Digital Photography

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Hi all

Is anybody interested in digital photgraphy ?

If so what kind of camera do you have ?

I have a Fuji S5500

 

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Indeed, my wife and I are both into photography. We hope to turn it into a business at some point, mainly weddings etc...

We currently use all Nikon equipment, we have a Nikon D100 DSLR, Nikon D50 DSLR, Nikon Coolpix 7900, a Nikkor 18-70mm DX ED, Nikkor 70-300mm ED, Nikkor 50mm F1.8 and a couple of Nikon SB600 Speedlights. Couple of Manfrotto monopods and a Gitso tripod.

We dream of getting a couple of D200's each when we can afford it.

 

Yikes

 

BOOOOO!!!

NIKON SUCKS!!


whew, got that out of the way.

well i have the canon 300D. nothing great, i know. but i've had to put my camera aside for awhile for certain reasons. though i've continued to study photography and nurture my newfound love for it.
so i have the kit lens (18-55mm f/3.5-56 if i remember well) and the 'bigma' , 50-500mm at f/4-5.6.

though once i pick the hobby up again, i have my eyes set on a 20D, and some sweet L glass like the 70-200 f/2.8L and the 24-70 f/2.8L.
*sigh*

yeah then i got a manfrotto tripod and monopod.

and was gonna get a canon 100mm macro and macro studio setup this summer but decided not to for lack of space.

 

yeah, i am. Went digital about 2 years ago. Started off with a Olympus 5050Z, great camera. Got a Nikon D70, SB600 flash gun, Velbon fluid headed tripod.
I love digital- there is so much more you can do with it than film in my opinion. Not to mention the wasted photo's you can have when using film...

 

Good lad Boyce another Nikon man! Since your a mod now Boyce I think you ought to ban Omni for mentioning the 'C' word.

 

LOL

Someone i know who has been interested in photography for years swears by Nikon....

 

Quoted from Why Your Camera Does Not Matter
© 2005 Ken Rockwell

http://www.kenrockwell.com/tech/notcamera.htm

 

Good link, Bluerinse.

I'd agree with this as from my experience my best photography was done back in the 70's with a Ricoh 35mm slr with a 50mm lens and a 70-210mm zoom that cost me all of about $150 for the kit that included a camera bag back then. It's the ability of the photographer to "see" that makes all the difference. I had just as many photos hanging on the walls of the local photo shops back then as the guys who were spending a $1,000 more their cameras and lenses.

Sure, you can't blow up a photograph taken with a lesser quality lens as far as you can a really sharp lens, but the quality of the photograph itself is all related to the photographer's "eye".

 

I don't know if that is aimed at anyone in particular, but I don't remember anyone saying yet that 'I can take amazing photo's because I've got great equipment etc..'. I have always been a firm believer of 'it's the eye behind the lens that counts' and I would claim to be anything but an enthusiastic amateur.

Since I got my D100 though I have learnt a great deal about light, exposures and manipulating the various settings on the camera to try and get the best out of it. My wife & I went for Digital SLR's (as opposed to cheaper point & shoot camera's) because we wanted the flexibility of being able to change lenses and have camera's that respond instantly when you need them too, ie high FPS when it comes to action shooting etc... This is something you don't get on most consumer cameras.

 

I'd agree that an slr has a great many advantages over the "consumer" cameras. If I ever find a job again I'll get a digital camera but I will wait until I can get an slr. The ability to fully stop a lens down for full depth of field for macro photograhpy and the variety of lenses does add a lot of flexibility. There were a lot of times I wanted more lenses back in the 70's, but being restricted did teach me a lot about how to be creative to get the shot I wanted.

I looked into large format photography at one point and those things are incredible. Once you really learn how to use them you can surpass what you can do with slr. The ability to adjust the bellows gives an amazing flexibility that an slr will never have. You'll never do sports photography with one, but WOW what you can do with landscapes and portraits.

BTW, here is a link another computer/IT related forum, broadbandreports.com , with a digital imagery gallery. There are some really cool pictures there. If you like macro photography there's a guy there that has taken some really incredible macro shots.

 

No Modey it was not aimed at anyone in particular. I was just checking out some of the gear that had been mentioned in this thread and came across that article which I thought was pretty good and something which we should *all* bear in mind.

Freddy, thanks for the link, I got sidetracked for ages on that site. Some of the images are stunning!!

 

I think David Bailey would disagree

Seriously, it is the photographer that composes the scene, but it would be madness to suggest a £100 camera could take a picture as a good as a £1000 by the same person.

My tuppence....

 

Boyce, another snippet from the same page suggests the writer must be mad

 

I take it this would be the same bloke who pulled more birds in his Lada than the guy that won the lottery who bought a Ferrari 355 then?!

 

What happens to the bloke when he blows his entire lottery winnings and cannot afford the insurance costs, where are the birds then, ah there they are running off in the distance.

 

I think that the circumstances of the photo or scene in question would dictate wether or not a pro photogappher could get the same results with an el cheapo disposable or a really top end piece of kit.

Eg, if the light was poor in most cases you would be screwed with a really cheap camera, but with something like a Nikon D2X it's focusing ability in low light is astounding.

I think the more you spend on kit, the more options it gives you, but being able to truly get the most out of the equipment is the key thing. I certainly don't think I have got anywhere near the best out of my camera thus far, but it's fun and interesting learning how ...


As for Ken Rockwell, he's seen as very outspoken and has very strong opinions on certain subjects and quite often his reviews of equipment are contradicted by many other reputable websites / reviewers. That's certainly the opinion I formed after hearing a good number of people disagreeing with him on various other sites.

 

I think Modey has just about summed it up.

 

When I read the link that Bluerinse provided what I took from there is that what the statement about the cheap camera vs the spendy camera was all about was that some people so focus on equipment that they forget the most important part of photography--the imagination of the photographer.

The context of the story was that a couple of guys in a class could do nothing but talk about Leica lenses and went on and on about them. They were derailing the focus of the class.

I don't think anyone, including the guy who made the statement in the article, would suggest that anyone with a cheap camera could do macro photography or that one of the el cheapo cameras have lenses that have low enough level of optical distortion to allow you to take a picture that can be blown up to poster size.

I think you are taking the intent and meaning of the statement out of its context when you start making technical aspects of clarity, sharpness, and low light focusing the point of the guy's statement.

But, even that being said take a look at some of Ansel Adam's photography. He didn't have any electronics to do the focusing for him. Nobody had that type of stuff 30 years ago even, and yet low light photography has been around for quite a while. I think what happens to the photographers of today is that they become so dependent on technology that they can't imagine doing things without it and lose out on some important skills.

I take a look at a lot of what is available today in cameras and feel that much of the creativity is gone. I did a lot with a camera that had as it's most advanced feature aperture priority. But I think I could do far more interesting things with a view camera and they have none of these things. They are set up completely manually. That's the way the old time photographers did it and they took some amazing photographs with lenses that are about the equivalent of a lot of cheapo lenses today. They just had a much higher skill level than the vast majority of photographers today because they really had to know what they were doing just to be able to take a picture. I know if I were able to work with a view camera for a few years my photography skills would increase tremendously.

 

while i have a dslr, i always keep it on manual. i hate to let the camera 'decide' on what is best. same for 'autofocus', i just don't trust it.