Camera suggestions for RR pics

I've go an Olympus E-Volt 500, around $700US.

Real good for outdoor use, and fast. I don't miss shots anymore.

Here's a shot I took of my son's n-scale just playing around, didn't do anything special. Just point and shot.

Warning: This is the full resulotion shot. about 1.2M

Jim

For no delay you'll need an SLR. The compact digitals all have a delay between shutter button press and shutter action. For under $1000 you migth want to look at the Canon line. Either the EOS Digital Rebel XT (aka 350D) at $943 (body and lens) or the slightly more expensive EOS

30D at $1080 (body and lens) will work good for you. Both camera bodies are in the 8 megapixel class and are available from B&H in NYC. Their web order system works quite well, from my personal experience.

I use an older Canon 10D with an image stabilized lens for my railfanning. This is a 6.3 megapixel slr camera. Don't be fooled into getting into a negapixel race. Unless you're going to be making huge blow-ups (over 11x14 inches) or doing severe cropping of an image, 8 megapixel will do you well.

Good morning Frank;

I use a Nikon D40 which is relatively cheap. It has both automatic and manual settings, a variety of lighting conditions, ISO range of 200 to 1600, a small built-in flash, shoots black & white, shoots RAW images with a resolution up to 3008x2000 pixels per inch. It will take you longer to get ready than the camera. It has a pixel resolution of 6 megapixels: unless you plan on very large prints, it will suffice. In addition to the camera, invest in some decent editing software as well if you intend to post pictures on a website. With RAW images and fine resolution, you're looking at about 130 pictures per CD. The lens has a left hand mount. Depending on how you use the camera, the battery may last you all day, and a 2 Gb chip will take 300 pictures or more. It will literally take auto focused flash pictures in near darkness.

Choose whichever camera best suits your needs. The above are suggestions, but will hopefully give you an appreciation of what you may need. Zoom lenses lend to a variety of distances and coverages, but overall have longer focal lengths. Don't be shy about acquiring a close-up lens filter kit.

Cheers, John

Frank,

Your most important requirement makes this a bit more of a challenge. Most all digital SLR cameras with auto focus have a bit of a delay. The real question becomes how much of a delay can you tolerate. Someone else mentioned using a Nikon D-40; I have a D40x which I have had for about four months now and TOTALLY ENJOY. There is a bit of a shutter lag while the camera is focusing but I'd guess that is only about 1/3 of a second. For my purposes, that is not a problem at all. It is certainly much quicker than the old point & shoot model that I had previously. That seemed to take a full second or more. Your needs may vary a bit though.

I got mine from Ritz Camera who is having (or had) a special where you got the camera, two lenses (15-55 and 55-200mm zooms), a case, a battery & charger and two DVDs to tell you how to use the camera. I did have to buy a memory chip and I also purchased an extra battery.

Someone mentioned not getting caught up in the "pixel race" as they called it. I have a different slant on that. I was going back & forth between the

6mp D40 and the 10.2mp D40x. Finally a friend of mine who used to shoot professionally as a newspaper photographer said to spring for the larger image. Not because of the enlargement possibilities but because you may take a picture and see something that you want to crop down to. With the extra pixels, taking a relatively small portion of an image still gives you plenty of detail. I don't know if I'm making myself perfectly clear but I'm glad I have the extra "image" to work with.

But do a lot of reading online and visit a camera store or two. See what seems to work best for YOU. Because you are ultimately paying the bill and will be the one who uses it.

Hope this helps... if you want to discuss offline, drop me a line.

dlm

On 11/5/2007 2:06 PM Dan Merkel spake thus:

Question: what if you focus the camera manually? (Maybe some folks don't realize you can actually do that with a digital camera.) Does that make the picture-taking process more instantaneous?

I have been very happy with my Pentax K100D and the older *ist/DS2 both are 6.1 MP DSLRs. Part of my choice is owning a large stable of Pentax film camera lenses. The K100D has a good anti shake system (the lower priced K110D does not) for 10MP there is the K10D.

The Canon USA guys show up at Altamont (Alberta-Montana railfan weekend) every year trying to convert us and a lot of the guys there shoot Canon 20d & 30d which give good results. Lots of Olympus & Nikon shooters there too.

All the top brands have suitable camera so I would look for these things:

1. One you find easy to handle, and like the controls, especially for shooting in rapidly changing light.
2. A good range of lenses & accessories
3. A camera that does not use proprietary or semi-proprietary memory chips

Megapixels are not everything and they DO NOT respond like silver halide does on film. The Canon guys brought some huge enlargements shot on one of their older 3MP cameras & you would not believe them (OK it was printed on their $14,000 printer, but still.....

