Re: Please indulge me .......
- From: Chris Malcolm <cam@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: 4 Jan 2009 12:57:27 GMT
SteveB <oldfart@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
I have decided on the Canon 50D, and am very close to purchase.
On your budget is it worth more than twice the price of a Sony A350?
Would not spending that extra money on better lenses more than
compensate in image quality?
If I had to buy one lens that would cover a lot of things, or be a first
lens, which one would that be? What would be a good two lens package? What
would be a good second lens if only one comes with the camera?
Checkout the Tamron 18-250mm zoom, which is surprisingly good quality
for its range, and value for money. It might do everything you want in
one general purpose lens. It's later brother, the 18-270, may be even
better, but mine is the 250 one. It's distinctly better than the
earlier 18-200 version.
It serves me very well as a general purpose single lens, but I so like
having a very wide angle that I really need two general purpose zooms,
the other being a Sigma 10-20mm. I'd really like a 10-350mm zoom with
better full aperture edge to edge and end to end sharpness than those
two, but that may be technologically impossible :-)
I take a lot of "general" pictures, that is scenery, travel, and grandkids.
I like to do macro on flowers and 1-3 feet on hummingbirds.
Macro distance is affected by focal length. The 18-250mm may have good
enough macro to do that. It can get down to showing the hairs on a
bumblebee's legs.
I also do
macros less than one foot on specialized fabrication to share with
associated newsgroups. I also like some telephoto capability for large
birds.
250mm on a 1.6 crop sensor gives you 35mm film camera equiv of 400mm.
I like to experiment with low light situations like sunsets,
firesides, twilight, and forest shade. Are the 2x adapters a reasonable way
to go to get a longer lens without the cost?
On a long easily portable zoom you may lose too much aperture to keep
auto focussing with a 2X zoom. You may lose it altogether, or suffer
it becoming very fussy and unreliable.
As for flashes, long long ago when I had a b&w darkroom, I had a bounce
flash with clip on filters that were useful for many situations. Are these
still the way to go, or do the current electronic ones have that
flexibility? I notice that most high end cameras today have hot shoes, so I
am ass-u-ming that additional flashes are used.
If your budget is limited, and you recall how to set your flashes up
manually (or auto thyristor), and don't mind doing it, you can acquire
a sophisticated multi-flash setup very cheaply by using your old
flashes, or buying old second hand ones that today's young rich kids
don't want because they're not automatic enough.
But modern sophisticated and expensive system flashes do a great deal
of extra useful automation of flash exposure if you want to pay for
it, which means they can do stuff on the run that could take you
minutes to set up manually. But sometimes one single set up in advance
is all you need. For example you can manually set up a big ceiling
bounce flash or two in a room, and then snap grandkids all afternoon
with motion freezing flash and fixed aperture which looks like natural
light.
I have taken pictures now for fifty years, but do not have the experience in
the technical aspects of a lot of you who are younger . This is a big deal
money outlay for me, and I would like to be satisfied with it, and not run
into the disappointment of buying something and then having to buy another.
I think this camera will fill my needs and I won't outgrow it in my
lifetime.
Provided of course that the new capabilities of your new camera don't
allow you to acquire new skills and grow in your photographic
capabilities and ambitions.
If my old eyes and legs and bank account are still up to it by the
time Hasselblad image quality is surpassed in a non-reflex camera of
SLR size I may have great difficulty resisting the purchase :-)
--
Chris Malcolm
.
- References:
- Please indulge me .......
- From: SteveB
- Please indulge me .......
- Prev by Date: Re: Digital Camera Sensor Performance
- Next by Date: Looking for suggestions on simple start to timelapse.
- Previous by thread: Re: Please indulge me .......
- Next by thread: I have found some great on Equipment
- Index(es):
Relevant Pages
|
