Upgrade From A100 to Canon XSi or 40D?

[Bruce_h]

Hi there, I am currently looking at the aforementioned upgrade / replacement for a couple of reasons...

1. Going on a trip, which includes a tour of base camp of Everest and I am finding information on which lens would be good for the Sony to be hard to come by.

2. The list of lenses available for the Canon's seems endless compared to the Sony.

3. More people are shooting the Canon's and information for a newbie is a lot easier to find.

4. Don't feel like switching all my lenses, batteries etc when I do get bigger into photography, rather just have one brand to start and build on it.

There are some of my reasons, what do you guys think? I can sell the Sony for a few bucks so getting rid of it is no problem. Also, if you support this decision, is it better to upgrade to the 40D over the XSi, even though it is less pixels, but more expensive?

Thanks for any replies!

 

[sultan]

I will go for the 40D (If I could afford it). For only a bit more money, you get a pentaprism (instead of mirror), twice the framerate, weatherproofing, slightly more detail and less noise (predicted, even though less megapixels), ISO 3200 max sensitivity and more advanced autofocus. Though probably, your current Sony is good enough for your trip. If you had an old P&S, I would encourage you to upgrade but the A100 is a modern SLR. I would suggest you practice your photography instead.

 

[Bruce_h]

If you had an old P&S, I would encourage you to upgrade but the A100 is a modern SLR. I would suggest you practice your photography instead.

Definetly agree with you on this point. I am not much past an auto mode shooter, but have the desire to get much better. I just don't feel like going ahead and spending more money on lenses etc until I am confident that I made the right gear choice. I should have bought the Rebel XT sitting beside the Sony, but the old girlfriend wanted 10MP instead of 8.

 

[sultan]

Definetly agree with you on this point. I am not much past an auto mode shooter, but have the desire to get much better. I just don't feel like going ahead and spending more money on lenses etc until I am confident that I made the right gear choice. I should have bought the Rebel XT sitting beside the Sony, but the old girlfriend wanted 10MP instead of 8.

Aww.. too bad. The Rebel XT is a great camera. Too bad people who don't know much about cameras and photography in general go for megapixels. My 6MP Pentax K100D makes the 12MP Canon Powershot G9 (prolly the best P&S around) look like junk. Any way, the A100 is also a fairly good camera.

 

[ChickenFriedRyce]

If I were you, I'd go for the A700. Since you already have a lens or so, you don't have to worry about buying a whole new array of equipment and just get the body. But, that's totally based on opinion.

 

[Bruce_h]

I just went down to the photo shop to look at the 40D and stumbled upon the A700. The salesman said it was a better purchase, and it was pretty much par price wise with the 40D. So now I'm really confused. I also found a swell Sony / Zeiss lens. So now I am wondering if I should by the lens now, learn how to use it, and hopefully the price drops by the time I leave for my trip. Or just do the whole thing and go to a Canon... Lost...

 

[sultan]

Getting a new body wont improve your image quality that much. Lenses are more important and lighting is really important. If you found a nice lens, buy it and put it on your A100. The A100 is a very nice camera.

 

[Bruce_h]

Well I took the proper step first I think, I enrolled in a photography class starting tonight... realized no matter how good the lens or body I won't take proper pictures if I don't have a clue to start.

 

[Mav]

This is why I recommend sticking with "Canikon" due to the vast selection of lenses, and strong third-party support. But Sony/Minolta does have a pretty good selection of lenses. What exactly are you looking for that you see in Canon but not in Sony/Minolta?

 

[CanadianMe]

I looked at the Sony A700 when I was looking to purchase a Camera and eventually decided on the Canon. The availability of good quality glass, if I want to sell and buy used glass the chances are so much higher with the Canon and all but one of my lenses will move with me to full frame camera should I eventually decide to go. I like the Sony A line of cameras and seem very well built and have read a lot of good things about them. It is just a choice you need to make. And taking classes is a great idea.

 

[Early]

Unless you bought one of the pro Canons, you'd probably get a more durable camera with the Sony. As for lenses, Canon does give you a lot bigger choice.

 

[Bruce_h]

What exactly are you looking for that you see in Canon but not in Sony/Minolta?

