The MUST haves.

[Whiskeyjack]

I am totally new to digital photography. I used my Mother's old Canon SLR a bit in high school and always wanted to take it further. Fast forward 18 years and I'm finally at a place in life where I can start affording to do some of the things I'm interested in.

I bought a Canon Rebel XS with the kit lens as well as the EFS 55-250mm. My brother bought me a Canon D60 after finding out my husband had expressed interest in photography as well. This will give us 2 bodies so I can have one for back up when my husband isn't with me.

My brother is also sending me a 28-90mm and 70mm (or maybe 75)-300mm.

I have nothing else.

What are the must haves in terms of filters and other equipment for an aspiring photographer. I'm just a few weeks in but I'm already saving up for L glass for when I figure this stuff out. It's now become an obsession.


Thanks in advance for any advice.

 

[Josh66]

What are you wanting to do with said gear?

 

[Derrel]

Photoshop Elements or Lightroom 4.x are virtually "essential", IMHO. Of course, Canon's free DPP software is also workable, and will develop raw images reasonalbly well.

Filters? A circular polarizer is nice, and is probably the single most-useful filter, followed by something more advanced like a 3-stop soft graduated filter. Filters are NOT that commonly used today.

A light, affordable carbon fiber tripod from Adorama's Flashpoint CF line, or one of the $150 Manfrotto aluminum 'pods are useful things to own.

 

[Whiskeyjack]

What are you wanting to do with said gear?

Um... Everything? I don't know! Would some examples of what I've taken in since I started help?

 

[Whiskeyjack]

Stuff sorta like this. Some indoor still-life kinda stuff... some outdoor stuff with my dog and just general surroundings. Keep in mind these were all taken my first week. Be kind >_<

 

[stevensondrive]

It kind of depends what you are given. You obviously need an SD card and an extra battery. But you might be getting that. Sounds like you might be getting quite a kit. Spend a lot of time using and learning your equipment. I'm just finishing reading "Understanding Exposure" and have learned an enormous amount.

Im excited for you!!

 

[Whiskeyjack]

Oh... I have 4 extra batteries for each camera. No flash though. My mother is getting my lightroom for my birthday in a few weeks. Just in time for the trial to expire!

 

[vintagesnaps]

Sounds like you'll have enough to work with to get a good start. The more you take pictures it's likely you'll find yourself thinking about what you could have done but didn't have what you needed to get a particular photo - that will probably help you figure out what else you need.

You seem to be seeing interesting patterns that are somewhat abstract/modern - the one of the chain is interesting, I like just the glint of sunlight along the post. The one of the light bulbs is cool - the right side of the photo is particularly interesting with that corrugated ceiling and shot at that angle; the left side is a little too dark where there's nothing much to look at or to balance the other side of the photo. But you seem to be 'seeing' some things that can make for good photos.

Learn how to use the equipment you're starting with and get in plenty of practice - hope you have fun with it.

 

[Whiskeyjack]

Thanks. My camera was used and didn't even come with a manual. I'm sort of flying blind and trying to learn as I go. I try and read tutorials but I'm really hands on and I get distracted about 3 minutes into a tutorial. I know there are some compositional problems as well as a slew of others but I was just giving them as an example of what interests me at the moment. So embarrassing. Ha! That being said if people can see what I'm doing now they can give suggestions on how to get better I think.

 

[David8]

You should be able to find a manual online. Or another member might be able to provide a PDF.

 

[Whiskeyjack]

You should be able to find a manual online. Or another member might be able to provide a PDF.

Thanks. I'll look for that now. Dunno why that didn't occur to me earlier. D'oh.

 

[bratkinson]

I'm not sure whether you had a typo and entered D60 camera rather than 60D. I'll assume it's the 60D.

Here's the link to the Canon web site for the 60D user manual. Simply download the PDF to your computer and then browse it or print out selected portions as needed.

http://gdlp01.c-wss.com/gds/9/0300004019/03/eos60d-im3-c-en.pdf

As for other 'must haves', the Understanding Exposure book indicated previously is a good start. Read through any of the other 'newbie' threads in this forum and there's a ton of good links for books and online tutorials to get you rolling.

Getting to the 'needed' equipment, yes, 'L' lenses are really good and provide improved image quality and aperture over the non 'L'. But be warned...L lenses are like a drug habit...they will empty your wallet, your credit cards, your tax refund, and anything else you can get your hands on to get them! Been there, done that.

Like so many have done before, including myself, is we go 'equipment crazy' and buy anything and everything that 'might be useful' and quickly discovered it's either junk, useless, or so rarely needed as it could be avoided. One especially common 'trap' that I fell into a couple of years ago was the $40ish screw on 'telephoto' and 'macro' lenses on ebay. Totally useless, low-quality garbage.

