Camera help!

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Jessi
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Camera help!

Post by Jessi »

So after years of using good ol' cheap Canon Powershots, I am trying to get a new digital camera that can take far better pictures than our 5-year-old powershot and our phones. I know some of you are really into photography, so I'm hoping I can get some good camera advice!

I'm looking to spend no more than about $400 at the absolute MAX (obviously less than that'd be great xD). Mostly what I take pictures of are my cats and food (especially because I'm starting a semi-fictional food blog, so I need a camera that's great with food!). Being able to take pictures in natural light is a must, since a lot of flash ruins photos of my cats - and being able to take pictures of cats and birds going by in a blur is also a must!

I'm pretty much open to anything, but I have NO idea where to start!
Wingsrising
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Re: Camera help!

Post by Wingsrising »

Personally, I've used slightly-less-cheap Canon Powershots for lo these many years. :-) My new point and shoot is a Canon Powershot Elph 300HS, which I bought because it's 24mm-equivalent at the wide end. It replaced a Canon Powershot Elph SD940IS, which is 28mm equivalent at the wide end and which has much more logical back buttons than the 300HS. I bought the 300HS when I lost the SD940IS, which turned up 6 months later behind the filing cabinet. I personally suspect Misty of having pushed it back there while killing the camera strap, but I have no actual proof of this.

If I want to get fancy I have an old digital Rebel SLR that I got as a grad school graduation present. (so that makes it what, almost 9 years old now? Now I feel old.) But I rarely want to lug it around (and those will probably go for more than $400 with lenses and things, although not much is going to be better for natural light than an SLR with a fast lens).

I'll be interested to see what people say. I know my father likes the high-end Canon Powershot series, the ones with the screen that rotates, like the G or SX series -- the ones that are larger than the Powershot series, with a large non-detachable lens, but smaller than a full SLR. Really, for natural light a big fast lens is going to be what you want. I just like the Elphs because I like being able to stick them in my pocket.
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Fjorab_Teke
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Re: Camera help!

Post by Fjorab_Teke »

I have a Canon PowerShot SX260 HS and love it! Its main pros are 20x optical zoom (great for wildlife pictures), nice macro quality, decent HD video capability, and compact size (not teeny, but does fit nicely in my shoulder bag without crowding my stuff). The flash is piddly, though, but i rarely use it. And my other problem is it got a large speck of something in the lens, so my wide-angle shots have a fuzzy spot if i'm looking toward the light source...gonna see if i can get that fixed.

Most of my pictures are of birds, lizards, flowers, insects and spiders, cats, horses, landscapes, sky scenes (yay moon zoom and actual constellation captures!), and concerts (no flash, and if they're moving it tends to come out blurred, and sometimes a spotlight will make one person all white and the others all dim, but the zoom is great and i've gotten some pretty impressive shots!).

Here are some reviews from some good camera sites, which are also handy to comparison-shop! ;-)
http://www.dpreview.com/news/2012/06/04 ... 60hsreview
http://www.steves-digicams.com/camera-r ... -sx260-hs/
Last edited by Fjorab_Teke on 11 Mar 2013 06:16 am, edited 1 time in total.
Jessi
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Re: Camera help!

Post by Jessi »

Yeah, I should specify I've always had the cheapest of the cheap powershots - I know there are better ones and I'm definitely not opposed to hearing about them! But our little $100 ones aren't cutting it anymore xD

Thanks for the links, Fjorab! I'll definitely check those out!
Fjorab_Teke
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Re: Camera help!

Post by Fjorab_Teke »

You're welcome. :-) Oh, and almost all of my FB pictures over the past year have been from that camera - all my home-trip (Nov-Jan), macro, landscape, bird, and concert pictures. And the one video i posted there, too. Check all my albums up until you reach "Arts and Crafts" - i think 99% of those were with it.

Also, more short videos from it:
http://www.youtube.com/user/fjorab/videos - all the ones from 10 months ago. (all were handheld, some full-zoom, some were in windy conditions)
Wingsrising
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Re: Camera help!

Post by Wingsrising »

I think the IS (image stabilization) feature is VERY handy for low-light shots.

The other thing you want for low-light photos is a fast lens... dunno how much you know about photography (and I've forgotten a lot that I knew at one time) but notice on the links Fjorab posted on the lens of the camera where it says 1:3.5-6.8? Those are the minimum f-stops for the lens at the wide-open end and the full-zoom end of the lens, respectively. Smaller is better. My Elph 300HS is f/2.7-f/5.9. (Usually longer lenses are slower lenses unless you pay a lot of money for them and have a really huge lens -- I imagine the reason my camera has a faster lens that Fjorab's even though it's a smaller camera is that it also has a much smaller zoom: hers is 25-500 mm 35mm equivalent (10x magnification), while mine is 24-120mm 35mm equivalent (only a little over 2x magnification).

