10 Reasons To Buy a DSLR 657
Kurtis writes, "If you're planning on getting a digital camera for yourself this holiday season, here's 10 reasons why you should choose a Digital Single Lens Reflex camera instead of a point-'n'-shoot. DSLR cameras are obviously not perfect for everyone. This article also has a couple of small blurbs about who shouldn't buy a DSLR, and a few things that could be deemed negative aspects of DSLR cameras."
Tags are interesting (Score:3, Insightful)
Another reason not to get one. (Score:3, Insightful)
You need both (Score:5, Insightful)
It is better to have some slightly less snazzy snapshots of you and your friends with a compact camera then to miss out on photographing the occasion altogether because the camera is too big to lug around.
Re:Another reason not to get one. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Tags are interesting (Score:4, Insightful)
Number one reason not to go DSLR (Score:5, Insightful)
I love my Nikon D70 (especially since I used hotel points to buy it), but for every shot I get that others don't have a chance because of shutter speed or ability to use another lens, there's one that I missed because I didn't consider lugging out my camera bag for some event. With compact cameras being as small as ipods these days, I'd recommend that you start with one of those first, and when you want to take it to the next level, get a second camera as a dslr.
Why I switched from SLR (Score:4, Insightful)
Since my teen years, I've had an SLR. For my wife's 30th bday I bought her a reasonable quality (Pentax) weatherproof aoto load auto focus auto flash PAS. Of course I turned my nose down and continued to use my SLR with clunky lenses and flash etc. So, often, my camera stayed at home in the closet while hers was handy in a pocket, handbag etc. I still have the SLR but I have not used it for over 8 years now.
About 4 years ago we decides digital was worth it. Got a Canon PAS + Zoom. It does a great job and is always handy. A DSLR would just get left behind.
The only time you want a DSLR is if you want to take professional pics. Professionals only account for a few % of the camera toting population.
Re:Go Digital SLR! (Score:4, Insightful)
Compare the point-n-shoot with what you consider an entry level camera (the Canon 20D) and we're looking at 2 completely different users. This $1000+ camera (after lenses, accessories, etc.) is far from simple to use, is less forgiving in automatic/autofocus mode, doesn't offer video, and could never fit in a pocket (or in most cases not even a backpack). It doesn't meet the needs of your average user
I have met so many average users who get sweeped into the marketing hype around DSLRs and then are highly disappointed. In the end, they often end up taking their point-n-shoot everywhere, while using the DSLR on a tripod for Christmas pictures. Hardly an effective use of $1000.
Re:Go Digital SLR! (Score:3, Insightful)
Apple builds intel processors? To me, apple always says less versatility - not more. You should maybe tone down the fanboism lest people get the wrong idea.
D40 (Score:5, Insightful)
By dropping the sensor resolution way down and ditching the bells and whistles you wouldn't find in similarly priced compacts either, they're looking at launching the first sub $500 DSLR.
For digital compact users who think DSLRs are too expensive - it's no around the price of a decent digital compact, no more.
For film SLR users who think DSLRs are too expensive, it's down to a few dozen rolls of film price difference and far less than the cost of a single great lens. Shoot clear of about a thousand shots, you'll save money with a DSLR.
As for power consumption, I'm not sure what's holding you back?
Batteries are rechargable so there's no real cost.
They last a reasonable length of time. A battery grip like the "big ED" holds a pair of batteries so it's down to one change every couple of hours.
Changing batteries is no more painful than changing film. If you shoot at any kind of speed you'll have to change rolls of film far more frequently than you'll have to change batteries. If you don't shoot that fast, your camera will go to idle mode and you'll get many hours of use out of a single battery.
Finally, yes, great film is still great. But, aside from its price, there are two main arguments against it:
1) No instant feedback. Say you're using ISO 3200 film to capture fast falling water droplets. Until you develop the film, you've no idea if you actually caught the instant. With digital, the proof's right there for review. It kind of sucks to finally develop film only to realize you didn't catch what you thought you did and have no way to practically recreate the shoot.
2) OK, you've loaded your camera with ISO 3200 film for a specific shot. The building rumbles, a plane has crashed outside. You spend the next couple of minutes trying to wind your film through, get it out without ruining your existing shots, searching for the ISO 200 that you didn't think to bring with you anyway. By the time you're ready to shoot, the drama of the once in a lifetime shot has long since past. Your buddy with a DSLR slides the dial to ISO 200, steps outside and gets the award winning shot. Sure, planes crashing are extreme examples - but life's filled with amazing unexpected moments that DSLRs let you get whilst changing film will miss many of them.
