Camera Question

[Aaron Kennedy]

Is 5 megapixels sufficient for publication quality material. Probably not, but for great amateur quality work

*Shrug* I've had a 3mp image from my D30 published on a 2 page double spread in a magazine. If you can focus and expose correctly... you're good to go (with good glass such as primes and L zooms).

Aaron

 

[Ryan McGinnis]

So your saying the lens that comes with the canon Digital rebel in the box/kit, is not good? So If I just started taking pictures with it, right out of the box, they would not look good? It's necessary to buy more lens?

Yes. Basically, the kit lense is total worthless crap and should be avoided at any cost. Luckily, you can buy the Rebel without the lense (at a reduced price) and then purchase your own lense. I reccomend the Canon 17-40 f/4L or a Tamron 17-35 f/2.8-4. To be candid -- if you're planning on using the kit lense with the Rebel, you're wasting your money on getting a Rebel to begin with.

 

[Rockwell Schrock]

I apologize if somebody already linked to this article, but here is an article comparing the Canon 20D to the Nikon D70s. It is very well written and very objective. I suggest you take a look.

To summarize one of the major points Andrew asked about:

If you need immediate control of all critical adjustments without menus, light weight or fast daylight flash sync the D70 wins.

 

[Andrew Khan]

Yes. Basically, the kit lense is total worthless crap and should be avoided at any cost. Luckily, you can buy the Rebel without the lense (at a reduced price) and then purchase your own lense. I reccomend the Canon 17-40 f/4L or a Tamron 17-35 f/2.8-4. To be candid -- if you're planning on using the kit lense with the Rebel, you're wasting your money on getting a Rebel to begin with.

This sounds very contradictory to what Nick Grillo said, however. He has JUST the basic lense that comes with the Canon Digital Rebel, and he agrees it is not the best...but have you taken a look at his pictures? They look outstanding, man.

 

[Aaron Kennedy]

Any lens will look good at small resolution. Compared to many lenses, the kit lens is crap, however, if you stop down a bit it will function fine.

Aaron

 

[Andrew Khan]

So, you can take the crappiest camera you can get your hands on, take a picture. Size it down, to decrease the resolution/pixels, and the picture will look tons, tons better, eh? Thats very true. But the reason I would be getting a Digital Rebel is for good quality high resolution pictures. How much is the 40mm for?

 

[Ryan McGinnis]

Any lens will look good at small resolution. Compared to many lenses, the kit lens is crap, however, if you stop down a bit it will function fine.

Aaron

I dunno if it's okay stopped down, either. Check out Photozone's quality survey:

http://tinyurl.com/4ycyj

It's just a terrible lense, all around. But then I don't think anyone has high expectations for a $90 lense. It's probably good for the price -- only, if I drop more than $700 on a camera, I don't see the point of slapping terrible glass on it.

I think Mike H. even used to have a comparison webpage he made about how bad the lense is where he shot a scene with the kit lense and then the same scene with his 17-40 f/4L. I know it's not a fair compairson at all (one is eight times as expensive as the other), but it's a very dramatic example of just how important good glass is.

If I had no camera equipment at all and enough money to either buy a whizz-bang digital camera or really good glass, I'd get the glass and stick buy a less expensive film camera. You can get a top notch weather-sealed professional film camera like the EOS-3 for nearly the same price as the filmsy plastic Digital Rebel, and a middle-of-the-road SLR for much, much less.

I say that, of course, with preconceptions about what one wants from a camera. Not everyone cares if their images will look good when enlarged at 20x18. Many people just want to take some awesome images for their website/chase accounts. If that's you, then you can get away with the cheapest lenses you can find, because once you shrink it down to 800 pixels wide, every lense looks pretty good.

 

[Mike Kruze]

In terms of camera speed and missing the "only a few seconds" shot, I've found that I can take pictures faster with a Canon digital SLR (the 20D) than I could with my old point and shoot Olympus C-750. With the point and shoot, after pressing the "on" button, I'd have to wait several seconds while the camera "started up" and the lens came out of the camera body. And once it was on and ready to take pictures, the autofocus speed was considerably slower so I'd find myself missing even more shots.

The 20D and Digital Rebel XT have very fast startup times. You can literally hold down the shutter release while flipping the power switch, and the camera takes a picture the instant it is turned on. The original Digital Rebel is slower to turn on, and you'll have to wait a few seconds before taking shots.

Of course the wildcard for the digital SLR cameras is if the correct lens is already on the camera. Most of the time you'll be keeping a lens on the camera anyway so it won't usually be a problem. And even then, with practice you'll be able to change the lens in 10 seconds or less.

 

[Andrew Khan]

Thanks for the advice everyone!

I have made a decision to buy a Nikon D70 Digital SLR

NOT A D70S!

I know I've been talking not stop about a Canon, but this turned out the result!