I don't even know why you are giving him advice, we have been down this road before.

Nice to see your infraction has expired Harjun.

All you really need is to spend your own £130 on a half decent digital camera from Argos or something. When you develop your skill, go up in the world

Edit: Damn, I just gave advice to Harjun...

Quote from StewartFisher :

While we're on the subject of apertures, could you explain the effect of aperture on depth of field? Or image sharpness? It's not just about letting more or less light through the lens.

Whoops, was typing an edit while you posted that. Now he can just copy/paste my post or copy from the link I posted.

Quote from Jagk :

Grrrrr, almost bought one of those! Amazon were doing a "buy any Fuji camera, get a S5700 free".

Indeed, that would have been a steal. Wish I knew of that because I just paid $200 (US) for mine 2 weeks ago.

Quote from harjun :

ok, i'll confess the only reason i want one is because of the twisty zoom thing, and the fact the pictures are AMAZINGLY clear...

The camera isn't the only thing that makes the pictures AMAZINGLY clear. 90% of it is the person taking the photo, unless it is a crap camera such as the DSC-S650 I mentioned.

Here is half decent picture in the rain, on the main road near your home...

From your descriptions, this is all you need...

Quote from harjun :

ok, i'll confess the only reason i want one is because of the twisty zoom thing, and the fact the pictures are AMAZINGLY clear...and you can zooom onto a picture after you've taken it a lot, and it still being clear, + my brother does dentistry and he needs to take photos of people's teeth, and zoom onto them clearly, where a macro lense should do

Twist Zoom thingy is on my Dads Kodak camera and that came in at well under £200, and has more options that i'll ever use. I think Kodak Digitals are a POS, but my Dad's camera more than meets what you need, so i'm sure there are better bargains out there.

I have NO idea about this, but surely SLR's really need proper lenses? Cameras like mine are good at being easy to use, and are VERY versatile. I'm willing to bet that if someone like DoN or XCNuse were to compare their cameras and 1337 lenses to mine they'd think mine was a heap of shit. But if i were to use theirs i'm such a n00b i'd probably get a better picture out of mine thanks to the magic auto button.

On my camera you can zoom in once you've taken a pic (and it still looks clear - this is where more megapixels help), but i'd imagine my screen is DEFINATELY no bigger than 500*500, and seeing as a 5 MP image is 2,500*1,900 ish, you can zoom in quite a long way.

I've never EVER needed 5 MP though, although i never use digital zoom. I always end up dropping my pics down to 1680*1050 at the very most, usually to 1280*1024 or 800*600.

Harjun needs a subforum.. If you and the others who use it want a decent / flexible camera, the super zooms are probably a good choice. Compact enough, flexible enough, decent quality.. not much they can't do in creative hands.

Canon Powershot S3 might be cheap now.

TBH, I'm getting a little fed up with these "What shall I get Daddy to buy me next?" threads. If it goes the same way as the PC, the Laptop, the Kart etc..what next?
What I am REALLY dreading is the post in a few years time:

Quote from Future Harjun :

Hey Guys! !1!!!onE!1!!11!
As you all know (because I've been reminding everybody for the last 18 months) it's my 17th birthday next week, and I dont know what to ask for. Should I go for the Ferrari Enzo, the Lambo Gallardo, or jusy ask for a Veyron? I have heard that the Ascari is pretty good and easy to overclock..which one do you recommend??

Remember guys, you read it here first!

Quote from harjun :

ok, i'll confess the only reason i want one is because of the twisty zoom thing, and the fact the pictures are AMAZINGLY clear...and you can zooom onto a picture after you've taken it a lot, and it still being clear, + my brother does dentistry and he needs to take photos of people's teeth, and zoom onto them clearly, where a macro lense should do

Then what you should buy is a point and shoot camera. As XCNuse says, the image quality you'll get from a modern P&S is very good. Bear in mind that those cameras you were using in South Africa were probably professional cameras with professional lenses costing thousands of pounds. A 400D with the kit lens won't give you that same quality.

Quote from XCNuse :

And no, I'm not gonna accuse you of being a Canon person, both Nikon and Canon are respective in their own accounts, I'm just referring to the fact that Canon is expensive no matter which way you look at it, when was the last time Canon came out with two IS lenses which were both priced $200 and ranged 18-55mm and 55-200mm? That is all I'm pointing out.

About a month ago There's this 18-55mm IS lens for less than $200. There's also this 55-250mm IS lens which would probably go for about $300 in the US (though they're apparently not releasing it there).

Quote :

Canon has some nice features on the XTi, but if there is one thing I were to absolutely hate about Canon is the horrible white balance, auto or manual, even when trying to set a manual white balance, you first have to take a picture, go into white balance, set it to manual, and then go into the options of the camera, and find white balance, and set it to use the manual setting. Maybe I just don't know how to use the XT and XTi that well
But on my D40 I just have to hit one button, tell it to use manual white balance, and take a picture and it's set.

