Hi,
I wanted to buy a new digital camera and I would like to know what would be a nice camera to buy, with a fast shutter speed, good quality, clarity, and a deccent price. If anybody has any advice on a nice user friendly digital camera, I’m opend to any ideas!
Thanks,
Dustin
I am on my second Canon (lost the first one, would you believe?) and I have used both of them to take pictures of and from trains to excellent effect. The pixel quality is quite high especially on the finer settings, and the shutter speed is relatively fast.
Depending on how much u want to spend, I’d say you can get good value for money with them.
This is way too general a question for the answer you may be seeking. Do you want a digital single lens reflex type body? Do you have any autofocus lenses from a film camera you want to hang on to? Are you more interested in an advanced prosumer type camera with a fixed zoom lens on the body? Is a simpler Point & Shoot camera with features making it more railfan friendly more what you might be looking for? Do you have a film camera now and what type is it? Do you want to grow as a photographer or are you just interested in 4x6 prints?
I had a Concord Three Megapixel from Walmart for a time. I dont think they are made any longer.
It had a switch on the front that showed a Mountain and a Flower. The mountain meant that the camera will ignore anything close to it and look into the distance. The flower setting means “Macro” and it will target anything less than 14 inches away, precisely at 9 inches and begin to lose resolution at less than 3 inches.
The term 3 Megapixel means the total size of the image. It is a good size for interneting and computing. Not too terribly big and nice considering the killjoy restriction on total picture size by free hosting websites.
You can get as much as 12 megapixel and beyond but those pictures will be HUGE.
Optical zoom is better than Digital zoom any time. Optical means it uses a set of lenses until it achieves a good picture. Digital zoom simply puts an image on a electric plate inside the camera and amps up the volume on little dots inside that picture until you hit the max and start creating awful blocks. There is a whole langauge of color called Hexdecimal which all the values specify an exact color across the entire visual color specturm but is beyond the scope of your question. (I dont know much myself; just a college drop out)
Here is Highwater Mark in the Gettysburg National Battlefield from Little Round Top about a mile or so away on a perfect april day with 20+ miles visibility. See how the image starts to block up along all the edges of the people, objects?
http://img115.imageshack.us/my.php?image=distantshot5sd.jpg
That is what happens when you max out a digital zoom feature. I am absolutely certian if I had a full set of optical lenses, I would have been able to recognize the person standing next to the monument or not.
Here is a shot taken of the early build of my computer in Macro mode. The picture is very unforgiving of problems near or around the subject being s
If your budget permits, a DSLR is best but not essential for railfanning.
Read the reviews here before you buy:
Dave
To borrow a phrase - go big or go home.
That’s not really elitist, however. What it means is to buy the most camera that you can afford that has the features you want.
A few points that may have already been made -
I’ll second the mechanical vs digital zoom.
Get something with removable memory - and buy extra memory. My 1 Gig cards will hold about 250 images at full resolution. If I go to RAW+JPG, that drops to 60. That’s still a lot of pictures, but not when you’re planning a day out at a busy railfanning spot. And, you can go to a photo kiosk and print your own. I bought a reader for my memory cards - it cost about $30 and I don’t have to have the special cable and software to download my pictures from the camera. In fact, I carry the reader with me - I can download my pictures to your computer, if you like.
Ditto on batteries. No fun being miles from the nearest outlet when you need to recharge the camera.
Get something you’re familiar with. If you’ve never used a single lens reflex (SLR) before, this is not the time to start. I’m used to an SLR and there are still features on my DSLR that I haven’t used… If you’re an “Instamatic” type, get a simple point and shoot (with the features you will use). The down side of the rear LCD displays is that they can be hard to see in direct sun. My old Mavica (which can use floppies - which is why I originally bought it) had an accessory - a “view finder” that you could put over the LCD screen.
As has been mentioned, get lots of megapixels, but there can be a limit. I have turned out some very nice 8x10’s and larger with my 8 MP Digital Rebel, but I really don’t have much use for a 12 MP camera.
If you have friends with digitals, try them out! It’s just electrons, and they can be erased.
Point & shoot I have a Canon S2 with a 12X telephoto. Please go to my web site listed in my signature & you can see the results in the 2006 & 2007 gallaeries.
I’m a Minolta man myself, and am very happy with my Konica-Minolta 5D Digital SLR. Unfortunately, KM was brought out by Sony. My friend bought the 5D’s replacement, the Sony Alpha and is quite happy with it. The Alpha accepts most of the KM Auto-Focus lens, which is good because the Sony glass costs twice as much.
For point and shoots, and extended zoom cameras, I’ve had very good luck with Kodak’s Easy-Share line.
More megapixels are good, up to a point. There is much debate among my photography friends whether the difference between 6.1 MP, 8 MP and 10 MP is really noticeable. The consensus seems to be that up to 8x10 or 11x14, there’s really no difference to the naked eye.
If you go with a point and shoot, or extended zoom camera, get the largest optical zoom you can afford. Digital zoom is practically worthless. It’s an extrapolation done with the camera’s computer, and severely degrades the image quality.
Nick
If you give us an idea what you’d like to do with the camera, and how much you want to spend I think we could probably give you a clearer idea.
One note I’ll mention: More megapixels is not always better, especially in the case of point ‘n’ shoots. There’s a couple items that come into play, namely, digital noise and image quality loss due to diffraction. Both are related to the size of the sensor. P&S cameras use much smaller sensors that cause more problems in both areas. It’s kind of a long, boring, technical thing as to the why of it all…
If you want a killer deal on a P&S camera that handles digital noise at higher ISO’s very well, check out the Fuji F20.
