SO, you just got a new DSLR.

[Solarflare]

#10 IF you are truly a newbie, this is going to hurt: Your new modern DSLR camera is a heck of a lot smarter than you are at this point. Over a hundred years of knowledge has been programmed into your camera.

Newsflash: the fastest computer in the world has the compting power of, I dunno, maybe an earthworm ?

Your camera ? Forget it. Its absolutely dumb.

Even less DSLRs. Compact cameras, some of them have quite nifty automatic modes. DSLRs ? Not the point of that camera to do the thinking for you, so their AUTO modes arent that great anyway.

And all that a camera has to decide about is four variables: aperture, shutter speed, and sensor speed, plus the focus throw. Theres a couple more variables in post processing, for creating the JPEG or TIFF or whatever, such as white balance, but those four variables are really all that has to be decided before taking the picture. Except special circumstances, like flash.

Also, knowledge of a hundred years ? Give me a break. We have computers in cameras for 20 years now, tops. Thats the maximum time people had to optimize their algorithms.

Don’t begin your career by believing that you are already limited and need better equipment.

#8 Until YOUR skill level outperforms your equipment, there is no real reason to “upgrade”.

I used my D5100 for a 3/4 year before switching to full frame and never looked back. I dont care if I maybe still might not even match my D5100 in skill; photographing with my D600 is simply so much better, the image quality substantly increased, and the system much closer to my personal needs.

I buy new hardware whenever I see the need for it.

 

[table1349]

 

[SCraig]

Since we are dredging up a thread that hasn't been posted in for 3 years I'd like to point out one thing:

People managed to take excellent photographs for decades without the benefit of autofocus, image stabilization, automatic exposure calculation, dozens of autofocus points, 36mp digital sensors, or any of the other bells and whistles that we enjoy these days. They managed to take photographs of everything from portraits and landscapes to motorsports and rockets launching, and everything in between. And they managed to do so quite well.

The way in which they managed to do this is very, very simple: They learned to use their camera. They didn't try to throw a Bandaid on the problem of poor photographs by running out and purchasing the latest whizz-bang new camera on the market, they LEARNED.

I see people here whining about their autofocus not being fast enough or accurate enough or their meter not compensating properly or their lens not focusing sharp enough and I'm here to tell you for an absolute fact that the majority of the time it is purely and simply because they don't know how to use what they have. I see everything in the world packed into a camera body these days but the one thing I have never seen a camera come with is ability on the part of the photographer.

Think about that the next time the urge for a new lens or body or something-or-other hits.

 

[unpopular]

Oh I don't know. An absolute newbie doesn't know anything about exposure compensation or meter bias. In that sense, yeah, AE program is 'smarter' than a newbie in the same sense that a calculator is smarter than I am at division to the 8th precision.

That's not saying much, as I can do a lot more with division and multiplication than it can. So yeah, a DSLR is "smarter" in the sense that it will compensate an exposure accurately every time (where I might skip f/5.6 - because I almost always do). But that's where it stops - what it does with the exposure it's totally clueless.