Leica Virgin

Rasher the D50 is in no way the lesser camera, the D40 has a bigger display screen on the back, and does allow selective ISO settings where the D50s are pre defined.

Other than that the D50 seems better in every respect, not the least of which is that you can set bracketing and have aperture priority mode.

For around the 500 mark the D70 has DOF preview and will remotely control Nikon Speedflashes.

These may not be important factors now, and may never be but you never know.

quote:

'Sipping on the bock of the day- a brilliant Spoonerism I thought- that drew nary a guffaw.

indeed, it is brilliant. and produced a guffaw here when I read it.

Agreed, D50 is a very good buy, and preferable to D40 *if you're going to use older lenses*. If you're heading up-range, I'd recommend a D80 over the (now superseded) D70/D70s though - the extra $$ and improvements in the feature set, handling, viewfinder, display, menus etc. really is worth it. That from a D70 user.

HTH

With DSLRs it's not all about resolution. I have a sports photography business and I shoot with Canon (1D mk2 8mp). My business partner shoots with Nikon (D1H 4mp). Both cameras are capable of producing poster sized prints from native resolution. We both have higher-res cameras for portrait and wedding work too.

The quality of lenses is the most crucial aspect of good quality pics. You really do get what you pay for with lenses. Especially if you're looking to produce large prints.

The world of photography is heavily divided between Nikon and Canon. At the end of the day they both take great pics if you learn how to use them properly. I've employed freelance help from a fellow Canon user who's approach is to spend money on high-end kit because it will ensure he takes good pics - wrong. Technique is more important the equipment.

Which ever system you buy into you need to really understand how to use your camera properly and quickly. Personally I can't get on with Nikons, just because I've spent so many years with Canon. My Nikon mate has used my gear and his main criticism is the zoom operates the other way round on my 70-200 f2.8 IS.

If already have a SLR I would suggest you stick with that manufacturer as the handling will be pretty similar to what you're used to. If you're starting from scratch spend time handling the different bodies to see which you feel most comfortable with.

Try not to get hung up on the endless list of features as they generally have little impact on the quality of the final image. The more features a camera has the more reading you need to do of the manual!!

A lot of rubbish it written about which camera is best. Award winning shots have been taken on both Nikon D70 and Canon 20D, both costing around £800. Camera bodies are commodity items which will be out of date very soon. Lenses, however, should last a very long time if they are looked after. If you are working to a budget I suggest a cheaper body with a better lens, rather than an all singing & dancing body with a cheap kit lens. The quality of DSLR sensors are great and WILL show up flaws in cheaper lenses.

Shutter lag on all DSLs is more than accepable these days. I've used very old and very new bodies for sports work and all are just fine. The key difference is speed and acuracy of auto focus & metering. This is not an issue for the average user.

For all the bells and whistles my cameras have I generally set them to aperture priority or manual depending on whether I'm working quickly outdoors or in an more controlled environment.

The biggest challenge any digital photographer faces these days is getting the right digital workflow to produce the best quality prints or images. Unfortunately it's becoming more techie than ever. Simply taking your compact flash card full of jpegs to the high street store doesn't do justice to what your DSLR is capable of. For the absolute best quality shoot raw, but be prepared to massive storage requirements.

I hope this rambling makes sense. It's so easy to get caught up in the hype and 'sexiness' around the latest digital bodies and lose sight of the importance of good quality lenses & workflow. I have 3 different photography businesses so at last I feel qualified to contribute to a dicussion on this forum

Graham.

Graham

what you've written makes perfect sense. It's a well-considered piece.

re lenses being more important - it's a sort of gigo/source-first argument, eh! A friend of mine produces some lovely shots with an L series lens on his old Canon D30. "only 3MP, but what beautiful pixels they are". And he echoes your sentiments re metering etc.

I decided to stick with my D70 and get better with it, hoping to add better glassware when finances allow. Instead of expecting the improvements of the new model to improve my images.

I fully agree re the bodies (your eg D70 or 20D) being mere commodities - they enjoy great physical longevity, however depreciate and are outdated very quickly.

I have nearly always used an SLR in either aperture or shutter priority mode - but carry the camera around set to automatic as the once in a lifetime shots never hang around for long.

Rico is right that digital bodies depreciate very quickly - but I reckon the advances are starting to slow down. It appears that shutter mechanisms are getting a lot better to - so digital bodies ought to last longer, and suffer from obsolescence at a slower rate. My good old F80 shutter supposedly has a life of about 1000 rolls - the digital equivalent is, I have heard, built for a much longer cycle.

I recently had to have a new shutter fitted to my 1Dmk2. Canon rate it for 150,000 shots (I think) and I'm sure mine had taken more than that before it failed.

On large jobs it doesn't take long to get through several thousand shots. I took 3,500 yesterday at a half marathon.

