Scothew

Anyone have experience with them?

Whats your opinion on particular brand's and models?

I've used the Canon 300D (the model before the current XT that is out now) and I loved it. I will be using this at many race events, and also in outdoor and indoor car shows. Also will be taking salt water aquarium pictures and pictures of my son. So being able to capture fast pictures will be a must.

Right now my choices are really between the Canon XT and the Nikon D50. The D50 is very similar in specs to the XT, but it is only 6 megapixel compared to the XT's 8megapixel. I am fairly certain I can get by with just the 6 but if quality would be comprimised, I wouldnt want to go that route.

Kluski

I have a Canon D60 and love it.



I bought it used off of a wedding photographer. He only had it a month or two before he sold it to me. He wanted the next new toy.

I don't know much about the two cameras you mentioned.

Check my website out and you can see what I can do with mine. Mine is a 6.3 MP camera.

C5 Photography

Scothew

Very nice pics Chris.

I am gonna cross reference the D60 and see how it compares to the Nikon D50, But I have a feeling the canon is alot higher end than what I am looking for :P

Edit: The Canon D60 is comparable to the Nikon D100 which are a few steps above the ones I have been looking at. (also a few steps up in price :P)

GirchyGirchy

I own a Nikon D50, purchased on Labour Day weekend of this year. Here's my story.

Make DARN sure you go to a store and feel them before purchasing. I found the Canon XT to be way too small for my hands - I couldn't wrap my fingers around the hand grip, which was a huge negative for me. The build quality didn't seem very good either, with cheap-feeling, hard plastic. Comfort has a lot to do with enjoying a camera, and it fell short of this, IMO.

So, I went with the Nikon D50, and love the thing. It actually feels like it cost $700-800, with quality feeling plastics, doors, and buttons. It's also somewhat large, so it fits in my hands very well. Plastic is grained or rubberized where it needs to be...when I'm using it, it just feels very natural.

One big bonus for me is being able to change common settings such as white balance, quality, focus mode/area, exposure compensation, ISO rating, etc. without having to go three screens deep in the camera's menu. It's also very fast (feels just like a 35mm SLR, speed wise) and has excellent battery life. This is partially because of the low LCD screen usage - I don't have it review the pictures after taking them, so it never turns on unless I manually review them or need to access the menu.

If you look at pictures of the back of the camera, there's a 4-way button to the right of the LCD - this is for changing the focus area to any of the five locations (left, right, up, down, and center of the image). It's a snap to use your thumb to change this while looking through the viewfinder. There are visible and audible (which can be disabled) focus lock notifications.

There are a couple of nitpicks I have on it. It sometimes has difficulty focusing on flat surfaces without edges, but you can easily lock the focus on a nearby object and pan back. I wish it had color effects built-in, such as black and white, sepia, etc. The USB/video/AC adapter jack door is hard to get closed, but I use a card reader, so that's never been touched by me. Finally, as far as I know, the timer button has to be pressed each time you want to use it - if you're doing a series of low-light shots, you have to press it every time you want to take a new picture.

You can get around this by pruchaing the remote for it - it's only $17 or so, and is very handy for low light shots. I also added a bag (Tamrac 5684) which holds the camera and 18-55mm lens well, along with extra battery, memory card, and polarizer filter. Another pocket can hold a cell phone, battery charger, or a media card reader for the computer. I also cut little pieces of clear plastic from a Palm Pilot screen protector to put over the rear LCD and top-mounted status display, so they won't get scratched.

If you have the money, you may want to skip the kit version and purchase the D50 body and the D70's 18-70mm lens for it. Most reviews say the kit lens is the weak point of the camera, and while I can't really notice, it obviously isn't the nicest feeling lens. I can live with it, though, and plan on buying the 55-200mm companion lens soon.

This camera was purchased to replace my Canon A60 (heck of an upgrade, huh?), which started taking lousy low-light photos. I also own a Canon SD200, which came in today - I really wanted something tiny I can take anywhere. My 35mm rig is a Nikon FM10 with 35-70mm and 70-210mm lenses. I mostly run Kodak T-Max in it.

If I had it to do over again, I wouldn't change anything. I'm very happy with the kit, and know I wouldn't have wanted to spend the large amount of extra money on a better lens. I'll recommend it with no reservations.

Here's a link to a 4.5MB zip file with five images I've taken with the camera of various things. The coffee mug shot was taken at the highest resolution and fine setting, while the others are fine/medium (what I leave it on for everyday use).

http://locker.uky.edu/~bcelme2/D50pics.zip

I hope this helps, let me know if you have any questions!

Scothew

Thanks for the info Brian.

I've been tossing many ideas around in my head, and you touched on one thing, I defintely want the 55-200mm lense. B has a deal where you can get the D50, the 18-55 kit lense and the 55-200 for right at 1k. Which isnt a bad deal at all from what I can see.

I defintely want to get a filter kit and a macro lense for later down the road.

I almost bought one today, but i'm making myself wait.

68PonyFever

You can find some good info here
www.popphoto.com

korinwoodo

Ive heard good things about the D70 and Rebel XT, but I would expect that at their prices.

GirchyGirchy

You're welcome, glad to help out!

If you want to save a tiny bit of cash, you could purchase the D50 with 18-55mm lens for $750 at Best Buy, then order the 55-200mm lens seperately from B&H Photo for $200. Then you could order accessories for the camera from either place in the same order - B&H is about the best for filters.

I'd go with a circular polarizer at the least. I also have a set of three close-up filters that are fun, along with a couple of screw-on fisheye lenses that make some neat effects. You could get some effect filters, but a lot aren't too useful with digital, like the red contrast filter for black & white photos and the incandescent compensation filter for daylight balanced color film I use on my 35mm stuff.