You've got a point there, but you only have to do the white balance thing once for any set of lighting conditions...it's not like you have to re-do it for every shot.

Quote :

edit- yall caught up; harjun you do realize that you can zoom in on any camera's picture on a computer as long as it's past about 1.2 MP right? (depending on your desktop's resolution)
Here is a comparison of MP size: http://k53.pbase.com/g3/75/479 ... 20.MegapixelCompare10.jpg

That's true to a point, but I wouldn't want a 6x4 printout of a 1.2 MP image...

Silly question...Did he actually get the kart.

if so, then he can lend it to the body squad when they tried to realize how a 13 year old boy killed himself in his kart. They need fairly good cameras. Two Birds > One Stone.

Quote from The General Lee :

Here is half decent picture in the rain, on the main road near your home...

From your descriptions, this is all you need...

Hehehehe. I wont let anyone know what took this (would ruin the suprise), but all you 1337 Geeks read the EXIF data to see what took it.

I'm amazed by the quality on that though - beats the crap out of "my one of those devices". Thought it was a proper highend camera then!

Quote from Jakg :

Hehehehe. I wont let anyone know what took this (would ruin the suprise), but all you 1337 Geeks read the EXIF data to see what took it.

I'm amazed by the quality on that though - beats the crap out of "my one of those devices". Thought it was a proper highend camera then!

Classic...just checked myself..and TBH _I_ was surprised!

@jak, digital zoom is a bad idea anyway :S I tried it once on a point and shoot and it came out horrrriiible, tried it on some 6MP Kodak about 5 or so years ago.. At first I was like, oh cool I can zoom in more!.. Yea they came out insanely pixelated.

Also, you bring up proper lenses, yes.. you do, unless you want bad pictures.

@harjun, if you're seriously going to buy that 400D, keep in mind the standard zoom is the equivalent of I believe something like .5x - 1.3x zoom (i believe that's what it is on the Canon 400D, I don't know what sensor size it has)
Meaning.. wide angle to lifesize (well, they don't actually call it lifesize in photography, that'd be 1:1 which is macro talk, and I don't want to get into it cause it confuses me!)

Even my Nikon 55-200mm VR lens is the equivalent of 1x - 11.1x zoom (28°50' - 8°) equivalent of 82.5 - 300mm on a 35mm camera, but all Nikons except the new D3 (which is full fram, a full 35mm) are 1.5x sensors, meaning.. they're equal to a 17.5mm frame of film.


@stewart; really! wow, finally canon has a cheap lens! lol to bad they won't give us the zoom lens yet though, my sister has been looking for a zoom lens for her XT for two years now, and the cheapest I could find was $200, but it didn't have IS, which is a MUUUUST for anything beyond 100mm

@General Lee, was that taken with your phone's camera lol?

Dat is not what I wrote bro...

Who edited my post

Argh! Stop the 'x zoom' madness! 50mm is not '1x zoom'...it's just a good match to the perspective that the human eye sees. 'x zoom' ONLY refers to the ratio of the longest to the shortest focal lengths on a zoom lens.

'1x magnification' is something to do with macro photography that I've not quite got my head around yet. I think that 1x magnification means that the image of the subject as projected onto the film plane/digital sensor is the same size as the subject itself.

But that's got nothing to do with zoom!

I know, I'm having as much trouble as you are lol I'm just trying to get it in terms with a PAS(point and shoot [should be POS LOL]) person.

Quote :

'1x magnification' is something to do with macro photography that I've not quite got my head around yet. I think that 1x magnification means that the image of the subject as projected onto the film plane/digital sensor is the same size as the subject itself.

it isn't called "x" anything, it's called 1:1 it's a ratio, and yes, it is equivalent in size to the sensor (I believe too), I think it's just I've never heard it used in that form.. which actually makes more sense than any other way I've heard it lol.

Quote from harjun :

he needs to take photos of people's teeth, and zoom onto them clearly, where a macro lense should do

You still don't sound like you have a clue what you're talking about, and are just trying to justify more expensive kit without actually knowing how to benefit from it, although at least you've now admitted it.

For the record, most macro lenses (at least those with true close-focus capability) don't zoom. And they start at £300-400. The depth of field is so small with 1:1 ~ 1:2 reproduction that you need a tiny aperture to render anything more than a fraction of the image in focus, which therefore requires massively more light to avoid slower shutter speeds and the motion blur. But of course, you know all that because you understand photography enough to benefit from an SLR.

So what's your brother going to do, shove a flashgun in their mouth too?

(EDIT) XCNuse, you're taking a very complicated approach to sensor sizes and focal length multipliers.

