Finally stepping up to a DSLR....tips, advice needed

[Bifurcator]

Hi, and thanks for reading my rant.

I was mainly looking for advice on lenses.

I already purchased a Canon EF 28-90mm F/4-5.6 III, but was looking for a decent and inexpensive telephoto lens (who doesn't?). I had my eye on the Tamron 70-300mm F/4-5.6 lens, but have read many reviews saying that it is a rather 'soft' lens, so maybe I should just go with a Canon lens?

I was also looking for a decent wide angle lens and a 50mm prime, any suggestions would be awesome. Are there any other dedicated lenses that you would recommend? I was also looking at getting an external flash to augment the one that is built into the XT, as well as a remote shutter release cable. Thanks in advance!

Others can answer more about various lenses. I have been going by a rule of thumb I formulated about 30 or more years back. Which is basically just "always buy maker glass". I pretty much keep to that rule so I won't be much good at 3rd party recommendations or shouting out the heads up on the gotchas. I know I still have a very healthy distrust of Tamron and Tokina. I think I may be warming up just a little bit to Sigma based on a combination of user reviews and what I know can be accomplished in Post.

One way you can save money without sacrificing quality if you're careful is to make use of high quality aspherical, achromatic, and apochromatic attachments in the form of CloseUp Filters (adds macro abilities with no downsides other than having to screw and unscrew them), teleconverters (on the end of the lens can increase focal distance between 1.2 and 2.0 times without too much degradation - usually in the middle of the aperture range almost none at all), and wide converters (also added to the end of a lens and if AC or APO have no detectable adverse affects on image quality - they're great up until about 0.6x).

There are also extension tubes and doublers that attache between the body and the back of the lens but you're exposing the sensor to dust with every use. Extension tubes might produce a tiny tad better image quality (I doubt it) than a good close-up lens but to get a set that allows the electrical functions of the lens to work you're talking about several times the cost of a close-up lens.

The main gotcha with end-lens attachments is that many lenses will now be subject to "creep" if the attachment is very heavy. Creep is where a zoom lens will zoom in or out under it's own weight when pointed upward or downward. It's usually not a problem but it can be - especially on a pod pointed straight down. Not all lenses will creep - many won't suffer from this at all.

When you're shopping for lenses test reports like at http://www.photozone.de/Reviews/45-canon-eos-aps-c and http://www.cameralabs.com/reviews/digital_camera_and_lens_reviews.shtml will tell the most by far. User reports and ratings are subjective and just about meaningless. If the review site doesn't include a set of uniform tests (like http://www.lensplay.com/lenses/lens_top_ten.php or http://www.lensplay.com/lenses/lens_list.php ) then it's not actually useful and is just tracking popularity and trends. They might be good as a starting point to begin to research a particular range of lenses tho. I notice that lens recommendations here at TPF for example, are very subjective and only about 10% of the people responding seem to have actually looked at the relative tests. That's all well and good but as a reader without a good base of test knowledge behind you how are you supposed to know which 10% isn't talking out of the side of their faces. And the 10% that isn't is just reaffirming the test bench results anyway... So finding sites with good test procedures and equipment is a must if you really want to know what's what on the subject of lenses.

One rule that seems to have held over the years is that prime lenses are generally sharper than zooms. Zooms are a compromise between quality and convenience.

A dedicated flash is handy but I think researching the usage styles and results of a strobe head and a flash unit is pretty important if your operating from a position of limited funds. You may find that for the same money and for what you want to do with it that one or the other are much more suitable. Check out sites like http://prophotolife.com/video-library/ (start at the bottom of the page) where all kinds of off camera lighting are considered to know more before dishing out the cash for one kind or another.

Others can add more as the thread goes on.

 

[BoblyBill]

Looking back at my post, I think my opinion about the SP-560 is accurate (at least for me, personally...I'm sure there are many others out there who are quite satisfied with it). For the price, it definitely makes a decent overall camera for the casual user, but that did not prevent me from finding what seemed to be rather silly design oversights, along with some glaring performance shortcomings. There were many positive aspects of the camera that I thought were superb (image stabilization worked perfectly, body is ergonomic and buttons were located intuitively, impressive zoom), but the negatives are equally noticeable and were frustrating enough to make a frequent shooter like myself the decision to sell it and get a better one.