My fastest lens for my digital SLR is a 50mm f/1.8, which is what I used to use for lower-light photography when I carried a film SLR.

In general long zooms and indoor natural-light photography don't really mix well unless you pay a lot of money to get fast lenses, although the nice thing about digital cameras is that as long as you don't mind more noise in the image it can crank the ISO up really high automatically for low-light shots. And like I said, the IS that Canon puts in most of its fancier cameras now is a really nice feature.

Am I making any sense with my late-night pontificating? :-)

EDIT: Nice hummingbirds, Fjorab! I sometimes think I should invest in a camera that's bigger and has a longer zoom than my little Elphs, but that is smaller than the SLR so I might actually carry it sometimes. Maybe with the moveable LCD like my Dad's have, which is actually a pretty interesting feature -- lets you take pictures at angles you couldn't with a normal stationary LCD. But there always so many other things I want to blow my discretionary income on, too. :-) (Also I keep hoping one of these days Dad will replace one of his cameras and give me his old one, but I think the last one he gave or sold to a friend of the family.)
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Cranberry
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Re: Camera help!

Post by Cranberry »

Unfortunately, the only thing that can really capture action without blurriness is a DSLR, and those will run you more than $400.

When choosing a new digital camera, I usually decide on the feature or two that are most important to me and search reviews for the best cameras that do those things. A camera that can take photos in low light without flash (I hate built-in flash) is always number one, which is how I ended up with the fuji f100fd and then the fuji f200exr. You can look at my Facebook albums, at least any recent ones, to see how they do (none of my pics are edited). I find they get me pretty good colors as long as I have ample light (here are trees in bright sunlight, here are some more sun/shadow trees, and here are some trees on a foggy day, and here is Cas in shadow). Indoor pics are hit or miss -- they can look like this or like this or this -- and forget about action. The best I can get is something like this, which you can see is still a bit blurry, and that's in bright light (and one out of about 30 shots).

My brother and mom like the little Canon powershots, which are nice, but I find the colors are different from Fuji, less saturated, maybe? I prefer Fuji. I like the colors my friends get with their Nikons, too. It's a personal preference thing, really. Read some reviews, look at some example pics... Flickr will let you search by camera, which is useful for seeing how different cameras perform.
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Fjorab_Teke
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Re: Camera help!

Post by Fjorab_Teke »

Thanks! I could probably get even better shots out of this camera if i learned optimum settings and fiddled with them for each shot, but i don't - i'm the laziest point-and-shooter. I expect the best bang for my buck and the features that are most important to me while still getting the best versatility with absolutely minimal preparation and bulk. ;-) I've only used a mini-tripod with it a few times, like some of my moon and star pictures in Arizona. So this is just my take on an amateur point-and-shoot.
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Re: Camera help!

Post by Jessi »

Wings, that's all SO helpful, thank you! I know absolutely nothing about cameras except how to take pictures of them, so that's definitely something to keep an eye on. And Cran, that's a good idea too - taking pictures in low light is a lot more important to me than action shots, haha, so that would definitely be something I would pick over action. I've actually spent a lot of time looking at Nikons recently, but I never even thought about looking at Fujis or other Canons, so that will definitely be something to research!

ETA: Okay! Here's a list of the main things I will be photographing with it XD I figured that would help!
1) The cats, mostly indoor pictures (except when Cairo's on a walk!)
2) Food - I intend to eventually build a lightbox to help with photos of this, but until then, yeah
3) Scenery in two places especially: the beach, so lots of open area, focusing on the water and the mountains in the back, and the mountains/woods, so LOTS of shade (the mountains around here are essentially rainforests, haha!)
4) Wild birds, whether they're at my feeder, at the beach, or in trees. Lindsey and I do a lot of birding, so I'm always trying to get good shots of them. I guess this would fall under scenery - I don't necessarily want a LOT of zoom to be able to get close up to them, but I'd like a camera that can really distinguish between a bird and another leaf on the tree xD
5) Close-ups of flowers, leaves, grasses, etc. I already play with the less-than-stellar macro settings on my camera to get a close-up of these sort of things, so having better ones would be awesome!

So #1 is definitely the low-light thing, so your wisdom with the numbers and the like is REALLY helpful, Wings!
Cranberry
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Re: Camera help!

Post by Cranberry »

Trying to get a photo of a wild bird with a point-and-shoot is frustrating as hell, haha. This is the best I have been able to do so far. It's hard to get close enough even with zoom, and then you lose quality from zooming in so much, and if the bird moves even a little, your photo ends up blurry. Now compare that to what my mom can do with her DSLR -- this or this... there's no contest.