In addition to a good tripod (not cheap...$250 & up) and good ball head for it (another $250 & up), may I suggest a good bag to carry your equipment. You'll quickly find the need to carry a bunch of stuff such as rocket blower, lint free, lens cleaning cloths, spare batteries, asprin, etc. DO NOT PUT ANY LIQUIDS IN THAT BAG! If they leak, your camera & lenses get damaged! Note that as time goes by, you'll need an ever larger bag. At some point, you'll end up having 2 bags...one to carry what you will need that day, and one for everything that stays home that day. While there's a number of good quality camera equipment bags with inserts, etc available, my method is to have several sizes of 'carry on' sized bags (gym bag size, etc) from Walmart, and have a couple of 'good camera bag' inserts to keep things from banging together. That way I won't end up paying $100 or more for a 'great' camera equipment bag only to outgrow it 2 years later. I learned that the hard way in my 35mm photography days.

Another purchase to consider is getting the correct lens hoods for the lenses you have. While L lenses come with hoods from Canon, the others don't. 3 party lens makers such as Sigma or Tamron may or may not provide hoods with their lenses, I don't know. The purpose of a lens hood is to prevent 'stray' light from entering the camera lens, 'bouncing around' and making unusual-looking 'flare', or bright lights of any color, anywhere in the image. Consider a nighttime shot and there's a streetlight about 45 degrees to your right. That angular light coming into the lens may, repeat may, propagate itself into one or more oddball 'lights' in the image. Too often, they aren't noticed until you look at the picture on your computer. They may be eraseable without too much cloning, but it's best to avoid them in the first place. Most hoods are in the $15-20 range...give or take. While 'any size hood that fits' may be workable in some cases, some of the 'generics' on ebay may fit, but actually show up in the pictures as dark areas around the corners of the photographs. What I and others have done is to go to the manufacturers' website (Canon, for example), look up the particular lens and find out what hood model it uses. Some retailers, such as my favorite, B&H Photo, show the correct hoods as 'available accessories' when looking at a particular lens. One stop shopping works very well!

A lens hood also makes great protection for your lens(es) against bumps, scrapes, and even some short drops. At worst, $20 worth of plastic needs replacment. While some consider UV and/or clear 'protection' filters will do the same thing, they may...but they also shatter into a zillion glass fragments if hit, and even the best of them (in the $100 range!) will have some, albeit minor, image degradation because the light is going through yet one more piece of glass. Filters also increase the possibility of lens flare, as there are two air/glass boundaries and a layer of glass for the light to change light angles and bounce around some more. So, as mentioned above, start with a good quality ($100 and up) Circular Polarizing filter (CPL) and stop there.

Like all photography gear, especially the expensive kind, make sure you have a NEED, rather than just WANT. If considering a lens, try renting one for a couple of days...especially if it's big and white. Buying one only to discover it doesn't do what you need/want it to costs money and time to sell (at a loss, usually). Especially when considering a new camera body or lens, spend some time reading what others have said about it before plunking down your hard earned cash (or credit) on it.

 

[pgriz]

I'm with those who tell you not to get more stuff until you know you need it. In my opinion, there are four things that make images. The first is the "gear" - you need basic equipment to even capture the image. The more extreme the environment (amount of light, degree of movement, distance), the better the gear you need. The second is "skill" - knowledge and ability of how to use the equipment to achieve good technical results. The third is "knowledge" which in this context is the knowledge of how to set up shots, how to analyse and arrange the lighting, how to create the composition. The fourth is "understanding" which is how to make the image relevant to your audience. If your audience are people who know your subject matter, this is pretty easy, but if you're showing stuff to complete strangers, it takes much more effort to successfully convey meaning and feeling.

What the above shows you, is that "gear" is only one component of what is needed to make really good images. But we all have to start somewhere.

So, since from your initial description I get the sense that you are just beginning to learn all this stuff, perhaps we should start at the beginning.

You do need to know how to operate your camera. Not necessarily every feature, but enough to get usable images that motivate you to continue learning.

Initial camera setup:

Set your ISO to 100. This is the native ISO speed and will give you the best dynamic range and the lowest noise. Later, if you’re shooting in dark areas, you may want to increase this to 400 or 800, but at the cost of noise in your images.

Set your Autofocus Active Points to the center AF point. This is usually the most sensitive AND it allows you to tell the camera what YOU want it to focus on. Also set your shooting mode to “Single Shot”. This will indicate to you when you have achieved focus, and will hold that focus until you take the shot.

Set your Program mode dial to Av. This is a semi-automatic mode where you set the aperture, and the camera then selects the shutter speed. Since much of the time the control over aperture (and its direct effect on dept-of-field) is more important, this gives you some experience with controlling the depth-of-field in your images. I’ll talke about depth-of-field (DOF) a bit later.

Set your recording mode to RAW+JPG. This will store each image as a RAW file and as a JPG file. The RAW file preserves as much detail as possible, and can be thought of as a digital negative, which needs further processing to give a useful image. The JPG is an in-camera processed image, where the camera applies various “enhancements” (White balance, sharpening, saturation, etc.) to the image, and then compresses it to give a smaller file size. In doing this compression, it gets rid of a lot of “redundant” information. So if you want to process a JPG, it is do-able, but you will be starting out with a lot of processing decisions already made for you and with up to 80% less detail than is present in the RAW image. But learning to process a RAW image to give a nice JPG is a separate learning curve, and is non-trivial.

Set your metering mode to Matrix (for the time being). In this mode the camera analyzes the image and tries to pick an exposure from its built-in database that most closely matches the scene as it analysed it.

