodies. I have just moved to an 18-105 with Vibration reduction. My wife has just bought her first DSLR with an 18-140 zoom. Again talk to a good camera shop. PM me for details of my local one as it may be within your close location if its any help.

 

Keith

[wollastonblue]

There's no shortage of knowledge people and advice available on this forum to help with this particular problem.

 

Your post was useful but can I ask a couple of supplementary questions;

 

What make and model number is your current bridge camera?

 

Can you provide a bit more information about the shot at Tyseley that you were trying to get - time of day, weather conditions (i.e. was it bright and sunny or dull and overcast)?

 

How fast was the train moving?

 

Can you recall what setting you had on the camera - was it for instance in 'programme mode' or had you set shutter speed, aperture and ISO settings yourself?

 

I'm currently using a Lumix DMC FZ72. It a was a sunny morning on a footbridge near the entrance (B'ham side) of Kidderminster Station. The train was approx. 50 mph. I had set the camera up on the sports mode with multi shot capture. I was holding down the shutter button, and it took 3 photos. The 1st photo took 5 seconds for the picture to take.

[4630]

. 

[Oldddudders]

I'm inclined to agree with 4630. Most of us tote far more camera than we need for the pics we actually take. I have seen a stunning magazine shot of a speeding TGV taken on an iPhone.

 

By all means plunge into a new camera - that alone can be highly motivating - but practice makes perfect in photography as in most other aspects of life.

 

As for the brands you have identified, none of those will be a lemon, but also look at their previous models, which are in many cases only slightly less well-specified. I have a Nikon D3200 and really there isn't much it can't do except high-speed bursts. Camera design has reached a plateau just now, and the manufacturers are desperately looking to get us to upgrade when we don't need to. Meanwhile sales worldwide continue to fall, albeit less so for DSLRs than compacts, which are effectively dead in the water since smartphones offer so much.

 

Lenses tend to outlive bodies. Some brands are better at preserving the same mount through thick and thin, so lenses from the '60s will still work, albeit not with auto functions. And such old glass can be quite cheap, but will not often include zooms. Lens brands like Sigma and Tamron are excellent value, and often very sharp, but may not stand up to as much handling as the camera-manufacturer's own offerings. That's why they offer a price advantage. Of course, if you look after your gear and are not a rough and tumble sort of photographer, that difference may never become apparent.

 

As suggested, immerse yourself in info from the Internet and don't hurry to splash unnecessary cash.

[ParkeNd]

There is almost no such thing as a bad camera nowadays if you stick with the big brands. The three cameras you have listed will produce photos indistinguishable from each each other - and you will have to spend £1700 - £2500 plus lens for a full frame camera before the photos look any better.

 

I am a Nikon user of 40 years and swear by the brand - but the Canon and the Nikon you have mentioned are equally as good as each other. What fits your hands best is all that will make any difference - try them in a shop. All three are really tiny and weigh next to nothing so the argument about humping great lumps of gear around is no longer valid.

 

Saddling the poor things with those ghastly colours will almost certainly ensure they have no secondhand value when the bug bites and you want to upgrade. I would not however agree with Oldddudders about Tamron and Sigma lenses - the items that Jessops sell right next to their Canon and Nikon starter cameras are pretty poor and look too cheap to be true - stick with the same brand as the camera you choose and then they can follow through in your system when you buy a more expensive body.

[sidmouth]

What camera do you have at the moment , and what mode are you using to capture the scene 

 

my observation to start is a DSLR won't necessarily solve the problem if you need some support in terms of the modes 

 

I'm not far from Kidder (Solihull) so maybe able to help

 

 

I have used almost exclusively a Fuji HS30 EXR Bridge camera which has done me very well . Only added a DSLR (D90) as I was given one 

[Oldddudders]

There is almost no such thing as a bad camera nowadays if you stick with the big brands. The three cameras you have listed will produce photos indistinguishable from each each other - and you will have to spend £1700 - £2500 plus lens for a full frame camera before the photos look any better.

 

I am a Nikon user of 40 years and swear by the brand - but the Canon and the Nikon you have mentioned are equally as good as each other. What fits your hands best is all that will make any difference - try them in a shop. All three are really tiny and weigh next to nothing so the argument about humping great lumps of gear around is no longer valid.

