Actually, for myself, I dun have a very good impression of Sony digicams. Mainly because many of them suffers from shutter lag. What is important in photography is to capture the "moment", and not to capture "the moment after the moment". 
PLS HELP, wishes to take up photography.. camera selection.
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"you could try the cheaper slide film like Astia"
It's more expensive than Provia 100F. EBX would be better, not to mention having nicer colours to me.
"advise: if u want zoom lens its better to save up for those f2.8 types even if it means waiting for quite some time. sometimes it is always better to wait and then be able to get better things once and for all. really, pls try to avoid the scenario of getting slower zoom then upgrading bcoz that way u end up spending more
once u r comfortable with the essential photo skills then choice of equiptment will be entirely up to u."
This sounds more like drawing the cart before the horse; I'd suggest beginners not purchase thousand dollar lenses. For starters it's not good to go broke then realise what you really want.
"AF will be useful in street/human photography."
Errrrr.... not really.
"It's film and developing cost that will drive you to take pictures good, once for all."
What I've always been saying, but sadly many choose to ignore.
It's more expensive than Provia 100F. EBX would be better, not to mention having nicer colours to me.
"advise: if u want zoom lens its better to save up for those f2.8 types even if it means waiting for quite some time. sometimes it is always better to wait and then be able to get better things once and for all. really, pls try to avoid the scenario of getting slower zoom then upgrading bcoz that way u end up spending more
once u r comfortable with the essential photo skills then choice of equiptment will be entirely up to u."
This sounds more like drawing the cart before the horse; I'd suggest beginners not purchase thousand dollar lenses. For starters it's not good to go broke then realise what you really want.
"AF will be useful in street/human photography."
Errrrr.... not really.
"It's film and developing cost that will drive you to take pictures good, once for all."
What I've always been saying, but sadly many choose to ignore.
thank you all for your replies.
most of the replies tell me to get a film camera to learn, etc etc.
let me present to you my standpoint.
considering the camera that i wish to buy is sony 717, which from many reviews online has already stated that it is a good camera which produces extremely good quality photos, with not too much lack of manual controls.
with a film SLR, i'll take photos, and send it for developing, and i'll only know the result after i see the photos. i may or may not remember every single setting - film speed, shutter, apperture, focal, etc etc.
yes, the photo if under/over exposed or screwed up will serve as a painful memory.
but let's put it this way
with a digicam, i can mount it on a tripod, aim it at a building, and do this in 5 minutes - film speed at ISO 100, shutter speed varies from 1/2000 till 1/30, and maybe i have like 30 photos of the same exact thing to compare and learn, what is the best shutter speed.
then maybe i can set shutter speed to be 1/500, and i vary the ISO to see what are the effects again.
all these settings will be stored with the photo's memory, so if i look at the photo, i can see its settings, what film speed, what apperture, what shutter speed.
in a way, i also learn.
furthermore, for sony 717, there're add-on lenses that allow me to change from wide angle (24 mm) to telephoto (300mm) and as dpreviews have stated, the image still looks very sharp at 300mm, as the lens is carl zeiss. built in is 35-190mm.
the camera is fairly cheap too, for carl zeiss lens, which i believe is very good quality.
so for $1500, i take good quality photos and still can learn stuff about these manual settings, without having to buy film, searching for 2nd hand lenses, buying and selling lenses, etc etc, which i believe will instead save time and money in the long run. (like 2-3 yrs.. i believe 5 megapixel cameras won't be beaten that fast coz 5 megapixels are already so high resolution, so much higher than a normal film camera photo resolution already.)
so this is my stand
i'm not insisting i'll buy a digicam
just that maybe you all can consider this standpoint.
in fact i think i still may buy a film SLR for traditional stuff.
but there're many slr-like digicams on the market that don't warrant the need for a film SLR.. if you know what i mean.
most of the replies tell me to get a film camera to learn, etc etc.
let me present to you my standpoint.
considering the camera that i wish to buy is sony 717, which from many reviews online has already stated that it is a good camera which produces extremely good quality photos, with not too much lack of manual controls.
with a film SLR, i'll take photos, and send it for developing, and i'll only know the result after i see the photos. i may or may not remember every single setting - film speed, shutter, apperture, focal, etc etc.
yes, the photo if under/over exposed or screwed up will serve as a painful memory.
but let's put it this way
with a digicam, i can mount it on a tripod, aim it at a building, and do this in 5 minutes - film speed at ISO 100, shutter speed varies from 1/2000 till 1/30, and maybe i have like 30 photos of the same exact thing to compare and learn, what is the best shutter speed.
then maybe i can set shutter speed to be 1/500, and i vary the ISO to see what are the effects again.
all these settings will be stored with the photo's memory, so if i look at the photo, i can see its settings, what film speed, what apperture, what shutter speed.
in a way, i also learn.
furthermore, for sony 717, there're add-on lenses that allow me to change from wide angle (24 mm) to telephoto (300mm) and as dpreviews have stated, the image still looks very sharp at 300mm, as the lens is carl zeiss. built in is 35-190mm.
the camera is fairly cheap too, for carl zeiss lens, which i believe is very good quality.
so for $1500, i take good quality photos and still can learn stuff about these manual settings, without having to buy film, searching for 2nd hand lenses, buying and selling lenses, etc etc, which i believe will instead save time and money in the long run. (like 2-3 yrs.. i believe 5 megapixel cameras won't be beaten that fast coz 5 megapixels are already so high resolution, so much higher than a normal film camera photo resolution already.)
so this is my stand
i'm not insisting i'll buy a digicam
just that maybe you all can consider this standpoint.
in fact i think i still may buy a film SLR for traditional stuff.
but there're many slr-like digicams on the market that don't warrant the need for a film SLR.. if you know what i mean.