On 11/6/2007 1:05 AM Mountain Goat spake thus:

Yep.

There's a lot of misconception about how many megapixels are enough, to be sure, a lot of it engendered by the camera sellers in desperate attempts to get people to ditch their "old" cameras and spend bux on hew ones.

Here's how I explained it to someone I'm working for, who expressed to me that maybe the Canon 3.2 MP camera we were using wasn't good enough and that we might need, say, a 16 MP camera. I took him over to the screen of his iMac and asked him how many megapixels he thought the display was; after discovering that the screen resolution was set to

1440x900, this was found to be ~1.3 MP. So our modest little camera was almost 3 times the resolution of that display, meaning it was plenty good enough for our purposes. (In other words, you could stack almost 3 of those displays together to display a picture shown at full resolution from that camera.)

Dave (and others),

That's a good question... to be honest, I've never tried it. This is just a guess but I would guess that it would eliminate the lag time for the camera to focus. Like I said, that is just a guess though.

dlm

Interesting. Even the HD TVs that are becoming so popular nowadays have images in only the 2.0 MP range.

And your analogy to the computer monitor is a point well taken. However, with my bad eyesight, I tend to run in the older 800x600 mode. Anyone using my monitor complains about how blurry & fuzzy the images on it are. So There s more than one variable at play here.

Perhaps the best display of the whole resolution thing I saw was at our local Sears store. There was an album with the same picture displayed in the same size but with different resolutions. In other words, the pictures were all 8x10 but they varied from a pretty low 72dpi up to a much higher resolution. I don't remember what the high end was but it was pretty obvious that with each picture, the image got progressively sharper. But I would think that at some point, there would be a dimenishing return on the increased image size.

For close-up model photography, things like depth of field, a good flash and a solid tripod might be of equal or greater importance in getting a really good picture.

dlm

Hmmm... I wonder how much those pictures were doctored up with some good image manipulation software like PhotoShop or PaintShopPro? With the software that is available today, it is often pretty easy to make a lousy shot acceptable and a good shot great.

When MR first had digitally enhanced photos in their annual photo contest, I was a loud opponent of the practice. Not only was it difficult to distinguish between the modeler's efforts and the photographer's manipulations, it was equally difficult to decide what was even a model and what was real. While I don't think that kind of stuff belongs in a model photo contest, it can be used to your advantage in editing images for other use.

dlm

Although you'll run into occasional problems with poorly written programs and their dialog boxes especially, you can right click the desktop, select settings, advanced, and try a custom font size. I have a very sharp 1920 x

1200 WUXGA laptop screen, and run with font sizes set to 160%. Very few problems, and I get the advantage of this very sharp screen (yep, it's 2 mp

- just like the best HD TVs).

One more point: while I think it leaves most or all SLR digicams out, many of the better "prosumer" digital cameras (like the Canon S5 is) have variable angle LCD viewscreens that allow you to place the camera down next to the subject - like sitting on or near the track - and rotate the LCD so you can see it just by looking down at the camera, instead of tryiong to get your eye behind the viewfinder.

(scroll down to the last image just above the bottom of the page)

Dye-sub printers do wonders for photos, too.

David Nebenzahl wrote: : : Here's how I explained it to someone I'm working for, who expressed to : me that maybe the Canon 3.2 MP camera we were using wasn't good enough : and that we might need, say, a 16 MP camera. : That is only part of it as well. The point where "more MP" is silly is when you have more MP than your lens is able to resolve.

Most quality 35mm lenses can resolve somewhere around 200 lines/ mm. So, it would make sense that you do not need more than 200 pixels per mm on your CCD, either.

Given the CCD's in use today, that is somewhere around 10 - 12 MP. : : I took him over to the : screen of his iMac and asked him how many megapixels he thought the : display was; after discovering that the screen resolution was set to : 1440x900, this was found to be ~1.3 MP. : If you are going to shoot photos for a web site, then you do not need a lot of MP, certainly.

If you are going to make enlargements, or want to enlarge just a portion of the image, then it is helpful to have the additional resolution.

What is of most interest to me is the maximum frames/second that I can shoot. Most 35mm "pro" level film cameras could do 5 - 6 frames/second, which means you could go through a roll of 36 exposure film in 6 - 7 seconds. That got expensive...

Digital SLR cameras are now at that level today, for around $1500.00, body only. And up, of course. Now, sustaining that kind of speed is still problematic. Most DSLR's only deliver that kind of frames/second using JPEG images, which is an inheritantly "lossy" format. So, if you want to shoot for enlargements or to enlarge just a section of the image, you are back to losing data before you can start working with it...

