Suggestions for a replacement Camera
- This topic has 9 replies, 7 voices, and was last updated Apr 20, 2011 at 1:08 pm by
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New here to this board , found it while looking for helpful info on cameras for outdoor photography. It looks like there’s a lot of knowledge here on the subject so if you don’t mind I’d like to pick your brains a little. I’m a total amateur that has been using a point/shoot for several years taking mostly fly fishing pics , last week I was free-diving with it and exceeded it’s depth limits…you can guess the rest. Anyway I’m looking at new ones and am considering an upgrade to an DSLR. I don’t want to spend big money , as it is just a hobby for me , but I do enjoy it so I’d like something that takes good shots. Is it foolish for me to spend the extra money with my lack of expertise , will I do just as well with a good p/s? Any suggestions or recomendations are greatly appreciated. I’ll be following this site trying to learn a few things…Thanks guys.
Jeff stepping up to a dslr IMO shouldn’t be about doing better as there are PnS option that take great images, capable of quite alot. Ive images published including 2 page spreads taken with my PnS. It should be about wanting to learn and grow with photography.
If you want to learn and grow then yes a dslr might be what you want. If you don’t want to spend hours,weeks,years learning than I might give more weight to a good PnS.
Don’t mistake what I’m saying by thinking that by learn I men it’s hard, it’s not hard to get going, it’s just that theres enough to learn to last you a lifetime.
Year 1 the basics
year 2 landscape
year 3 macro
year 4 artificial/studio lighting
year 5 long lens/wildlife
year 6 portraits
and on and on and on.I love it, I figure one day I’ll leave this world and still not have learned near as much as I might have liked about different syles/genres/techniques, etc
Thats the power of DSLRs imo..they open the door to photogrpahy in ways PnSs cant, despite both taking great pictures.
Jeff, while I’m nowhere close to the level of John or most on here, I do agree with what he says. All of my fishing buddies carry PnS cameras and they do take some amazing pictures. But you can do a lot of different things with a DSLR. It’s a fascinating learning process.
I bought my first a few years ago to take HS Volleyball pictures of my daughter. Talk about jumping right into one of the hardest things in the world to capture, but I have loved it.
BTW, Love the blog, you have done a great job with it. Seen it first a few weeks ago on OAF.
I appreciate the replies…that first answer pretty much said it all and gave me something to think about. I do enjoy taking pictures and obvously enjoy it even more when they turn out decent , but as stated a better camera doesn’t take better shots without some extra knowledge from the guy behind the lens.
Jeff, I’ve gone the other way. I started a project to record my year using a compact system camera after finding myself taking less shots as I gathered more professional gear.
I shelved the dslr kit and am putting at least one shot a day on my Flickr account as I aim to shoot for 365 days with the little Lumix GF-1.
Images have been coming out well enough for my print editor to be happy, and I’m quite content.
The world isn’t perfect however. The little 20mm pancake lens is great and happily sits inside my waders with the strap around my neck but I do miss the extra reach and the complete up close macro of the old kit. I’ve recently adapted to this by getting an old Canon FD 50mm macro which although manual focus was cheap as chips and is great quality.
In short I really like having the portability of the little lumix and having more control than a standard p&s is great. I miss some bits of the dslr kit and find myself seeing the odd thing that I can’t quite capture but on the whole, it’s meeting 80% of my needs.
Flickr 365 photos project – http://www.flickr.com/photos/nadder-diary/sets/72157625997847566/
Pics and words on the blog linked in sig.
Malcolm
I bought my first digital P&S this year and I’m really happy with it. It honestly has become my carry around camera that I use most of the time. I recently took a vacation to Sequoia National Park and barely used my DSLR the entire time since I was mostly shooting snap shots. I got some great shots on it too! I do miss the manual controls of an SLR or Compact camera, but it’s really not that big of a deal for me.
That said, the jump into the SLR game can be a fun one. It can also get frustrating and expensive depending how far down the path you go. The major manufacturers are going to all have comprable gear.
You may want to pick up a P&S camera now though, that market is going to start hurting in the next year or two. Smartphones have taken a big chunk out of the P&S market and your options may become a bit more limited in the not too distant future.
http://society6.com/grainfarmer Fly Fishing and Landscape open edition Photography prints.
http://grainfarmer.vsco.co/ iPhone photos
http://instagram.com/chad_simcox InstagramFor a P&S a G12 or S95 would be my choice. For a starter DSLR I’d look for a used mid level body with low shutter actuation’s from POTN, Fred Miranda, KEH, etc, and some high end glass.
P & S, megapixels and glass?
I am a rank amature as far as photography is concerned, but I did have one question about point and shoot cameras.
Canon actually went down in MPs on the G11 and G12. the G10 was around 14 and the newer G’s are around 10. I assume they did this to improve the high iso.
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