That is good...
then go for it....
:thumbsup:
Actually there is something called notepad, and pencil. For the shoots, u could just jot the shutter aperture and focal down
As for later stage, you probably wun need to record down, as most probably u would be shooting with certain range of settings and can know the settings from the pictures.
Cheers.
uh, yah.. but.. very hard (and wasteful) to experiment..
like spend 2 rolls of film on one building with like 70 different settings...
:dunno:
if digicam can just delete everything at the end of the day coz more or less already learn what's the good settings for a particular kind of shot.. etc etc.
with a digicam most ppl are lazy... the general attitude would be like 'oh, the information is captured in the EXIF headers already. If I need to know I'll go and look... '
So in other words you wouldn't really remember how you took the shot unless you took the pains to remember it.
actually there is no real need to meticulously jot down the settings becoz after 2 or 3 tries, trails an d errors; all the settings will become more or less "ingrained" ie u will quickly realise your "preffered" settings to be used for a variety of situations. then the next couple of times u shoot, the process of going about setting the settings will be autopilot.
Hi
The best solution:
Wait for another Once-In-A-Lifetime offer of a Canon D30 selling at $1000 again and get a 28-135 IS. Everything is settled.
But the problem is which Ah-Gong will sell at $1000 again?
If the Sony 717 is okay for you, then get it and start shooting. The more you shoot, you will know what you want in your photography. NATCO(No Action, Talk COck Only) is no use here.
Davey
The best solution:
Wait for another Once-In-A-Lifetime offer of a Canon D30 selling at $1000 again and get a 28-135 IS. Everything is settled.
But the problem is which Ah-Gong will sell at $1000 again?
If the Sony 717 is okay for you, then get it and start shooting. The more you shoot, you will know what you want in your photography. NATCO(No Action, Talk COck Only) is no use here.
Davey
I think the slide film you're talking about is Fuji Sensia
I myself started with a Sony 707. It gave nice colours, but eventually the even better colours of slides won me over
Its good to start out with a digital camera provided you have discipline and have the motivation to try out and learn. There is also not much point in remembering the exact settings because in outdoor shots, you seldom encounter the same subject under the same lightning conditions.
Its good NOT to spend too much on lenses when you first start out on photography unless you are very very sure on what you want to shoot. Choices of lens often depends on the subject and good lenses more often than not doesn't come cheap. A good and cheap lens to start out on would be the 50mm. It forces you to use your legs more, which in turn helps you to learn about perspective when you try out other lens.
Well, just want to point out that, even though it's has a Carl Zeiss name on it, doesn't necessary have the kind of performance that you expect. Many of the earlier Sony models, as well as the
Panasonic Lumix(???), the lens were made to Carl Zeiss specifications only by a 3rd party factory and not by the actual Carl Zeiss factory.
And also, think you've got a misconception there, the average equivalent pixel size of a ISO 100 slide frame is around 18-25 megapixels. 5 megapixels is no where near that. It's just that since so many labs now uses the Frontier digital minilabs, you don't really see the maximum resolution of film prints anymore.
F
fooJac
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Though it may not be the case for the other Sony/Panasonic cameras, the F7x7 series does have a rather good lens. It is actually the most resolving 5MP digicam around. I've tried a friend's F707 before and was impressed with its resolving power. The main nitpicks are the limited max shutter(1000/2000*with caveats) and apertures(f8) and the consumer oriented interface with seems to place the program controls in priority over the usual A/P/M settings. Needs some getting used to.
Granted that you may be able to scan a 35m slide to 18-25Megapixels, it need not contain 18MP worth of resolution at all. From my scanning experiments on some 35mm slides, it seems that going from 6-12MP hardly yields any more useful data and that the usable resolution of 35mm Provia 100F might only be 6MP-8MP or thereabouts.(Compared to a DLSR) Scanning any larger need not yield any useful data. Also, one may have to take note that you may need a decent film scanner at least and factor that into the cost consideration.
Anyway, one cannot judge usable resolution just by looking at the pixel size of the file. The actual lines per picture height resolved gives a better clue and that cannot be determined without scanning a test target.
Going OT here..
Hi, think you misunderstood me. What I meant was "equivalent" megapixels, and that's exactly what I meant. The minute you mention anything about scanning... it totally defeats the purpose of comparision between digital and film resolution. Sure you can scan a picture to 6-12MP worth of data, but that doesn't mean that resolution of a film frame is that. What you are doing is using the resolution and resolving power of the scanner. When you scan in a film frame, it becomes 2nd generation data, of course it will only have 6mp or 8mp of data. This kind of comparision is meaningless. To truly compare the kind of resolution that film and digital print has, just compare a 20"x30" print. And I don't mean a print from a Frontier machine ( Even the Frontier 370 prints to 10" only). You have to print from an enlarger to get the full resolution of the film frame.
BUT.... it's senseless, cos few people do conventional prints now and since most people will have their prints from a digital machine anyway.
F
fooJac
Guest
Agree.
But it probably depends on the individual's workflow, if he does digital image processing than scanning has to be taken into account.
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