Oh a macro LENS is only the beginning, wait until you buy a flash! YAY!
Like Nikon's R1C1

that's only $625!
By the time you get into macro photography you'll be living in a cardboard box it's so expensive, the cheapest macro lens you can get is a Phoenix lens which costs $100, and is.. a Phoenix, meaning it's slow (i can't remember what it's max aperture is), and poor quality!

@stewart, Oh I forgot to mention, a company now makes a Nikon G to Canon EOS adapter
http://www.16-9.net/nikon_g/

Quote from XCNuse :

@stewart, Oh I forgot to mention, a company now makes a Nikon G to Canon EOS adapter
http://www.16-9.net/nikon_g/

Also a fan of Mr Rockwell's site?

I am
My life is incomplete without an update from him every day no matter how random lol

There every single day lol, no joke, that's seriously where I learned all about photography, I just wish he didn't have so many fans and payed attention to his email

Think I might email him again requesting the difference quality wise between a $10 filter and a $100 filter.

Quote from XCNuse :

I am
My life is incomplete without an update from him every day no matter how random lol

There every single day lol, no joke, that's seriously where I learned all about photography, I just wish he didn't have so many fans and payed attention to his email

Ditto, although I do wish he would stop using Nikons and start on real cameras

Quote :

Think I might email him again requesting the difference quality wise between a $10 filter and a $100 filter.

This might interest you.

BWAHAHAHAH!! Thanks for that link stewart! that just made my day lol

That's why I never buy tiffen filters, I have 4 filters, all of which are hoya, 2 52mm UV filters for my AF-S lenses (mainly for protection), an ND8 filter, and my Infrared R72 filter.

Hoya really is bang for your buck, they're excelent, of course nothing up to those glass $150 filters, but I haven't come across anything better than Hoya just yet, I hear B&W is good, but they're all expensive.

It's funny, I was looking at an older PC photo mag after seeing a variable ND filter, I was like.. genious, that's just what I need, I saw the price and was like.. no F'ing way! they're as expensive as my AF-S lenses.. combined!

Quote from XCNuse :

@stewart; really! wow, finally canon has a cheap lens! lol to bad they won't give us the zoom lens yet though, my sister has been looking for a zoom lens for her XT for two years now, and the cheapest I could find was $200, but it didn't have IS, which is a MUUUUST for anything beyond 100mm

that's actually one of the reasons why i'm considering the E-510 over the D40/D40x and the XT/XTi...the E-510 has IS in body, so every lens that is used with it will have IS. And from the reviews that I've read, the lenses included in the kit for it are some of the better lenses available. they obviously aren't exceptional, but are good lenses.

out of the box, the images from the E-510 are soft, from the noise reduction processing, but that can be adjusted to improve the image quality a good bit.

one of the negatives is lens selection. There seems to be about 2 dozen lenses available for it, as it's mount is a newer standard over those used by the Nikons and Canons.

but, i still have about 2months till i get my bonus, so i've still got time to research and think about what's going to work best for me.

I think the E510 is what DeadWolfBones bought, I know he has an olympus, I think he loves it quite a lot too.

Also keep in mind that the Sony Alphas have in body image stabilization too (whatever they call it)

I've never seen or used an olympus SLR before I've only had my dad's point and shoots until August, nor have I heard much about them from PC Photo.

You'd have to talk to DWB, I'm pretty sure that's the same model he bought last Summer/Fall.

Quote from Niels Heusinkveld :

Harjun needs a subforum.. If you and the others who use it want a decent / flexible camera, the super zooms are probably a good choice. Compact enough, flexible enough, decent quality.. not much they can't do in creative hands.

Canon Powershot S3 might be cheap now.

I got mine a year and a half ago for a fairly decent price, I highly recommend it.

yeah, but the sony alpha is a bit more expensive. i can get the e-510, with 2 lenses for less than the cost of the sony body.

i haven't read about the sony yet (but, i'm about to), but i'd guess that the only thing that makes it more expensive is the sony name. but maybe i'm wrong. i'll find out shortly

edit, i was mistaken. the E-410 w/ 2 lenses is less than the sony body. the 510 w/ 2 lenses is about $100 more than the sony body (at b&h)

edit2: oooh, the sony takes minolta lenses. i actually have a minolta film SLR. i'll have to figure out if it uses the same mount as this sony accepts. if so, that might just push the sony into the lead.

Yea the sony alphas are expensive, I don't know how either stack up against each other. I don't know about the alphas, but keep in mind the Olympus' do have sensor cleaning, which, from what I've read is the best sensor cleaner out there.

I don't know about either lenses though, I'd imagine Sony is above Olympus, but not by much.


edit- sorry, DeadWolfBones considered buying an E510 when I was looking at the D40, he landed up getting the Pentax K100D instead.