You can shoot RAW, which basically takes the sensor data and shoves it into a quasi-standard (each camera maker has a different idea of how their RAW images are formatted to storage, but they more or less follow the same principals. Sorta. Basically). However, you are moving a lot more data to storage, and eventually, you will fill your storage buffer, and have to stop shooting at a high frame rate. The key for me is how quickly that storage buffer is cleared. Newer cameras can write the data faster, but there are still hardware limitations.

As for how long does it take an AF camera to focus, that depends on the camera. Most DSLR cameras today have some kind of predictive AF mode, which calculates where a subject will be when the shutter is released. This technology was first marketed by Minolta, who sold their camera technology to Sony. Point & shoot cameras, you probably have no such luck. You also need to consider how long it takes a camera to "wake up" from a power conserving mode. Again, newer DSLR are going to tend to be faster than their older counterparts. Nothing like missing a shot because the camera was fondling itself...

As for myself, I shoot Minolta (now Sony) DSLR's. I moved from Minolta MF bodies to the 2nd gen. AF body when Canon was thrashing around trying to get an AF camera to work even half way well, and Nikon was still thinking that AF was a passing fad. When it came to digital, however, Minolta was asleep at the wheel. Their first DSLR was a frankenstein of a mid-grade consumer AF body with an electronics package grafted (ungracefully) to the AF body. But, at 1.75 MP, it was fine for photos on a web site, and it preserved my $$$$ AF lens collection. Minolta eventually re-entered the DSLR market with a poor effort, and exited the photography business completely, which is where Sony comes in. Sony recently introduced a DSLR body that lives up to the Minolta AF legacy, and is what Minolta should have done before they took their ball and went home. In the meanwhile, of course, Canon and Nikon ate Minolta's lunch in terms of market share.

Bruce

I have used the Canon Powershot S2IS for over a year, and besides the unbeatable price $379 at the time, the 2 reasons I bought the S2 was because of the flip screen and the 12x optical zoom with stabilization. I shoot a lot of band photos and the flip screen makes for using the camera at odd angles a breeze...like over a crowd. It should be noted that the Canon Powershot cameras also have 640x480

30fps video capabilites... which with a 2gig chip gives about 17mins of video.

The only downside to the S2 (and most other non SLR digitals) is the shutter lag time. There are some ways to mitigate this on the S2 - like using manual modes & pre-focusing, but it can be annoying sometimes. The problem is more pronounced in low light conditions... as it's harder for the camera to auto-focus - which is the reason there is a lag in the first place. Also since you can take 1000's of photos with a couple memory cards, you can just delete any bad shots.

Other than the shutter lag this is a great camera (and I'm sure the S3 & S5 are even better), full of functions, easy to operate, and a lot-o-bang for the buck.

Doug

Ya, you betcha!! I still have an old Nikon Coolpix 950 (2mp) with a rotating viewfinder. In Siena a couple days after the Palio, the youth of the winning contrada were still parading around the narrow streets with horns and drums and ... the flags of their contrada folded diagonally and worn over their shoulders with the ends tied around the ring of a baby pacifier and the nipple in their mouths!! (of those not playing horns). Must be an Italian thang. I was on a crossing lane as they came by and the crowd at the intersection was three deep - but I culd get the shot by angling the lens down and forward and the screen down and back and holding it over head.

For anything other than live action shooting - and I don't think model shots fall in that area - the occasional "shutter" delay is no drawback. And just think of all the shots on your layout you couldn't get without sawing it in half or shooting blind - say, in the middle of the yard from track level - that a flexible or "variable" viewfinder can make doable.

PS - the S5 has a bigger LCD, 2.5", than the older model, and is up to 8 megapixels. You do need an adapter for macro shots closer than 4" (my old Nikon does it right down to 3/4" without an adapter)

One thing about the new Sony DSLR: at least Sony lets the buyers of their top end cameras have the option to use CF cards instead of restricting them to their proprietary (and more expensive) "Memory Stick" storage chips.

Good morning David;

It does once the lens is in focus and the distance remains relatively constant. Otherwise, the autofocus on my camera is faster than me. One thing about the auto-focus is it can be set up several ways. If shooting moving objects, I'd recommend a spot focus. I purchased the same type of kit as Dan and I find it a good camera although I would have preferred Canon's Rebel XT which was twice the price.

Cheers, John

In addition to my Nikon, I have a Fuji 2600 which will focus down to about six inches. My Nikon is strictly viewfinder whereas the Fuji is real time viewing through either the viewfinder or display screen. I discovered your observation while shooting apple and cherry blossoms: use the display screen vice the viewfinder. BTW, a 6 mm lens is virtually a fisheye lens.

Cheers, John

Uh, yes, for sure. But I'm not sure what prompted that observation. Was it something on the DPR review page?