 

Saddling the poor things with those ghastly colours will almost certainly ensure they have no secondhand value when the bug bites and you want to upgrade. I would not however agree with Oldddudders about Tamron and Sigma lenses - the items that Jessops sell right next to their Canon and Nikon starter cameras are pretty poor and look too cheap to be true - stick with the same brand as the camera you choose and then they can follow through in your system when you buy a more expensive body.

As it happens I am also a Nikon user, since 1970, and these days my lenses are all from that marque. But I cannot let the dismissive remark about Sigma and Tamron go unchallenged.

 

Tamron's 90 mm macro lens, which has had regular updates as system demands evolved, has for well over a decade been regarded as a benchmark for such lenses. Every magazine review I've read has shown it to equal if not better marque lenses. Some of their zooms are extremely competent. And Sigma receives rave reviews for its high-end products. 24 f1.4? This week I read a test that showed it outperforming the Nikon equivalent, which costs twice as much. And Sigma is the first lens manufacturer to offer an f1.8 zoom (18-35) for Canon and Nikon, which is a stonking performer and quite affordable.

 

Cheap zooms from any firm may not be great. Nikon's 28-80 AF was famously held together with double-sided tape! OTOH, their current 18-55 is really rather good, so I read. And as cameras evolve, lens performance may drift. So the 18-200 zooms that we all wanted a decade ago, and which really did the biz on 6 MP bodies, are no longer the mutts' nuts on 24 MP.

 

Online reviews of products are now easy to find. DxO mark is a leading source of such data. I recommend any purchase be preceded by a thorough search for opinions.

[sagaguy]

One of the problems with lower price range DSLRs is the amount of time it takes to write the buffer to the card.Woolastonblue mentioned that the first pic took 5 seconds to take,this is normally because the buffer in the camera is writing the information to the card.Like everything else in this world,the more you pay,the better the performance.Burst exposures will be slow to write.

 

                                    Ray.

[ParkeNd]

As it happens I am also a Nikon user, since 1970, and these days my lenses are all from that marque. But I cannot let the dismissive remark about Sigma and Tamron go unchallenged.

 

Tamron's 90 mm macro lens, which has had regular updates as system demands evolved, has for well over a decade been regarded as a benchmark for such lenses. Every magazine review I've read has shown it to equal if not better marque lenses. Some of their zooms are extremely competent. And Sigma receives rave reviews for its high-end products. 24 f1.4? This week I read a test that showed it outperforming the Nikon equivalent, which costs twice as much. And Sigma is the first lens manufacturer to offer an f1.8 zoom (18-35) for Canon and Nikon, which is a stonking performer and quite affordable.

 

Cheap zooms from any firm may not be great. Nikon's 28-80 AF was famously held together with double-sided tape! OTOH, their current 18-55 is really rather good, so I read. And as cameras evolve, lens performance may drift. So the 18-200 zooms that we all wanted a decade ago, and which really did the biz on 6 MP bodies, are no longer the mutts' nuts on 24 MP.

 

Online reviews of products are now easy to find. DxO mark is a leading source of such data. I recommend any purchase be preceded by a thorough search for opinions.

 

The OP's examples of what he was considering are all from Jessops. The key part of my quote is " the items that Jessops sell right next to their Canon and Nikon starter cameras are pretty poor". When visiting Jessops to handle the bodies he would see Tamron lenses right next in the shop to the bodies he was looking at     e.g. 18-200 f/3.5 - f/6.3 at £105 and other similar items - all bottom end stuff. The salesman will also certainly point him in that direction. The £700 and £800 lenses in the range will be a different kettle of fish  e.g. 15-30 f/2.8 and 70-200 f/2.8 but he probably will think that's a lot to put on a £250 body.

 

 

P.S. All my lenses also are Nikon marque lenses - why do you use them exclusively?   No need to answer that - I can already guess the reason.

[chriswright03]

There are a lot of good photographers on here and there has been some very good advice offered for both keeping the Bridge and changing to a DSLR.  One thing that seems to have been understated though is a better camera will not automatically produce better photographs. 

 

If you are relying on the 'auto' modes with the Bridge then to me it looks like you have not mastered the art of using the camera settings to it's best.  If you cannot do that with your current camera, updating to a better more expensive one will not produce what you are looking for.  I have learned quite a bit from the forum about taking photographs of trains and other stuff.  Not least from Beast and I am still learning but I seldom use the Auto facility of the camera as I have gained the knowledge how to beat those settings by taking control of the camera myself.

 

Just a thought but do a bit of research on the sort of photography that you will use it for, try it see if the results are better then revisit your decision.