At least the filter sizes are the same for both lenses, that's a big plus. Both of my 35mm lenses have 52mm threads, too, so I don't have to worry about any adapters.

Happy purchasing! I was waiting on that 55-200 myself, and now that the price has dropped $40 or so, I think I'm going for it.

Edit - I forgot to mention my favourite digital camera review site, www.imaging-resource.com. It's sometimes slow to load, but it has a ton of good information on the cameras, along with sample images from each so you can compare them directly. Another good one is www.dpreview.com.

adrenalin

I have the KonicaMinolta Maxxum 7D and I am very happy with it. I've had the Nikon 5000, Minolta H7, A1 and A2. So far this one is definately my favorite since it is a true Digital SLR. Even though it is only 6.3 megapixels, the clarity of the photos easily beats the A2's 8.0 megapixels. Works with all of my old 35mm equipment except for the flash. Check out www.dpreview.com or www.steves-digicams.com

Both are great review sites.

Scothew

John, how long does it take for yours to power up? From what I have read on the konica is it is roughly 2.5 seconds, as where the nikon is almost instant.

Fastrack

Hey Scothew,

When looking at a SLR camera, look at the Lens line-up. Canon equipment (Lenses, Flashes etc..) are generally cheaper than the Nikon/Nikkor counter parts, and are regarded as being just as good or better than Nikon lenses. When buying a SLR these days your buying the "Lenses", not the camera body as it's not considered to last 20 years like the previous film body's.

Canon makes all the CMOS sensors in their SLR's.

The Rebel as I'm sure you've read are based off the same sensors as their bigger bothers 300D was based off a 10D sensor, the XT is based off the 20D sensor. Things you'll notice with the Rebel line is a smaller view finder, plastic body etc.. but the pictures will be VERY close in quality.

I ended up buying a Canon 10D after a lot of research, and now have 27,000 shots in 2 years the camera is still going strong. I also have a Canon 100mm macro, Canon 100-400L, Canon 28-135, and a Sigma 15mm Fisheye. And the highly regarded 50mm 1.4 lens (it's a plastic lens, but it's cheap and takes razor sharp pictures)

Check out www.dppreview.com and look at the comparison shots between Nikon/Canon, pay attention to the ISO levels etc.. As with SLRs you can bump up the ISO and not really notice (Point & Shoot cameras have a ton of noise at anything above the default ISO).

I've taken pictures at ISO 800 and they've been very usable.

The power up time of the new Nikon / Canon camera's are pretty much instant. My 10D on the other hand takes about 1.5 seconds to power up.

With the 6 vs 8 mega-pixels. The more Mega-pixels you have will allow you to crop images. The 20D can take about 800 pictures on a single battery charge.

As others have suggested you'll want to pick up a Circular Polarizer (not liner). If the lens can accept a Lens Hood, this will tend to increase contrast in the images as well as reduce lens flare.

I also use UV filters on the front of all my lenses to protect them as well as reduce haze. Also this will allow to clean the front lens without cleaning the front element. There's many arguments if you should use a UV filter, if it's a high quality one Hoya or B&W you'll be fine.

If you have any questions let me know.

Scothew

Thanks for your input Ben. Im still torn on it honestly

GirchyGirchy

Have you actually tried them out yet? That's what did it for me.

Scothew

I used a canon eos 300d out at the grand am races last year. Loved it. I've shot a bunch here at work with a co-workers Nikon D70 so I am going tonight to try out the D50.

Here is one of the pics I took of the Grand Am Racers.
http://bradbarnett.net/mustangs/wall...arberWP-35.jpg

More here: I took a good majority of the action shots. http://bradbarnett.net/mustangs/time.../wallpaper.htm

Fastrack

One thing with SLR's you need to sharpen the images (And do other various Post processing, you can't really use images out of the camera as you can with Point and Shoot), and the picture you posted above needs a little unsharp-mask. I hope you don't mind, but I applied a bit of unsharp-mask to your image, and re-attached it.

Here's some ISO1600 pictures from a Blue Jays game, I was near the left outfield foul post, using my 100-400. This was a night game, and the Rogers Centre was open but the field lights do not provide enough light for a descent shutter speed.





And here's a 100% crop from the first image, this is unsharpened, and is ISO1600. So it's not as razor sharp as ISO100-200.



Please note my camera is 2 years old, the current Rebel and 20D outshine it in noise levels.

But as GirchyGirchy said, make sure you try out both..

Scothew

Thanks fasttrack, that does look better. That was my first outing with a SLR. I didnt really even touch them up or anything, but now I know to.

After shooting some with all of them last night, the price and everything I've found, I am going with the Nikon D50. Spec wise, its about the same as the XT, minus the 8mp, but i dont think that will hinder me at all.

Fastrack

Well I'm glad you decided, I know I had a hard time trying to decide when I bought mine. It came out to what Lenses I wanted / price range etc... The canon was cheaper overall. And has better image quality.

Enjoy, and remember to order a polarizer! It'll remove reflection from car windshields, water etc... It's a must have filter.

Scothew

Yeah I gotta get some filters, for outside and inside under flourescents.

Kluski

Not sure about the camera you got. But mine has white balancing funtions. It already sets it self up to take pictures in flourescent light and other light. No need for those filters.

But a polized filter does eliminate the reflections. It also makes the sky more blue.

Scothew

Yeah this has a lot of white balance options. You'r probably right, I can just switch presets for the indoor stuff. It doesnt have the manual step down like the D70, but I think it will be ok. If I find it is too bad, I can shoot RAW and adjust in PS I believe.