First Camera Thoughts?

eyeadoreu_

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Hi forum! I'm a newbie, and I've been contemplating on if I should either start with film or digital first, right now I can't afford a Nikon D80 financially. So I'm going to start with the camera I have posted here. Give me your opinions/thoughts, any feedback would be appreciated. Thanks!

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Hi forum! I'm a newbie, and I've been contemplating on if I should either start with film or digital first, right now I can't afford a Nikon D80 financially. So I'm going to start with the camera I have posted here. Give me your opinions/thoughts, any feedback would be appreciated. Thanks!

Getting BS answers about equipment you can't afford doesn't do you any good and the answers don't mean anything because we don't know you.
You've got a camera.
Start taking pictures.
 
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Few months of experimenting with film and the cost opf processing you'll have paid for a D80. Good luck though, I enjoy shooting film too
bigthumb.gif
 
Great camera and lens to start with, as did a generation of Nikon users.
 
For starting off with a DSLR with very limited funds I'd recommend something like this to you:

Nikon Digital D 70S 6.1 MEGAPIXEL WITH 18-70 F3.5-4.5 G, BATTERY & CHARGER (CF CARD ) DIGITAL SLR INTERCHANGEABLE LENS CAMERA OUTFIT - KEH.com

The cost of purchasing and processing 20 or so rolls of film will ay for this thing.

Great set of features for a newbie on a budget. Pair it with a cheap off camera flash and it will sync at all shutter seeds up to its maximum 1/8000. Two control wheels for control. In body focus motor for older AFd lenses. It does not have a super duper modern sensor but it will do.

KEH currently have some of these for around $100 or so, body only. Plenty of other starter models for less than $200.

Film and processing is not cheap. Nor are prints. Scanning negs on a cheap home scanner is a painful and lengthy process.
 
Hi forum! I'm a newbie, and I've been contemplating on if I should either start with film or digital first, right now I can't afford a Nikon D80 financially. So I'm going to start with the camera I have posted here. Give me your opinions/thoughts, any feedback would be appreciated. Thanks!
It's gonna be tough for you here, among film shooters and some digital voices. No wonder, photographic landscape changed globally from film to computer. Starting photographic hobby today with film is more complicated as the infrastructure for film is heavily depleted; film companies are going under, labs are going under, popular opinion about people shooting film is not favorable. The big question is WHAT is your goal and in what environment you will have to work for that goal. I shoot BW film and sometimes I have to buy it 2-4 thousand kilometers away, I bring my chemicals from a place 1500 km away. And so on. I have no idea where is the closest lab with E6 processing, I know there is no BW lab here anymore. I have to make my own lab, but that is exactly, what I enjoy, pictures are somewhat secondary. So ask yourself where is your enjoyment; is it in processing of a picture or is it in post processing only ? Start with digital is much easier, however later is getting harder (financially mostly as at some point you will be limited by your equipment), start with film is nowadays much harder, but once you create the system is easier (as you don't have to update your equipment every 2 years or so).
 
"I have no idea where is the closest lab with E6 processing, I know there is no BW lab here anymore."

Timor, if you're talking about TO, what about Toronto Image Works? Best E-6 lab still standing in the GTA.
 
Since you already have the camera it might be worth using it for now, see how you like it, then upgrade to something else later on. I have a film rangefinder and a digital camera body that use the same lenses so I can switch back and forth easily enough.

There are a number of places like The Darkroom in San Francisco that has a flat rate for developing and scanning of $10 per roll (with other services and options available). You could try Lomography or the Film Photography Project to find expired film or specials/sales on film at lower prices.

I don't find it too difficult these days to go from film to a digital format with my photos, it just depends on what you want to do with your images.
 
The 35-70mm f/3.3~4.5 AF Nikkor was the very FIRST Nikon autofocus lens I ever owned!!!! It was stolen by a US Army enlisted man in a TPF forum contest a couple years back. It's a nifty lens--it is NOT super-large, which makes it very good in social photography situations, where many times people are a bit put off by having a monster-sized lens aimed at them from close range. I'm not sure about the Nikon body you have...it was never popular, and I have not shot with one. I dunno...you can learn photography with anything. Film costs $13 or so per three dozen pictures if done in prints....slides are just a little bit less-costly.

Learning photography can be done without access to a camera, in some ways. It's very much about "process". On the other hand, "practicing photography", by actually shooting images, requires a camera, of one type of another.
How much practice one puts in, in terms of hours, and days, and weeks, and in terms of exposures made, and successes and failures, is determined mostly by costs: cost in time, cost in materials, cost in effort expended.
 
"I have no idea where is the closest lab with E6 processing, I know there is no BW lab here anymore."

Timor, if you're talking about TO, what about Toronto Image Works? Best E-6 lab still standing in the GTA.
I knew this is somewhere. :)
 
Hi forum! I'm a newbie, and I've been contemplating on if I should either start with film or digital first, right now I can't afford a Nikon D80 financially. So I'm going to start with the camera I have posted here. Give me your opinions/thoughts, any feedback would be appreciated. Thanks!
It's gonna be tough for you here, among film shooters and some digital voices. No wonder, photographic landscape changed globally from film to computer. Starting photographic hobby today with film is more complicated as the infrastructure for film is heavily depleted; film companies are going under, labs are going under, popular opinion about people shooting film is not favorable. The big question is WHAT is your goal and in what environment you will have to work for that goal. I shoot BW film and sometimes I have to buy it 2-4 thousand kilometers away, I bring my chemicals from a place 1500 km away. And so on. I have no idea where is the closest lab with E6 processing, I know there is no BW lab here anymore. I have to make my own lab, but that is exactly, what I enjoy, pictures are somewhat secondary. So ask yourself where is your enjoyment; is it in processing of a picture or is it in post processing only ? Start with digital is much easier, however later is getting harder (financially mostly as at some point you will be limited by your equipment), start with film is nowadays much harder, but once you create the system is easier (as you don't have to update your equipment every 2 years or so).

Thank God i live in the UK where there are loads of labs if you can't do it yourself, I'm going to get some top quality prints done soon by this chap R O B I N***B E L L - Photographic Printer


 
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Thank God i live in the UK where there are loads of labs if you can't do it yourself, I'm going to get some top quality prints done soon by this chap R O B I N***B E L L - Photographic Printer
How I said, local conditions are different here and there, Europe has usually better distribution of services (not only photographic), America is just very big.
The thing is, that OP started 2 threads but so far is not giving us any pointers what are hers/his plans.
Thanks for the clip Gary. Film is not death.
 
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