Graham,

After you've written another couple of thousand posts, which take 10 mins each, you'll realise you've wasted your time.

Leave these people here to waffle on about their jewellery.

In my memory, I think there's only been one person ever to show interest in the finer points of Photoshop.

The best lenses you can buy, IMHO, are Carl Zeiss T*.

Once upon a time they used to make Contax cameras especially for these lenses to sit on, but sadly Contax got canned by the parent company (Kyocera).

Real shame - I used to work for a Contax dealer and owned some of the kit for a while - however - there is a point to this ramble....

If you buy the Canon then the finest lens you'll ever balance on the front of it will be made by Canon, but if you buy the Nikon you can hang one of a small range of Carl Zeiss T* Nikon F-mount lenses on it - at the price of losing most of the automation.

As a confirmed Canon SLR fan this goes against my instincts to recommend the Nikon - but as a one-time Contax user this extra piece of flexibility would sorely tempt me.

As for Leica - the M* looks fantastic - would buy one tomorrow if I had the funds - but will it suit you?

I bought a What Digital Camera magazine at the weekend and did a bit of research, and decided on a D50 over a D40. I found that Park Cameras 10 miles away had both in stock so went there and had a long chat and looked at both of them. I've come away with the D40.
I got some really good advice and am assured that the bottom line is that the D40 takes better quality pictures as it has the mkII lens with new coatings and is a better piece of kit. I like the huge screen. The D40 pictures are less noisy too when pushing ISO settings. The time taken to fix on focus was nothing as far as I could see. Reviews state a longer focus time than others, but it seemed pretty instant to me and the lag after a shot again was nothing - and in comparison with manual focus on my old Olympus OM2 and manually winding on - well, no comparison.
The guy in the shop was very informed and I believed what he told me. He also agreed that a D80 is what to get when I've become hooked. The D40 will have trade-in value too whereas the D50 is now already an obsolete model. I'm happy anyway. £389 is a good price too.
Thanks for the info guys - I'd never heard of the Nikon D40 before I asked the question about a Leica, and now I have one.
Give me a few weeks and we'll get another photos thread going.

Graham

How do you control, process and sell from a collection of 2500 pictures of an event.

Seem like good people at Park Cameras.IMO

Derek,

Two of us shot 6000 pics yesterday, and everything is now online here: Milton Keynes Photos

I'm not going to give away any trade secrets because one of the benefits of us covering an event is we typically get everything online withing 24hrs.

The secret to getting through a large volume of images is automation. Building web images and thumbnails is automatic, using Photoshop. Most effort goes into identifying race numbers on every image - this is a manual process. Once identified the database building process runs automatically.

It is essential to make it easy for customers to find their photos easily. Searching by race number is how we achieve it. Each section of an event can be browsed too, but it is a bit "needle in haystack" with this many images.

Web pages are built automatically as users click. We use PayPal to handle online orders.

All the back-end web software was written by me

Graham.

Forgot to mention we also have full on-site browsing and printing capability to sell prints at an event.

The process from camera to printer is totally wireless (don't need to keep swapping flash cards around) and automatic.

This is great for balls and proms. Can setup 6 screens to allow simultaneous browsing by lots of people. People queuing to see their pics typically means lost sales.

hi Graham have you played with the Adobe Lightroom software, seems just the job for the volumes you are talking about.

I had a quick look a while ago, but (like Adobe Bridge) it was slow loading images. Personally I don't need all the bells and whistles it adds. I can organise my pics using hierarchies of folders. Photoshop is the key to batch processing.

Graham

If these guys think that is you getting techie for God's sake don't start a thread on scheduling software for HPC! Then they'll really see the techie Graham in full flow!

For what it's worth, I have been lucky enough to see some of Graham's photo work and it is definitely about the eye behind the camera. You can have every bit of tech kit in the world, but without skill and technique all you have is a very expensive collection of either jewellery or paperweights. In that respect, cameras and hifi have quite a lot in common. Most of us buy more tools than our sight/hearing will allow us to fully exploit.

Graham's skills as a software engineer have enabled him to devise a workflow system that really works. That is how he can process 6000 images in a short space of time and turn a profit on the work.

Rasher, well done on your choice. I have heard great things about the service at Park. A good camera dealer is as important as a good Naim dealer! The difference is that Naim will turn over their model range at a fraction of the pace of a camera manufacturer.

Graham - thanks for the info

.

This should end any further discussion of which camera to buy:





Action Man (Surveillance Specialist) even comes with a roll of 110 film!!!

Not sure if there is a digital back for Action Man (yet).

110 film? oh man, he's not only dressed retro, he works retro.

these guys are so digital, they have digits. 10 of them. binary people. you know?

That's nothing.
This babe, Marina from Stingray, doesn't need digits. Here's the spec: Nice boobs, can't speak, oversized head and she can breathe through her ears!