I averaged about 800-1,000 shots a month since April and here are some of the reasons for my disappointment in the Olympus SP-560 UZ:

1. Holy friggin' noise, Batman. I don't even know why they introduced 6400 ISO on that camera model because it literally useless. I understand that this is a shortfall of all compact cameras due to the image sensor size, but gimme a break; Canon's own compacts blow them out of the water when it comes to high ISOs. I generally didn't use anything above 400 because anything above that makes the photo appear that it was produced on 40-grit sandpaper. I've seen cleaner images shot at 1600 on the Rebel than ones shot at 200 on the SP.

2. SLOOOOW. Slower than molasses in January on a cold, Wisconsin morning. For starters, the startup time is three seconds, and that's not including the time you need to allow the extremely sluggish auto focus to lock on to something before it lets you release the shutter - the XT is ready to go in a whopping 0.2 seconds after hitting the power. Also, the memory write/read speed is laughable. If you plan on shooting in RAW mode, you may as well bring War and Peace with so you can sit down and read a chapter or two while the camera leisurely writes the image to the card. I'm still not sure what kind of memory I'm getting for the XT, but surely it is faster than the SP.

3. Manual focus is a joke. As you mentioned above, there is no MF ring. Instead you have to switch focus modes in a sub-menu, then once you're back in capture mode you have to press and hold a button to find the correct range (it shows you a miniscule inset of a zoomed-in region while you are doing this in order to 'assist' you in finding the proper range) and then you have to press and hold another button to lock it in, then you are finally able to take a picture. If you need to make an adjustment, you have to exit capture mode so you can change the focus again. WTF. Trying to find the correct focus when it's dark outside is nearly impossible - not because the buttons are hard to see, but because there is really no way of telling if your subject is/was truly in focus without seeing the photo on a computer screen when you get home.

4. Noise reduction system - this is actually a hard one for me to knock because it actually works pretty well - when I need it. But the camera employs a dark frame subtraction method, which cuts the time you are able to take pictures in half. So, if I'm shooting in bulb mode (which I do quite often when I shoot lightning), NR is on by default and you can't turn it off. Which means, if I'm waiting for a strike and I don't get one in the 20-30 seconds I normally give myself to keep the shutter open, I have to release the trigger and wait another agonizing 20-30 seconds for the camera to take the dark frame and process before I'm able to open up the shutter for another exposure. This is unbelievably frustrating for a lightning photographer because I can't tell you how many times I'd be standing there impatiently waiting for the camera to do it's work and then see the sky explode with lightning directly in front of me, after which I promptly smash my head through the nearest wall for missing the shot (if you think capturing lightning is easy try it yourself some time).The XT's noise reduction system doesn't employ a dark frame subtraction method, therefore I will not have this brain anerysm-inducing problem.

5. Optics - the chromatic aberration is just horrible at long focal lengths. I took a long range photo of downtown Milwaukee from the lakefront and the city looks like it was attacked by a large purple marker. I don't see how I'm going to be encounter the same problem with any decent Canon lens.

(Edit: I can't believe I forgot about this one):
6. Movie mode - I have no idea what Olympus was thinking with this one, but if you wish to use the zoom while shooting video, you have to disable the microphone. Who thought this would be a good idea??

I could go on and on about other, less significant things that irritated me about this camera (like how burst mode is a joke too), but those are the main ones. Perhaps you still may have your doubts about whether I will be happier with my new Canon XT, but I certainly don't.

-Steve

We are friends already!!!! Welcome aboard!!!! I have a 40D so I'm somewhat familiar with XT, but the camera's are different enough that I don't think I can help you with specifics. got anyshots of lightning that you would like to share?

 

[BoblyBill]

Hi, and thanks for reading my rant.

