OT Camera choices OT

Just sayin'

Why not look for a camera that uses AA or AAA battaries?

Suggest taking a good look at the new value priced cameras with zoom lens and macro capability [I use an older Fuji S700 and am very satisfied with the photo quality and have lower resolution selected to save bandwidth when sending over internet. Top resolution is razor sharp. Uses standard SD memory cards and AA batteries.

new(er) version ]

and possibly investing in a photo editor such as GIMP

or Photoshop Also see

I have a Fuji that takes Nikon lenses - both digital and my

1963 models when I was AFRS photo guy. I was a Minolta and Nikon buyer at the PX but lost my Minolta's with a break-in in 71. I shot some nice 500mm Nikon photos with my Fuji. Not the greatest MP but it is smart and does well. Bought two digitals for it for quick and general purpose. Use my analog and telescope when I want.

Mart> On Mon, 23 Feb 2015 09:05:59 -0800, snipped-for-privacy@whidbey.com wrote: >

[ ... ]

A scanner that I use turns 35mm full frame images into 72MB files (no compression) -- and that gives enough resolution so for Ektrachrome 64, film grain becomes obvious before pixel size when zooming in tight.

Unless you need to do extreme cropping -- because your lenses and physical situation at the time did not let you get close enough for a full frame image. (And you do lose some resolution as you hit the limits of your lens, too.)

Indeed so.

Given the choice between Canon and Nikon, I would say that you should chose whichever accepts any lenses which you may already have. If you don't have either, then dig deep into the reviews and the listing of features to see whether any particular feature jumps up and says "I would be really useful for the way *you* want to use the camera." :-0

Enjoy, DoN.

Film grain should become obvious with a scanned image size of around

12 MB. I scan with a Schneider Componon-S lens into a 24 MP camera, and I can see the grain in old Ektachromes easily -- even Kodachromes, barely. A lot will depend on the quality of the imaging lens or scanner.

I also have a number of drum-scanned ("laser" scanned) 35 mm Kodachromes, professionally scanned for $25/each (ouch!), in which the grain is obvious at about the same resolution.

Watch out for matching Canon cameras to older lenses. The mix-and-match is a little complicated, and I forget which works with which, but the newer cameras made for the EF-S Canon lenses expect a much deeper rear element than those of older lenses.

Aack! I mean 12 MP. That would be 36 MB with normal 24-bit color.

My pecking order is Olympus, Canon, and Nikon. Lots of people like Sony. I like Olympus because the cameras are physically smaller than Nikon and Canon. That said, if I were a pro, shooting at least 20,000 frames a year, I'd get Nikon top end, so I wouldn't wear the camera out too soon.

There is little difference between 18, 20, and 24 Mpix in practice. Look at how the photos look - there is far more to it than Mpix. I like dpreviews.com here.

And, as others have said, handle the camera and see how you like it's controls.

Put your money into the camera and especially the lens. Avoid the bundles - as others have said, the other stuff is usually junk.

Buy two batteries, so when one runs down, you have the other in your pocket, ready to go. Make sure you have a battery case, so you can carry a charged battery in your pocket without danger of shorting the battery.

And don't buy any camera model that has been out less than a year or two.

Joe Gwinn

The Sony Alpha 58 looks really really good for the money . Has the extras like battery , case , and tripods , two Sony branded lenses and very good reviews . It also has what they call "translucent mirror technology" which is supposed to help minimize shake - also has the stabilizing in the camera instead of the lens . I'll need to purchase separately the remote shutter release and a macro/fisheye lens , but it's still less than the Nikon D3200 at WM with one lens and no other extras .

If you want to get natural shots of kids -- especially interacting with critters -- you really *want* good fast autofocus, and a zoom which works quickly *for* *you*. (My preference are the lenses which zoom by sliding the collar forward and back, and focus by rotating it if not auto-focus. I've got an older Nikon which fits those characteristics which I use for such things. Remember -- getting close to kids being active doesn't work -- they keep moving, following their interests, and if forced to hold still, will produce much less intersting pictures.