I see that most people have Canons. On the sidelines at sports games nobody really has Sony/Minolta gear. Also the point was brought up about more used lenses, and I've heard you can rent Canon. It really comes down to the fact where I see more Canons/Nikon mentioned anywhere on forums that anything else, and it makes me wonder if there is a real reason for it.

 

[Warhawk]

Most people use Canon and Nikon, because those 2 brands have the best image quality of all the digitals. If you dont believe me, look for sample images, there are lots of websites that takes the same photo with different model cameras to allow you to compare the image quality between the 2.

Currently i have the 40D and to be honest, i couldnt be happier with any other camera

 

[Mystwalker]

If you absolutely have to buy a new body, I would say 40D over XSI.

But like others have mentioned, your lens is more important.

I'm guessing top of the line lens from any brand will produce similar quality. Question lie in price of lens - I've heard of people moving from Nikon to Canon because of cheaper high end lens. I do not understand Nikon lens nomenclature so not idea if that is true.

I just know "white" and "red ring" = expensive, but EXCELLENT IQ ... brainwashed by Canon

 

[Mav]

I see that most people have Canons. On the sidelines at sports games nobody really has Sony/Minolta gear. Also the point was brought up about more used lenses, and I've heard you can rent Canon. It really comes down to the fact where I see more Canons/Nikon mentioned anywhere on forums that anything else, and it makes me wonder if there is a real reason for it.

I think we're talking about two different things here. Yes, if you shoot Sony/Minolta (or Pentax or Olympus) DSLRs these days you're going to be the "outsider" for sure. Some are ok with that and might actually prefer it, but others don't. Yeah if you're with the two big players it's certainly going to be a lot easier to find used stuff, or sell it yourself. I'm in the process of downsizing my lens lineup and have easily sold 3 lenses in the past few weeks without even really trying. I just put one in the mail today and have two more to go.

If you're interested in shooting sports, it certainly makes a lot of sense to shoot Canon since the sports market has been owned by Canon since the early-90's when their AF was superior to Nikon's. Canon has a much more complete lineup of telephoto lenses, and they're often thousands cheaper than the Nikon equivalents. In fact they're so much cheaper that some Nikon guys will just buy the Canon lens and a cheap body to go with it, and will still come out ahead vs having bought the Nikon lens. If you make friends with someone who shoots sports and they're shooting with their 400, but have a 300mm f/2.8 as a backup that they're not using, you won't exactly be able to mount that puppy up to a Sony body if you want to take it for a whirl either.

As far as lens rentals, yes, you can rent Sony/Minolta lenses. One quick Google search took me to www.alphalensrental.com and from the looks of things they've got a pretty good selection of lenses. It looks like they're the only company that rents Alpha stuff online though, so if you need something fast and they're out of stock you're probably screwed. There's a good dozen or so places that rent Nikon and Canon gear.

If you're planning to move up to the big-time equipment, yeah it probably makes more sense to do it sooner rather than later so that what you buy today will still be compatible with whatever body you upgrade to tomorrow.

BUT... just looking briefly through the alpha lens lineup alone and then the Konica/Minolta stuff, they DO have a pretty complete lineup of lenses there. There honestly isn't that much missing. And if you go to www.keh.com there's plenty of used Sony/Minolta gear floating around too. In fact I just did a tally the other week for curiosity's sake and there were 46 pages total of used Nikon stuff, 32 for Canon, and 27 for Minolta/Sony. Only 10 for Pentax. That's just old film gear, not counting newer digital-only lenses. So there's plenty of stuff floating around. There was almost as much used Minolta film gear as there was Canon! Also in my local pro shop there's usually a pretty decent selection of used Minolta gear too.

I made the jump to DSLRs partly because I wanted maximum selection of lenses and wanted to be able to play around with a lot of stuff, so I stuck with the big two. It's also nice to know that if one day I decided to take my photography to the next level and start doing it for pay and want to get a full pro body that most of my stuff will still work, or that the stuff that won't I'll be able to sell easily. And that's a big thing with the Sony/Pentax/Olympus stuff. Their consumer level equipment may be just as good if not better than what Canikon makes, but there's only very limited upward mobility if you want to move up.