Regarding the dark frame thing, I'm fairly sure the XT uses a radically different NR system:

"While most other high-end digital cameras on the market use a dark frame subtraction method to deal with image noise, the 350D (like Canon's earlier CMOS-based cameras before it) appears to be doing something very different, as there's very little delay between the end of the primary exposure and the writing of the image file to the memory card. There's clearly no "dark frame" exposure involved. I suspect that this advanced noise reduction processing in the 350D is another consequence of the "active pixel" CMOS technology Canon developed internally. Having active circuitry associated with each pixel in the sensor array allows lots of fancy processing that would be impossible otherwise, and it looks like Canon's noise reduction system takes advantage of this. However it's done, the 350D's noise reduction approach appears to be very effective."

http://www.imaging-resource.com/PRODS/EXT/EXTP.HTM

I hope that's true! In any case I can just turn the NR off and deal with a few hot pixels. Anyway, I was mainly looking for advice on lenses. I already purchased a Canon EF 28-90mm F/4-5.6 III, but was looking for a decent and inexpensive telephoto lens (who doesn't?). I had my eye on the Tamron 70-300mm F/4-5.6 lens, but have read many reviews saying that it is a rather 'soft' lens, so maybe I should just go with a Canon lens?

I was also looking for a decent wide angle lens and a 50mm prime, any suggestions would be awesome. Are there any other dedicated lenses that you would recommend? I was also looking at getting an external flash to augment the one that is built into the XT, as well as a remote shutter release cable. Thanks in advance!

I had this lens about a month ago... I hated it. Not only is it a little soft but it has some terrible purple fringing. What is your price range for a tely?

 

[ScubaSteve]

Not sure if this will help.

http://images.photoworkshop.com/rebelxtlessons/interface.html

That is very cool! Thanks for the link; I'll have to dig through that when I get home tonight.

Others can answer more about various lenses. I have been going by a rule of thumb I formulated about 30 or more years back. Which is basically just "always buy maker glass". I pretty much keep to that rule so I won't be much good at 3rd party recommendations or shouting out the heads up on the gotchas. I know I still have a very healthy distrust of Tamron and Tokina. I think I may be warming up just a little bit to Sigma based on a combination of user reviews.............

Awesome advice, thanks for the input.

We are friends already!!!! Welcome aboard!!!! I have a 40D so I'm somewhat familiar with XT, but the camera's are different enough that I don't think I can help you with specifics. got anyshots of lightning that you would like to share?

Thanks! I was all over the place this summer trying to get lightning and this was one of the few that actually turned out decent:

I had this lens about a month ago... I hated it. Not only is it a little soft but it has some terrible purple fringing. What is your price range for a tely?

Well, I'm actually not quite sure because after doing a lot of research, I discovered that it is simply better to save up and then buy a quality lens, but I really want one now. I know this may seem like peanuts, but probably no more than 3 or 4 hundred bucks at the moment.

Thanks for everyone's input btw!

 

[CharlesSmithPhoto]

Get a good book!

 

[ScubaSteve]

Just thought I'd let everyone know that my Rebel arrived today AND IT F*****G ROCKS LIKE A HURRICANE. Holy hell this camera is awesome. It makes the Olympus I had seem like a toy camera. Damn. Anyway, thanks for the advice everyone! I'll be posting pics soon.

 

[Bifurcator]

Nya... you're just impressed with the mirror noise.

 

[ScubaSteve]

Nya... you're just impressed with the mirror noise.

Speak no foul, vile one!!

 

[Bifurcator]

Muahahahaaa... :devil:

 

[FindersKeepers]

Just thought I'd let everyone know that my Rebel arrived today AND IT F*****G ROCKS LIKE A HURRICANE. Holy hell this camera is awesome. It makes the Olympus I had seem like a toy camera. Damn. Anyway, thanks for the advice everyone! I'll be posting pics soon.

get yourself the IR remote if you havent already

Awesome tool for a beginner on those cameras because you KNOW you'll be wanting to play with it