The lens in question is AF Nikkor 35-135mm f:3.5-4.5 (maximum aperture varies with focal length). It also has a pretty good macro mode, by pressing a little silver button on the zoom collar and rotating it.

But for general purpose, my favorite lens is the 28-105mm, f:3.5-4.5 D (equivalent to 35-135mm on a full frame or film camera with the 1.5 crop factor of my sensor). It has an even better macro mode. However -- this does not have the sliding collar zoom feature, so I would not use it for quick shots of kids being kids -- unless they were distracted enough to not notice me and my camera.

Note that some of the new lenses made as "kit" lenses to go with the cameras with the crop factor will not work properly with a full frame sesnor, or with film. The image blurs out towards the corners and edges. They also typically don't have an aperture ring, depending on the camera telling the lens to stop down to a specific aperture.

Good Luck, DoN.

Depending upon how serious you are, of course: but couldn't you just get further away and crop? You'd be less intrusive (shots more candid), framing a non issue, more depth of field.

A not-serious-at-all picture taker, Bob

You lose sharpness and selective focus. With modern cameras and their high pixel counts, sharpness is not a function of pixels as much as it is of lens acuity, and the apparent "circles of confusion" become larger as you crop and enlarge an image.

Selective focus often is important in portraits, because you use it to blur the background and/or foreground, to focus attention on the subject. It's a function of several things, but you lose some of it if you shoot a larger area and then crop out a smaller portion of it.

Someone probably will now explain all of the issues regarding selective focus; here's hoping you don't wind up confused by the full barrage. d8-)

Here's a good example of selective focus:

And the confused result when you can't use it on a busy scene:

The still doesn't reveal what the audience sees, that only the main characters are moving.

It requires a relatively long lens and more importantly the ability to predict where the center of action will move to while looking through it, which is relatively easy for sports and airshows, not so much for kids or animals moving randomly, or crashes at auto races.

-jsw

Ah, yes - that's probably the only thing that I do miss with a P&S camera. But, kids-and-animals shots are not very amenable to selective focus. Large depth of field is more desirable. Unless you're _really_ fast focusing.

Selective focus is critical for "quality" photographs. I.e., where the photo has intrinsic value. Not so much for snapshots where the value is memorializing the moment. Now, the serious photographer will want his memorial pictures to be quality. For me, I know that I have a lot of treasured pictures only because of the convenience of P&S.

Bob

On 3/1/2015 11:41 AM, Jim Wilkins wrote: ...

Indeed! The kids-and-animals context that I was addressing pretty much wants indiscriminate focus.

Sure enough, and I have lots of those, too. But the portraits I've shot of relatives' kids, the ones that they have framed on their walls, were shot mostly with a wide-open f2.8, 105 mm or longer lens. They're the ones that they go "ooh! ah!" over.

I shot a lot of sports photos over a period of 20 years with long, manual-focus lenses. As the man said, "practice, practice." I liken it to wing shooting.

Sometimes the best camera, is the one you have with you...

Jon

I practiced following cars on the back loop straightaway of the Hockenheim race track, which I could reach on a bicycle via fire trails from Heidelberg. Aiming a camera at race cars didn't attract the attention that practicing on road traffic would, although my goal was quick shots of terrorist suspect's license plates.

At first I couldn't even keep them in view as they flew past 20' away.

I just tried following the traffic outside with the old Pentax. I can still keep the split-image circle on the driver's door. The snowbanks are much too high to see license plates.

A good, challenging coordination exercise for this is to find and follow aircraft with binoculars.

Bob, get farther away and use a telephoto lens to crop for you.

Defocused areas are a result of depth of field (or lack thereof), so it's easy to create that with variation in aperture. AFAIC, "selective focus" is just another term for "depth of field" or "selective aperture".

Not seeing your point here. :/

It's much easier to do when your camera has selectable styles of autofocus, for those of us who allow our very capable cameras to do a better job at it than we could. Prioritizing aperture is another method of telling the camera what you're after.

Not so easy unless your lens is long enough and has a large enough aperture. Many pocket cameras do not.

Selective focus is something you do with the camera. Depth of field is something that the camera does with you.