Personally, I think it would be worth your while to get a DSLR if you are really interested in the hobby, and I can give you some pointers there if you’re really interested. There are some crazy deals out there in the DSLR realm at the moment (Nikon D40 and Pentax K100D come readily to mind).
One final note: everybody is stressing optical zoom. They’re right…but just make sure you get a decent lens. Best bang for the buck in P&S zoom lenses is Panasonic (they use very nice Leica glass). Just watch out using Panny’s at higher ISO’s!
| I got an A100 Sony for Christmas and so far I love it ! I got the 18-70 mm lens pkg and so far I cant complain…I have shot pics in auto mode and manuel and it produces great pics…Danny |
|---|
If you can afford it buy a 6 Megapixel Digital SLR. Instead of getting the camera kit which includes the body and an 18 - 55 mm F/3.5 -5.6 zoom lens as a package get the body only, and get an 18 - 135mm zoom lens. The 18 - 135 mm zoom lens would be equivalent to a 28 - 210 mm zoom lens for a film camera. This body/lens combination will allow you to handle most (but not all) railroad photography situations. But having a single lens has another benefit in that you don’t have to frequently change lenses which opens the camera, and possibly allows a build-up of dust on the sensor which has to be kept clean.
Unless your camera operates from Nickel/Metal Hydride (NiMh) AA cells you should get a spare battery for your camera, keep it charged, and take it with you wherever you go so if one battery runs down you will have a spare. You should use either an ultra violet, a haze, or a skylight filter on the lens to protect it from being scratched.
A 2 Gigabyte flashcard is should be sufficient even if you are shooting both raw and JPEG simultaneously. Raw is like the negative or the master which should not be edited. Also you should look for a camera which will allow you to shoot at high equivalent film speeds without noise; noise in digital ameras is equivalent to grain in films
The July 2007 issue of Consumer Reports has a write-up on digital SLR’s which should give you some tips on buying a digital camera.
I have owned Single Lens Reflex cameras since 1967 thus forty years.
I have had many types and found Canon to be very good.
I started with digital SLRs in 2004.
I am now told that the Canon EOS 350D (or Digital Rebel XT) now replaced by the EOS 400D (Digtal Rebel XTi) was the largest selling SLR camera of all time. I’ve got one (400D), and there isn’t much wrong with it. But I find it hard to believe that a camera released so recently has sold more than all the camera types I’ve had for so long.
But it is a really good camera and don’t take it from me, go to:
Which is the best camera site anywhere.
M636C
I’ll second (third? fourth?) the good advise from everyone else. Consumer Reports and dpreview are really good resources.
The only thing I’ll add is that you should buy a camera you’ll actually use! I know that sounds stupid, so I’ll explain. I had been shooting slides with an SLR since I was a teenager, but, with marriage and kids, there was less and less dedicated railfan time and dragging around a great big camera bag full of glass was a major hassle for the few opportunities I got to go out and shoot. Consequently, the SLR got used less and less - a couple of rolls of film a year - maybe.
A few years ago I purchased a 5MP Kodak DX7530 with 10X optical zoom. It’s small enough to ride around in my briefcase or throw under the seat when I run weekend errands, so the number of railfan shots has increased.
The only complaint I have with it is the need to take the camera dock with me when I travel in order to rechage it. The good news is the lithium ion battery holds a charge very well, unlike Ni-cads or Ni-metal hydrides.
I use to use my Canon 650 35mm with a canon 35 - 135mm and a Promaster 130 - 300mm zoom lens and a Canon 430EZ strobe.
Well I could not afford the cost of film. So I carried my SVHSC JVC video.
I found that action is so much better than stills. Then for some reason the head began going bad and It lost clearity.
I purchased several pocket digital 1, 4mp and several 5mp.
They all took great pictures but had several draw backs.
Now for viewing photos on a computer monitor or the max you will need is 5mp.
If you go to professinal enlargements then 10mp is max. After theis your will not see any differance and waste a lot of money.
check what type of memory card it uses. “SD” card are smaller and cheaper and have more access to equipt. (all by a slight margin)
MAJOR CONCERN!!!
If you had interchangeable lens and equiptment. Take all of them to a store and use them on you desired camera.
I gained great interest in Canon’s 10mp XTi.Canon’s claim is that it excepts all autofocus lens from previous Canon SLR AF camers.
Well I took my smaller lens to the store. It(Canon) lens worked great.
I puchased the XTi for $650.00+.
I shot several dozen short around my yard with my 35 - 135 zoom. Then I put on the pronmaster 135 - 300 lens. I got off about 4 shots and I got an "99"error message on the camers view screen.
NO explanation in the manual as to what the error message mean.
When I contacted Canon via E-Mail. They said to send the Body and lens to them for correction.
After Canon acknowledged th
I’ll be very specific. Get a digital SLR, not a point and shoot. The ability to focus quickly and take multiple shots is essential in rail photography. I have both Canon and Nikon DSLR’s (lot’s of lenses from film days). Nikon, Olympus and Pentax are marketing excellent 6-8 megapixel cameras (unless you are going to prints larger than 8x10 you do not need more than this) with kit lenses that can be bought for close to $500. Think investment. The Nikon D40 and the D50, if you can still find one, are excellent cameras and good value and you can add from a multitude of lenses later on. Both are easy to use with intuitive controls and a program system you can immediately use right out of the box.