[Willem]

June 17, 2010 at 2:18 pm

I think the wory about an obsolete body is a bit strong, no camera will be obsolete until they discontinue light :D Newer bodies will certainly be released, but an obsolete Nikon D200 which is now three generations old stil takes great photos and works with most lenses: The Nikon AF system has been around since 1986 and the AF-S since 1992, with no sign of being discontinued. It’s a bit like computers: if you worry about obsolescence you won’t ever buy one.

I would suggest you do a lot of reading to really get a feel for what these cameras wil allow you to do. This will have a bonus of bringing up photographic terms that you may not be familiar with and so you will learn a lot if you follow these glossary terms. When I was looking for a camera I used http://www.trustedreviews.com/ and http://www.kenrockwell.com/canon/index.htm which I found to give good clear and extremely detailed performance reviews. I would also suggest you get a piece of paper and make a note of what you want to do with your camera, and tick these off as you go to make sure you don’t get distracted with all the bells and whistles – HD video may be nice but if you’re buying a camera to take photos it’s an incidental concern, especially as some require manual focus. I’m not a fan of swiss-army knife gadgets, I’d rather they concentrated on one excellent task. If I want HDV I’ll go buy a camcorder…

If you want a landscape setup, go and look on this forum, and on flickr, for some photos you really like the look of, and make a note of what equipment they use. This will give you an idea of what your kit choice may allow. If you are anything like me, your developing skills will be a much bigger limitation on what you can produce than the limits of the equipment. You should also consider if you want some editing software, as post-processing can have a very important effect on the finished picture. Just go and look at HDR-style. I found it very frustrating until I realised that a lot of photos I couldn’t emulate had been photoshopped a lot.

When you have narrowed down your choice of possible cameras, go and have a look at them in the shop, and get a feel for how they sit in your hand, and you will get a feel for which one you favour. The Nikon D-90 or Canon 500D both look like great cameras, and although the Nikon/Canon war will wage eternal, either will take pictures of excellent quality. It’s not like comparing a mercedez to a trebant, they’re almost identical on spec. Nikon’s D3000 is specifically for beginners and includes loads of help functions on-board to assist you in getting to grips with SLR photograhpgy. While most people talk about a two-horse race, I also have an Olympus SLR which is a good capable camera and because it is so light, it gets carried everywhere, when I’d leave my D-300 behemoth at home. You don’t take photos if you don’t have your camera with you :D.

Lenses are important, no doubt about it, I got a zoom lens to begin with and this allowed me to get a good feel for what I wanted to do with it without shelling out for a lot of top-quality glass, as I said it won’t be the kit limiting you for a good while, by which time you will have saved up enough to buy specialised lenses, and know enoughto choose which ones you want. In six months you may be grabbed by macro or portrait instead of landscapes, and go down a completely different route with lenses – I find in Ireland if you want to do landscapes you need a second interest for when it’s wet and miserable out!

It’s a lot cheaper to buy in the UK than ROI because of the way the camera manufacturers discount to big chains, although ROI good shops will do everything they can to give you a deal to balance this out. Don’t be afraid of haggling for a few freebies, especially in Jessops :D And a good bag will make it easier to grab it whenever you go out, meaning more opportunity, meaning more photographs!

That’s it from me, I’ve written that from my perspective as someone who has started photography quite recently, so people may not agree with it but it’s from a pragmatic rather than a perfect point of view 8)

Have a read in this thread, there are ‘first camera’ threads started every week so that will serve as a good starting point…

Good luck!

Will

[Willem]

June 14, 2010 at 11:24 pm

I think the third image is an absolute cracker, the fourth is lovely but I think it might be nicer if you cropped off the top with the really dark blue cloud, just leaving the lovely light clouds :D

[Willem]

June 14, 2010 at 10:40 pm

A polariser is great for landscapes, it can bring out the colour in the sky in the right circumstances. ND grads are also great for this, and you can get one set with adapters for subsequent lenses with different diameters…

a UV filter is a good idea to keep your expensive optics protected from scratches.

[Willem]

June 9, 2010 at 1:59 pm

I made a DIY softbox and I use 100w crompton craftlights, the blue ones that give light closer to daylight. They’re in reflector housings and through white paper they give a good light and illuminate the subject really well. They’re only a few euro each as well.

[Willem]

March 26, 2010 at 5:43 pm

It’d be cool as a replacement to casual remote use in the house/garden, as the Lite version is about 1% the cost of a Nikon remote. I’m just amazed you can do it at all! Gadget rating 10/10!

