I'm new to this

[tadpole29]

OK, I'm getting a new interest in photograph and I have a digital camera, but it's not a good one. I'm not wanting an SLR, because I don't want to have to change lenses, and I'll be doing this as only a hobby, what would be a good digital camera for me to get?

 

[Tiberius]

There's no one best digital camera, so I can't tell you which camera to buy. But I can give you a list of a few things to look out for when you are buying a camera.

• Ignore digital zoom, it's the spawn of Satan. The only zoom you should ever use is optical zoom and only optical zoom. When you look at cameras, ask the saleman what the optical zoom alone is. Many manufacturers count both optical and digital zoom together, so if they have a 6x optical zoom and a 4 times digital zoom, they'll say it has a 24 times zoom. be careful that what you are told is the optical zoom only.
• Look for a camera that has manual, aperture and shutter priority modes. You can easily tell this because there will be M, A, and P on the mode dial on the top. On some cameras, it may be M, Av, Tv and P instead. These modes will give you a huge amount of control over the way the camera works.
• Don't pay too much attention to how many megapixels. While it is important, the only difference the number of megapixels makes is how large you can print your final picture. Unless you want to print huge poster sized prints, 6-8 megapixels is more than enough. You can print up to quite a large size with this many megapixels.
• If you can, get a camera with a hotshoe, so you can plug in an external flash. The inbuilt flash is very limited, and will never give good results if you have to use it as the primary light source. A seperate flash will let you use techniques like bounce flash, which is impossible with a built in flash.
• Look for a camera which is capable of accepting filters in front of the lens. There will be a fine thread on the inside of the rim that sticks out a tiny bit in front of the lens. This will let you put on a polarising filter which can make your photos look much better. (Some photos, not all of them). it will also let you put a UV filter on the front of your lens to provide a bit of protection for the lens.
• Look to see what range the ISO rating can go. ISO is a measure of how sensitive the sensor is to light. The higher the number, the more sensitive the camera is. Most digital cameras have the ability to choose different ISO rating so you can change it depending on how much light there is. On a sunny day, you can use a low number like 100 ISO, but as it gets darker, you can increase the ISO to 800 or even 1600 so you can take photos without needing to use the flash (which is very good if your subject is out of flash range, such as people on stage). Be warned though, that higher ISO ratings mean more noise, although this can be used for artistic effect.

before you buy a camera, go to a website such as Megapixel, where you can read reviews of all different cameras to see how they compare to each other. The reviews at Megapixel give you lots of information on each camera, so you know exactly what you are buying.

 

[Bradical79]

I'm still pretty new to digital photography myself, but I'm pretty happy with the quality of the Canon Digital Rebel XT. Excellent combination of quality and afordability

 

[Tiberius]

Yep, the Rebel XT (also called the Canon 350D outside the USA) is a very popular camera. i have one, and I love it.

 

[Boss_BlueAngels]

Yup, I have a Rebel XT as well. 25,500 shutter activations later and I'm still learning new things!

 

[umhbtexasdem]

I will have to find out what kind I have, but my husband works at Best Buy and got me this fantastic digital camera, I take it everywhere now! I will have to ask him specs on it and will let you know; I love mine!!

 

[Tiberius]

What model camera is it, umhbtexasdem?

 

[Leanna]

I have an SLR and only one lense, I don't change it.

 

[Tiberius]

What size lens is it?

 

[Leanna]

um 18 to 55 mm ? would that be the size?

 

[Tiberius]

Yep, that's the size! Nice wide angle to standard lens.

 

[Leanna]

It works. I figure eventually I will get an SLR with more megapixels (this one only has 5 point something I think, or 6?) and then worry about additional lenses....

 

[jwu]

OK, I'm getting a new interest in photograph and I have a digital camera, but it's not a good one. I'm not wanting an SLR, because I don't want to have to change lenses, and I'll be doing this as only a hobby, what would be a good digital camera for me to get?

You don't have to change lenses...normally a basic lense for an SLR will give you at least as much possibilities as the fixed lens of another camera - but you retain the option to change lenses if your interest grows later on, without having to buy a new camera.

And as others mentioned, megapixels aren't that important. Get a camera with six or so, that's enough. In fact, in some cases where the manufacturer boosted the megapixels to impress the potential buyers this can make the pixels interfere with each other, resulting in a picture of less quality and detail than a camera with half as many megapixel but of good quality would have produced.

Another important thing is, as others previously mentioned, that you can manually control the shutter times and the aperture if you want to, preferably each individually and the other one being automatically configured and both manually as well as both automatical. Experimenting with these things is what actually makes much of the fun of photography; if you are stuck to a few predefined settings then this will bore you quickly.

Another important thing is a tripod. It doesn't cost much compared to the camera but gives you a lot of options with long shutter times, and exactly that is something that you'll certainly want to experiment with early on.


Personally i got a Nikon D40 and i am *very* happy with it.