Set your Picture mode to “normal”. This mode applies some sharpening, some saturation, etc. to your images to create JPGs with a bit of “pop”. It does not do anything to the RAW file.

What else? Well, there’s the shutter speed. If you control the aperture, and the camera controls the shutter speed (in Av mode), it is possible that the shutter speed will be too low for hand-holding. The usual rule of thumb is that the shutter speed should be equal to or higher than the reciprocal of your focal length (there’s an additional adjustment for crop cameras like yours, but let’s ignore that for now). So if you are shooting at a focal length of 50mm, the reciprocal of that is 1/50, meaning that the slowest shutter speed you should use (for hand-holding) is 1/50 sec. If you’re shooting at 300mm, then the slowest shutter speed is 1/300 sec (actually, you’ll probably be better of rounding it to 1/400sec.). What to do if the shutter speed is too low? - Open the aperture wider (smaller f/number) or increase your ISO, or put the camera on a tripod, or move to a brighter area.

There’s also the white-balance (WB). Different light sources have a different proportions of red and blue, and the camera has some control over how much bias is applied to the red or blue. You select this by choosing the sun symbol or the light bulb symbol, or the cloudy symbol in the WB menu. This setting will be encoded by the camera into your JPG file, but it will not affect the RAW file. I prefer to use the “cloudy” setting as it creates a slightly warmer image. However, you can get really good control over the WB when you use the processing tools on the RAW image.

Now, with your camer set up, you can take some shots.

Select your WB. This you need to do only once (usually) in a shooting session, unless the light source changes.

Select your aperture. But which one? Your lenses have apertures ranging from F/3.5 to f/22. The smaller number gives you the largest lens opening, and therefore lets in the most light. At the same time, it gives you the smallest depth-of-field. The larger number lets in much less light, but it gives you the maximum depth-of-field. So selecting aperture becomes a creative decision – how much blurring do I want in the foreground and background? If you’re shooting a portrait, and the background is filled with messy and irrelevant detail, then you’d want to blur it, and you’d shoot with a low aperture like f/3.5. On the other hand, if you’re shooting a landscape and you want everything from the foreground to the background to be in focus, you’ll select a higher number like f/11 or f/16.

There’s another thing to keep in mind – lenses are not equally sharp at all apertures. Photographers talk about a “sweet spot” for a lens, which is the range of apertures where the lens is the sharpest. This is usually at least 2 stops in from the wide-open end. For a lens with a maximum aperture of f/3.5, that would be around f/8-f/11. So if you are trying to get the maximum amount of detail in your image, you’d set the aperture to the “sweet-spot” range.

With your aperture selected, check to see what shutter speed the camera gives you when you half-press the shutter. If it’s above the minimum we discussed earlier, you’re good to go. Point your center AF at the place you want most detail, half-press the shutter, wait for the AF point to light up to indicate that you’ve achieved focus, and then take the shot.

Are you done? Well, not just yet. Digital cameras have this amazing capability built into them called the “histogram”. This feature analyses the image and displays all the pixels in the image in a histogram where the left is black, and the right represents pure white, and mid-tones would be somewhere in the middle. You get to see the histogram by pressing the image review button, then the “disp” button which cycles through four display modes. Choose the one that shows the 3-colour histogram. Looking at it, you see three separate graphs, labelled R, G, and B, with Red, Green, and Blue displays. A well exposed shot will usually have most of the coloured area in the center, or bunched up around the center. An image with everything bunched up at the left will be very dark, and when it’s over on the right, it’s mostly white. It’s the distribution of pixels between those two sides that tells you whether you have a “good” exposure or not.

What you want to avoid, is having a bunch of pixels sitting at the right edge – that shows you that something in your image is over-exposed to the point that you lose all information in those pixels. If that happens with an image that is “properly exposed” according to the camera, then you have something in the image that is very bright, and if that very bright thing is something you want to have detail in, then you need to dial back the exposure. One way to do that is to use the exposure compensation button (the one with the +/- marked on it. It allows you to instruct the camera to deliberately under-expose an image (relative to what it thinks is “correct”) so that the bright stuff is rendered with enough detail to see.

We haven’t talked about the downloading of your images to your computer to review them or to post-process them – that’s another subject, and this post is already probably too long to read for most people. But, the fun part of photography is to understand how the various choices you can make at the camera affect your image, and allow you to express a viewpoint, or to influence what we see.

 

[BrandonLaw]

The whole time I was reading this thread I couldn't wait to get to the bottom so I could start by saying AWESOME name! I love the Malazan books I just finished Toll the Hounds! I'm jealous that you are getting such a great kit from your family you seem to have a great start! I like the pictures you took the dog with the football in its mouth is great!

 

[Whiskeyjack]

The whole time I was reading this thread I couldn't wait to get to the bottom so I could start by saying AWESOME name! I love the Malazan books I just finished Toll the Hounds! I'm jealous that you are getting such a great kit from your family you seem to have a great start! I like the pictures you took the dog with the football in its mouth is great!

Ha! Thank you! The dog's name is also Whiskeyjack.. Whiskey for short.