The world's moved on. Those arguments were fair enough for the first couple of generations of DSLRs. Honestly, it's now reached the point where it's like saying, "Steam gives better torque than internal combustion engines. I'm not going to buy one of those new fangled cars when my stanley steamer car works just fine." If you're determined to reinforce your preconceptions, you can probably just about find justification - but the rest of the world's moved on and for good reason.
Re:10 reasons NOT to buy a DSLR (Score:3, Insightful)
One more negative, one BIG positive (Score:4, Insightful)
Problem is that at any kind of event, as soon as you walk in with an SLR with a flash, you always get "Oh, the photographer is here" comments. You just can't be discrete toting one of those things around.
But, drunk girls at 3 frames per second never fails to yield interesting results. The 'model instinct' naturally comes out and nasty sh$t starts to happen....
Re:Number one reason not to go DSLR (Score:2, Insightful)
Parent is right - I've got the converse situation. My Canon IXUS 50 [canon.com.au] is a great little camera with a rugged metal body and a decent control set. I can even do some manual tricks with it. However, it's got the tiny lens and tiny CCD, and consequently there's only so much you can achieve with it.
Still, the sheer ability to drop my camera in my pocket without bothering to think about its weight or inconvenience has meant that I have had my camera on hand to take some very memorable and artistic shots, with just a little patience. I intend to buy a DSLR (Nikon's new offerings are attractive - D80 [dpreview.com]?) but purchasing a point-and-shoot digicam first is a Very Good Idea.
It comes down to what you want, or need, to achieve. My opinion? Take whatever camera you have wherever you go, and keep taking photos. I don't care if it's a mobile phone camera or a Hasselblad, just be creative and get used to setting up your shots. Photography isn't so much about the tool as it is about the photographer.
Re:Bummer (Score:3, Insightful)
Sure, you have your DSLR cameras. You also have your point-and-shoots. However, just because a camera isn't a DSLR does NOT mean that you can call it a point-and-shoot. Take for example this [canon.com] camera. It classifies as neither. Just to keep everybody informed! (There still is a middle ground.)
Re:Why I switched from SLR (Score:3, Insightful)
If you just want snapshots get the point and shoot, if you want photographs get the DSLR.
/. should fix the tagging system or trash it (Score:1, Insightful)
The irony is that tagging is supposed to make it easier to sort through information, and all the
Re:Go Digital SLR! (Score:5, Insightful)
Or you actually want to adjust settings. It's no comparison.
I disagree. I have an XT and I've used a 30D. The 30D's controls do make adjusting settings a little quicker and easier, but with a little practice you can do it nearly as quickly with the XT/XTi. Chances are that your photographs will benefit more from taking the price difference between the 30D and the XTi and spending it on a better lens. 30D+decent lens == XTi+very nice lens. Unless you're regularly taking shots where the faster continuous shooting mode is important, or where you really need to be able to very quickly adjust exposure (and you're experienced enough at it to twiddle aperture and shutter speed simultaneously), I think you're better off spending the cash on glass.
Re:Go Digital SLR! (Score:3, Insightful)
Personally, I think the question is not whether to have a P&S or a DSLR, it's whether to have just the P&S or a P&S *and* the DSLR. All those reasons that a P&S is more convenient for a casual photographer are just as true for a serious photographer when he's not on a shoot. He mentions in the article the idea that the photographer, not the camera, makes the picture. There's a corollary to that -- the cheap P&S you're carrying in your front pocket takes a better picture than the high end DSLR that's at home in its case. You never know when the perfect photo might just happen and it's a lot easier to be ready all the time with a P&S.
Modern P&S digicams are good enough and cheap enough that unless you really *know* that you want a DSLR, you probably don't really want it. Get the P&S and take pictures with it. Try to take the kinds of pictures you're interested in taking. Most of them will come out just fine. If you really find that you don't have the control or image quality that you're after, even after practicing your framing and working with the settings that you do have on the P&S, then think about the DSLR. In the meantime, you'll have learned a lot about composition and subjects. And, face it, most of the pictures you'd have taken during this learning period would have been lousy with a DSLR too, so you're not likely to have missed out on much. This has the additional benefit that the same camera will be cheaper tomorrow than it is today (barring major earthquakes in Southeast Asia), so there's no reason to hurry out and buy it.
