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08/11/2004 05:17:45 AM · #1 |
Recently, i've been looking into buying a digital camera. I'm very new to this and have no clue as to what all the specs on the camera are (aperture speed, shutter speed etc...).
I've been looking around on dpreview.com at some of the cameras but am still really clueless as to what it all means.
I have selected a few photos from this site; these are the kind of pictures i want to be able to take...
 
The cameras i have been looking at getting are the Nikon Coolpix 4300 and the Canon Powershot A80.
What i have learned from lurking around this site is that it's not the camera that takes good pictures (although it helps) but the person shooting the picture. What i really want to know is whether the cameras i have mentioned are even capable of the pictures i showed earlier.
Thanks for anyone who can help me with this.
Nolp
Forgot the thank the photographers pitsaman, Moodville, Olympian, Imagineer and visoblanco for the sample images i've shown
Message edited by author 2004-08-11 05:20:33. |
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08/11/2004 05:24:10 AM · #2 |
Yay, you selected my waterfall photo :).
My friend has the A80 and it works great for him. If you want to shoot waterfalls and show the movement of the water, you'll need a tripod. You also need to do a long-ish exposure (I used 1/4th of a second for the waterfall photo). To do this, you'll either need to shoot early in the morning or later in the evening. I used a neutral density filter to cut the light as I was shooting mid-day... filters may not work out with the cameras mentioned but I'd say that most cameras should be capable of a similar shot if used correctly and shot during the right time of day.
I think the A80 would be capable of taking the rest of the selected photos. I'm not sure, but the church seems to be taken with a pretty wide angle lens, you can stitch multiple photos together to accomplish this on a standard point and shoot, also I know the A80 has a decent macro mode. |
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08/11/2004 05:26:55 AM · #3 |
Hmm .... I'm not that familiar with the powershot a80 .. but I think its a step down from the one i have , the canon powershot G5. Or maybe its equivalent to .. I'm not sure. Anyhow, I highly recommend the Powershot series if you want a great camera, great value, but can't afford to splurge on an expensive SLR.
I've been using the G5 for almost a year now and I still love it. The A80, I'm sure, could take pictures like the ones you listed. But like you said, its the photographer, not the camera ;)
Good luck! |
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08/11/2004 05:31:58 AM · #4 |
For architecture you will need a wide angle in the lens. When looking at specs this (along with amount of zoom) is often referred to as 'mm'. The lower the mm, the wider you can get. Most cameras start between 20m and 30mm. While this is fine for normal shots, for architectural shots of large buildings you may often need wider, maybe 18mm or less sometimes. You can buy add-ons for a lot of cameras which allow you to get wider or more zoom. They're called 'Wide-Angle Converters' or 'Teleconverters' for wideness and zoom respectively.
For wildlife photography you'll often need a good zoom. Don't be fooled by a lot of cameras saying they have 12x zoom, as this is often digital zoom. That means it is just expanding the pixels, losing quality, rather than actually optically zooming. There are some real 12x zoom digital cameras out there though. To achieve the shallow depth of field (the blurriness in the background) as shown in the second wildlife photo here, you will probably need to do it in photoshop if you're just thinking of a prosumer digital camera. Digital SLRs, whilst being much more expensive, allow this effect straight from the lens much easier than with normal digital cameras. If you get a camera that lets you adjust the aperture, making this number as small as possible will blur out the background a little, depending on the distance the subject is from the camera.
For the water shots you need a camera that will let you choose the shutter speed, so that you can leave it open longer than the camera thinks it should be left open. This will make the water look smooth and silky. You can use ND filters (or just a pair of sunglasses!) in front of the lens to stop as much light getting in, so the picture isn't over-exposed.
For the bug shot you'll need a camera with good macro capability. Check out in the specs what the closest focussing distance is. You can also buy close-up filters which let you zoom in extra for getting closer to bugs.
I'm not familiar with the 2 cameras you mentioned, but now you know more specifically what you're looking for as far as features are concerned, you can try looking at the reviews again, or spec sheets for different cameras.
Feel free to ask me any questions if you need more explaination :)
Message edited by author 2004-08-11 05:36:21.
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08/11/2004 07:23:08 AM · #5 |
I used to have Canon A70 which I think was pretty good camera for it´s value and I think that the A80 is very similar, just more pix. They have manual exposure controls (and automatic to of course) which I found very useful.
Wideangle- and teleconverters can be useful though it´s likely that you can loose some imagequality.
For the waterfall images then it´s always a possibilty to use good sunglasses as ND.
Think the powershots are good cameras and the manual settings gives you a good change to learn and experiment with exposures.
Would think that the Coolpix were also fine. |
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08/11/2004 07:30:58 AM · #6 |
| Depends on how much you wanna spend. I like the canon line of digital cameras. |
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