[Izzy]

 

Before you consider moving to using a DLSR there are a couple of aspects worth a mention. Most compact cameras have quite slow autofocus compared to the average DSLR and it is probably this which caused you problems with the shots you were trying to take. That the light levels might not have been what it best needed, or the tonal contrast of the subject not good enough for the AF to 'bite' quickly enough.

 

Another is that most compacts have small sensors which actually provide an advantage with general picture taking in that greater depth-of-field is produced than a larger sensor camera can deliver. As a rule the larger the sensor, the shallower the DOF will be, and as a consequence, the more accurate the cameras AF needs to be to ensure sharp shots in an image where you want it. This is quite beside any other aspects that can affect it. With their smaller sensors most compacts produce front to back DOF in their images at the default wide open apertures, a considerable advantage in many situations, and especially in lower light levels.

 

A decent DSLR may well be able to rattle of loads of frames where a compact will struggle, but if these are of shallow DOF, or blurred because the shutter speed is too low, then there is no advantage, just usually, frustration. One good shot is worth more than loads of iffy ones.

 

Izzy

[Andy Y]

For the kind of photographs that you're wanting to take, my view is that you already have a great camera to do the job.

 

I suspect the issue with the photos that you were taking was more to do with the settings on the camera.  Either those which the camera is trying to use under 'sport mode' or any of the other settings that might be set by default on the camera.

 

My advice, for what it's worth, is to take the camera out of 'sport mode' and to try the following;

 

Put the camera in shutter priority mode at a speed of 1/500.

 

Set ISO to 200 if your subject is in full sun (or 400 if it's a dull day) - or if you prefer leave it on auto for the camera to set according to the conditions.

 

Set white balance to 'auto'.

 

Set focus to 'normal', i.e. not macro or any other of the focus modes.

 

Set AF metering to '23-area' (thats a setting available according to the specs for the Lumix DMC FZ72.

 

Flash mode - off

 

Take yourself off to the station and just practise taking single shots getting the framing of the moving subject as you want in the view finder/rear lcd screen.

 

You won't need as a higher shutter speed, of course, if you're wanting to take photos of slower moving or static subjects so just dial it down a bit.  For general use (family stuff, etc) I set mine to 1/125.

 

Just do a bit of practise with different settings and have the camera manual to hand when you're trying different settings out.

 

I hope that helps a bit.

 

Sound advice there from Russ, especially the bit about practicising on mundane stuff so that you're more confident when the moment matters more. When you've reached the limitations of the camera is the time to move up because there may be more that you can get out of it. For example it may be worth experimenting how fast or adaptive the auto-focusing is on the existing camera and what control you have over the focussing in any of the cameras settings. AF tends to look for easy horizontal and vertical lines it can register against, round black smokeboxes for example can be problematical. The other thing to consider as you've mentioned the delay between shots is what memory card you're using, a Class 10 SD card can be written to a lot faster (if the camera's software is up to it).

 

If you post a picture Alex we may be able to diagnose a little more from the exif data.

[Oldddudders]

P.S. All my lenses also are Nikon marque lenses - why do you use them exclusively?   No need to answer that - I can already guess the reason.

To some extent I suppose I'm a collector. Many of them are by no means new or current. 55/3.5 Micro-nikkor, for example, or the 80-200f4.5, bought cheaply a decade ago, not least because when I bought my F Photomic in 1970 that lens was the best still zoom in the world. It still works on myDf. And my 135/f2 (MF, I did have the DC version, but didn't use it enough) was rather cheap on ebay, because the original owner was the Times newspaper, the photographer having etched the name on the sliding lenshood. The 300f4 AFS has been a stalwart for the race track down the road, as was the 80-200f2.8 AFS, although I now prefer the lighter 70-200f4 AFS. Weight matters as I get older, and moving on from the D2h to the D300s was a good day. Now the full-frame bodies weigh a little more, and so lighter lenses make even more sense. Nikon is doing a good range of lightweight primes, and the 50f1.8AFS and 85f1.8 AFS are lovely. My current avatar was taken on a 105f2 DC, attached to the Df. The pic was taken by an unknown French chap who saw the camera sitting on the cafe table in the Paddock Bar at Le Mans last year, picked it up and bingo. People like nice things.

 

Auto settings can work much of the time. At our recent wedding, I handed one brother my D750 set on auto, and he produced many smashing indoor pics with the ordinary 24-85 zoom using ambient light. The rest of the year he uses his iPhone like the majority these days.