[Willem]

March 20, 2010 at 8:34 pm

either, you can do monotone on your camera or convert images with software after. Very easy if you shoot RAW and think a colour image may look better in B & W

[Willem]

February 25, 2010 at 8:38 pm

First off, make sure you understand how the polarising filter works, as it has some limitations – my Dad bought one and trekked through Nepal for five weeks, and when he came back we were talking about how good his skies looked. Then I asked if he found it awkward to turn the filter with his gloves on and he just looked blank – didn’t realise you had to twiddle the end :lol:

I bought the P-system from Cokin and I like it a lot. Some people complain that it can have a pinkish tinge but I have never noticed this. You can pick this up fairly cheaply (check the back of a photo mag) which allows you to invest in a more flexible system that you can use on lenses of different diameters with the appropriate adapter. I have an ND4 soft grad which works really well at detailing in and bluing up the skies. I really like it but it is a bit cumbersome to get used to! I think Lee filters offer a similar style but more expensive and of a higher quality, more towards pro-end. I would say get a cokin setup with maybe a couple of these and experiment. It’s easy to add more over time when you can understand more what you want them to do. Maybe get an ND2 hard graduated and an ND4 soft?

What kind of landscapes do you want to shoot?

:D

[Willem]

February 24, 2010 at 9:36 pm

Alot of the UK mags are actually produced by the same couple of publishers.

I didn’t realise this is so prevalent until I spotted the same articles and inerviews bing rehashed from one magazine to another for the next edition. I know money’s tight but they could at least wait a bit longer!

I’d say that unfortunately resources such as this are reducing the demand for purchased magazines, just as they are with newspapers. I’ve been buying a couple of photo mags for a year or two and they do seem to get quite repetetive, at least on here you can get a more in-depth education focussed on areas you want to explore further, and you get to see a lot of very good pictures complete with critique and equipment set-up info. The more seasoned (ok, older :D ) contributors to this site add up to just as much expertise as you’d find in a magazine.

That said there’s something nice about the whole paper thing. Ireland has enough people to warrant a general photo mag (I’m not talking about Blue Ireland’s launch next month :twisted: ) if not a dedicated DSLR mag. I’m sure you could market it to tourists for location finding to up the readership…

[Willem]

February 21, 2010 at 10:14 pm

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Clip-Light-Mains-Metre-length/dp/B000NVRCM0/ref=sr_1_50?ie=UTF8&s=lighting&qid=1266790271&sr=8-50

http://www.amazon.co.uk/eglo-uk-ltd-Fabio-Clip/dp/B000MRXC6U/ref=sr_1_46?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1266790217&sr=8-46

http://www.amazon.co.uk/OA6341C-BK-Black-Clip-On-Light/dp/B001KPELN6/ref=sr_1_43?ie=UTF8&s=lighting&qid=1266790217&sr=8-43

Any Good? :wink:

[Willem]

February 21, 2010 at 7:38 pm

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/8453878.stm

Some good news for you from the European court, if you missed it after Christmas.

Hopefully the stupidity high water mark has been reached…

Now they’re going to limit it to Buckingham palace because information and photos of that are SO hard to find! :shock:

[Willem]

February 20, 2010 at 9:27 pm

Just to say I use cokins and I don’t find any unwanted cast on my pictures, I wouldn’t worry too much about that.

[Willem]

February 19, 2010 at 11:42 am

http://www.vividlight.com/articles/1615.htm

This should give you an idea about lighting styles for portraits, you should be fine using natural light – you can reflect with a big piece of card or cover a large piece of cardboard in tin foil!

You could hang a curtain or white sheet for the background? If you use aperture priority you should be able to blur the background a bit in order to keep focus on the subjects, should be easy enough with a 50mm lens…

Consider some black and white, as well as colour, as it can look brilliant and draw more attention to the subject.

Good luck!

[Willem]

February 18, 2010 at 7:46 pm

It was on the radio the other day, I think you can just turn up, it’s meant to be cool and animatronic…

[Willem]

February 18, 2010 at 4:36 pm

http://www.independent.ie/sport/gaelic-football/tyrone-to-pull-tv-plug-2064836.html

[Willem]

February 18, 2010 at 4:33 pm

If it was on his camera phone in a dark area, it’s probably running quite a long exposure (very small lens = minimal light gathering) if they walked past quickly they would be there for only a portion of the exposure, so they would be transparent compared to everyone else, and the background behind them would also be exposed, so you could see both, giving the illusion of transparency.

Now if it was a small child dressed in a victorian frock with red eyes and wielding a butcher knife, I’d probably say ghost…