Re:Pentax K100D Seconded but most importantly.... (Score:1, Insightful)
Let's be realistic rather than pandering to the OSS-biased moderators, shall we?
Good quality pictures, the sort of thing you see in the galleries of highly rated photos on www.photo.net, come from RAW photos that are processed in Photoshop, Photoshop, Photoshop, etc to bring out the best of the shot.
Re:Why I switched from SLR (Score:5, Insightful)
In good light, though, I don't think SLRs have much advantage in image quality.
Yes, they do, actually. The larger sensors and larger, higher-quality lenses produce much sharper images. Take an SLR with a good lens and a P&S that have the same number of pixels and look at the images at 1:1 zoom. The P&S will be fuzzy, have chromatic aberrations like color fringing on all of the high-contrast lines, and will generally have much less fine detail, even in the center. The corners will be much worse than the SLR. Some P&S cameras also have pretty severe vignetting problems.
And that's just image quality. The other thing an SLR gives you is control. Depth of field control, in particular, can make a huge difference in the perceived quality and emotional impact of a photo. Even people who don't know anything about photography perceive a portrait with a shallow DoF (subject in focus, background blurred) as being better and more professional than one with a deep DoF, even if they can't say what makes it better. I've actually taken the same shot both ways and showed them around to get reactions. Better P&S cameras give you some aperture control, but they simply can't match an SLR.
Other important advantages of a DSLR are in the accessories: Lenses, filters, flashes, etc. By changing some attachments, a DSLR can become different kinds of cameras for different kinds of photos... including many kinds which simply don't exist in the P&S market. Some of those advantages are in poor light, but many are not. I can use a 400mm zoom lens for wildlife shots, for example, or a 90mm macro for pictures of flowers and insects. I can throw on a polarizing filter to cut the haze in landscape shots, or filter out unwanted reflections on water. I often use a flash even in full daylight, to fill in shadows on faces and soften the harsh glare of sunlight -- P&S flashes don't have the power to do that, even if the camera will let you.
I'm really just a novice [photo.net] photographer, just beginning to learn how to take good pictures, but even I can already get far more out of my DSLR than I can out of my high-end P&S camera.
Watch out for the "lens factor!" (Score:3, Insightful)
However, if you are a longtime film-SLR user and have an investment in SLR lenses for some platform, then watch out!
In a nutshell, most of the lenses in your collection will not be really usable with your shiny new DSLR! This is because most DSLR use an imaging sensor that has a different size than the 35 MM film size. What this means is that the effective focal lengths of all your lenses are going to be different from what they are when fixed to a film camera. Nikon has a multiplication factor of 1.5. Depending on the model, Canon has a multiplication factor of 1.5 or 1.6. [Some of Canon's Very Expensive cameras have a 35-mm size sensor and have no multiplication factor]
What this means is that your 50mm lens will have an effective focal length of75 mm, reducing its utility considerably. You will find that you will have to replace pretty much all your stock lenses with new "digital-ready" lenses, a pretty significant investment overall. I am surprised that the article did not mention it.
Why is this? The camera companies say that full-frame sensors are expensive, and that they don't contribute much to image quality anyway. The former might be true, but not something that investment and time won't fix. The latter is completely bogus. They said the same thing about the APS system, but the marketplace quickly figured out that this was not right and rejected the system.
Here is the real reason: Companies like Canon and Nikon make far more money on their lenses than they do on their cameras. They are always looking for ways to make you buy more lenses. If their old-line lenses could work with the new DSLRs, they have lost a huge profit opportunity! But they cannot change the format of the camera-lens connector without a huge backlash from the customers. So this is a way by which they can force the adoption of an entirely new line of lenses, at the same time maintaining plausible deniability.
If you regularly use an external flash, you will have to buy a new external flash as well. The flashes that used to work with film cameras are not fully compatible with the DSLRs.
Magnus
Re:lenses lenses lenses (Score:3, Insightful)
There are lots of wankers with equipment fetishes* on sites like that. Many of them have more money than sense, and shouldn't be taken seriously. Many SLRs with basic zoom lenses produce very good results.
And with the point and shoot digital LCD to review pictures immediately, looking thru the lens doesn't matter as much.
There's no comparison between an LCD preview and actually looking through the lens. It's a poor substitute.
* Hey, I have an equipment fetish myself, but I don't invest my ego in it, or begrudge people who use cheaper gear that suits their needs.
11 Reasons to Buy a Digital PHD Camera (Score:3, Insightful)