Re: Newbie to digital SLR

According to Johannes D. Pedersen <no-spam2@xxxxxxxxx>:
Rich wrote:
On 4 May 2006 06:19:06 -0700, "Johannes D. Pedersen"
<no-spam2@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Is there an FAQ for this group or digital SLRs?

dpreview.com

Thanks. Nice and comprehensive site.
I've taken a brief look at some of the camera reviews, but you really
need to have a great deal of knowledge in order to figure out which
camera is better than the next one.

Despite my bad experience with Canon (the crap lens that came with my
EOS-300) I've had a look at the EOS-350D. I've had recommendations for
Nikon's D-70, which apparently is a step up from the D-50. At this
stage I really don't know which features I'll likely outgrow or ever
need, but pricewise the EOS-350D seems to be in between the two Nikons.
The D-70 seems a little pricey.

It was my entry point to digital SLRs (excluding the weird
NC2000e/c -- a Nikon N90s film SLR married to a back by Kodak to make it
into a digital for the AP -- but very low resolution by today's
standards -- only 1.3 MP.

At this point, I'm finding motivation to move up to the D200
(and keep all of my lenses) -- with one of the motivations being the
ability for the D200 to meter through the older lenses (from my film
days) which the D70 can't meter through.

As for the lens: do all "kits" come with really bad and cheap lenses?

I got the D70 as body only, expecting to use my 28-105mm zoom as
my everyday lens. I later discovered that the 18-70mm "kit" lens was
better than I had expected, and picked one up. I use that more often
than my 28-105mm, though there are things for which the 28-105mm is a
lot better, and I have several other lenses which I use from time to
time.

So -- not all kit lenses are bad -- though you can get more lens
for a *lot* more money -- often more than you spent for the camera body
*with* a kit lens. :-)

Trying to categorize my photography habits I don't know what to say.
It's usually when i travel that I take a lot of photos, City
architecture, landscapes, people and life, nature etc.
I would need a couple of good lenses for situations like this, ideally
-right?

Note that city architecture really needs a perspective
correction type lens, and I believe that those do not work with any of
the Nikon D (digital) series bodies, though someone may step in and tell
me that I am wrong. This kind of lens is needed to eliminate keystoning
caused by pointing the camera up to get the entire front of the
building, resulting in the building being much wider at the bottom of the
image than at the top -- more so than looks natural.

I don't know too much about lenses, but I believe what I've heard is
that a "non-zoom" lens is best for "normal" situations like when taking
pictures of anything close by,

It may offer more resolution, or more light gathering ability,
but a zoom may be "better" in that it is more likely to let you fill the
image with what you wish to shoot. I have a 50mm f1.4 in my collection
which (on the D70) is a short telephoto, but it is excellent for
hand-held low-light images -- especially when you also boot the ISO of
the sensor (at the cost of some noise at the highest settings, but still
better than film pushed to the same ISO).

as a lens like that would let in more
light and give better results, whereas for example trying to take
pictures of a city landscape, needing to zoom in on specific building
etc. you'd need a (big?) zoom lens,

Or -- a slightly less big fixed focal length lens, if that focal
length will let you fill the frame with your intended subject.

which is a hassle to carry along
and not very good for those other "normal" situations because of bad
lighting capabilities, but on a tripod for example would give great
night pictures of city buildings close up. Have I got it right?

The big problem with the big (long) lenses -- zoom and non-zoom
--is their weight, and the added weight of a tripod. You can get some
with the VR (Vibration Reduction) feature, which will let you get away
without a tripod in some situations -- but which add significantly to
the expense. For example, the 70-200mm f2.8 zoom with VR costs around
$1600.00 last I looked -- more than I paid for my camera body and two of
the lenses which I use with it.

So I gather that the ideal solution would be to buy a good camera body
(not a "kit"), then get two really good lenses,

At which point, the price difference between the D50 and the
D70s sink into insignificance. The 18-70mm kit lens with the D70 (and
available for the D50) is a very good starting lens -- until you are
willing to consider paying more for a single lens than for your camera
body.

Note that third-party lenses included in some dealers' "kit"
setups are a significant decrease in quality, and I've read things here
about the Canon kit lenses which suggests that for that, you may wish to
start with a higher quality lens.

and of course one or
two memory cards.

Yes -- and how big varies with your shooting expectations.

Oh, another things: batteries: I've noticed that all of these cameras
use non-standard rechargeable batteries. It would be better if the
camera could use standard AA batteries or something like that, because
if you're travelling, don't have access to electricity for a while, you
could always pop into the corner-store and buy a couple of replacement
batteries.
Perhaps this isn't a problem? Do batteries last for a while on these
Nikon and Canon digital SLRs?

I got over 600 shots on a single battery in a D70, with a lot of
them taken with the built-in flash.

Note that the special batteries are LiION batteries, much more
storage efficiency than even the NiMH AA batteries. I think that you
will need to go through five or six sets of four NiMH AA's before you
come close to draining the LiION battery which comes with the D70.

And normal Alkaline batteries will require a lot more changes to
equal the energy stored in the LiION battery for the D70. (And the D70s
and D50 have a newer version (which will fit in the older cameras) which
has even more storage capacity.

And -- the D70 came with a special holder (I think that it is an
extra cost option with the D70s and the D50) which will hold three CR2
batteries, which *can* be bought in stores.

Finally, memory cards: I've just heard about this "raw" feature.
apparently it's a special file-format which is uncompressed and lets
you edit features you normally can't with JPG images, without any loss,
am I right?

The "without any loss" is the key phrase there. The camera
takes the shot in RAW internally, and then can save it as is, or convert
it to JPEG. But whenever you save an image as JPEG, you lose some
information, and JPEG uses a "lossy" compression algorithm. It achieves
more compression, but at the expense of fine detail -- often detail that
you would not see without zooming into the image on your computer to
pick up information in small parts of the image. (I do this fairly
often, though others may not.)

But without any compression they would take up an awful lot of space,
wouldn't they?

On the Nikon D70 (and D50) you have three levels of compression,
"Fine" (very little compression), "Normal", and "Basic". Basic is the
highest compression, and thus throws away the most image detail. At the
same time, you have three sizes of image "Large", "Medium", and "Small",
with Large being the full size of the image, Medium being half the
number of megapixels, and Small being 1/4 the number of megapixels.

For quite a while, I was shooting at "Fine/Medium", which got me
a claimed 521 shots per 1GB CF card (and in reality over 720 shots when
I took one 1GB CF card to its limit on one very busy weekend.

I now have added a 4GB CF card to my collection, and that one
claims:

Raw 718

Fine/Large 1.1K
Norm/Large 2.3K
Basic/Large 4.4K

Fine/Med 2.0K
Norm/Med 4.0K
Basic/Med 7.6K

Fine/Small 4.4K
Norm/Small 8.4K
Basic/Small 15.1K

Naturally, when on a holiday I want to get as much
quality out of my photos as possible (you never know, perhaps when i
get home and find a killer photo I want to print it out poster size!),

Poster size? For viewing from how far away? I don't think that
the D70 or the D50 is capable of that kind of resolution, even in RAW
mode. 8X10" -- Sure. 11x14" -- probably. 16x20" -- pushing it. But
the same would apply to normal choices of films in a film 35mm,and you
really should be shooting medium format or large format (film or
digital) for poster size images. And those will make these digital SLRs
seem cheap. :-)

so how many photos will fit on say a 1GB memory card?

Take the figures which I gave above, and divide them by 4, since
they are for a 4GB CF card.

BTW would suggest that you get the higher speed CF cards while you
are about it. I've got 80X for the 1GB cards, and 133X for the
4GB cards. This can be a significant advantage when you are
shooting in "burst" mode (just hold the shutter down and it
keeps clicking as fast as the images can be saved off to the CF
card), but where it will save you more time is when you put the
CF card in a reader in your computer to download the images for
processing

I assume when in
major cities I can just pop in with my memory card and have the images
("raw" and/or JPG) transferred to CD-ROM discs.

Take along a laptop with a CD-ROM burner or a DVD-ROM burner
built in -- and don't bother with going to stores to accomplish the
task. Or -- take along extra CF cards. The 1GB card should hold about
178 photos in RAW mode, and a lot more in the various JPEG modes.

And -- you can switch back and forth in the middle of a card
(just hold the "QUAL" button down with your left thumb and rotate the
command wheels to change the compression and the image size), so you can
shoot regularly on your vacation with whatever lets you get all the
shots you want, and switch to RAW for the special shots. Note that
"Basic/Small" is still more image than you need for a web photo, so
consider what you will want to do with the photos.

Phew! I sure have a lot of questions ;-)

And I sure type a lot in answer. :-)

I hope that this helps,
DoN.

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