Also, most point-and-shoots tend to get everything in focus rather than just your subject (the background blur you want is called bokeh). I take a pic of my papillon and it looks like this, with the background just as sharp as she is. My friend takes a pic of her papillon with her Nikon DSLR and it looks like this.
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Wingsrising
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Re: Camera help!

Post by Wingsrising »

Cranberry wrote:Also, most point-and-shoots tend to get everything in focus rather than just your subject (the background blur you want is called bokeh).
Which to throw my $0.02 in and expand on what Cranberry said, is aperture again. :-)

The smaller the aperture, the deeper the area of focus, the wider the aperture, the shallower the area of focus. Most point and shoots have lenses that are fairly slow when when they zoom out (meaning their maximum aperture is smaller) so they'll have a harder time taking photos with blurred backgrounds. Also, generally you get the best image quality at an in-between aperture, so the auto modes of most P&S cameras are going to stop the lens down (use a smaller aperture) even if you'd rather have the shallow depth of field.

Depending on how much control you have over the settings you may be able to change this behavior. I once had a P&S that let you control the aperture and shutter speed manually if you wanted, which would be an interesting feature to look for if you want to get more into the mechanics of photography. However, most small models don't have that feature, and I found I didn't use it all that much so my current cameras don't have that feature. However, a lot of P&S cameras have "portrait" mode which will use a wide aperture to get a narrow depth of field.

I was into birding back in college and grad school and I'm afraid I quickly concluded that for the most part, bird photography requires not just an SLR, but an SLR with a lot more lens than I was willing to pay for, and probably a tripod to make up for the fact that long lenses are difficult to hand-hold (unless they're fast, but that's $$$ in long lenses.) I mean, I've gotten some lovely shots of birds that I happened to be very close to, or see Fjorab's hummingbird videos. But there's a limit to what something like a little point and shoot can do.

If you take a lot of scenery, I think it's worth looking for a camera that will go to <i>at least</i> to the 35mm equivalent of a 28mm lens at the wide end, maybe even more. That used to be very rare feature -- it now seems to be becoming quite common, for which I'm grateful. (I was poking at the Canon website and all the ones I saw were at least 28mm on the wide end.) Still, it's worth making sure as I imagine there are still some that are only the equivalent of a 35mm lens on the wide end, which is just not wide enough for landscapes as far as I'm concerned.
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Jessi
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Re: Camera help!

Post by Jessi »

Yeah, if I could afford a DSLR i would definitely be going for one, trust me! Unfortunately it's not in the budget right now (I JUST SPENT $350 ON A MIXER [totally worth it]) and we've slowly been updating our technology, so a nice P&S will have to do for now!). Ugh Amy, those bird pictures your mom took make me SO jealous, seriously! I'll have to settle for half decentish bird pictures rather than OH MY GOD FANTASTIC ones for now ;_;

Seriously, the three of you have been so unbelievably helpful. I hate going into places to ask for advice because I hate pushy salespeople, so this has really helped. I'm really excited to be getting a new camera at long last, haha - especially before my trip to San Francisco this summer!
Wingsrising
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Re: Camera help!

Post by Wingsrising »

In an interesting coincidence, it was a trip to San Francisco last summer that drove me to replace the lost camera instead of hoping it would turn up. (I didn't find it until November.) I flew to Denver, visited my parents, and then we all took the California Zephyr to San Francisco. San Francisco is awesome and Muir Woods is awesome and somehow San Francisco is always much, much colder than I'm expecting even though I'm expecting it to be much, much colder than I'm expecting.

OT: Ooo, what mixer did you get? I keep thinking I'd like to get an expensive mixer (that's something else that's on my list of "expensive things I'd like to buy") but haven't been able to justify it to myself yet. I almost bought one last year on the theory I could use it to make bread -- although I bought my food processor on the same theory and that didn't work out that well, I don't care what Mark Bittman says -- but then a friend on FB convinced me to buy a bread machine instead. It turned out the bread machine was the best idea ever but now having two different appliances that can in theory knead bread taking up massive amounts of counter space is discouraging me from buying yet another one. :-)
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Jessi
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Re: Camera help!

Post by Jessi »

Wings, I got the Kitchenaid Artisan stand mixer in Apple Green!

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They retail $350 and they are literally worth every single penny. It's everything I've ever dreamed about, haha - I've made things from boring old chocolate chip cookies to mashed potatoes to low-fat Matcha cupcakes in it so far and it's just amazing. I've never had mashed potatoes come out so good - or had baked goods mix up SO easily. It's seriously amazing.

And since then I've gone on a Kitchenaid Green kick. We bought the matching teapot, I JUST got the matching food pro in the mail today, and TJ Maxx randomly had every kitchen tool available in the matching color, sigh! SO CUTE.

ON THAT NOTE, SO MANY CAMERAS. It's so overwhelming! I'm currently looking at both the Fuji that Cran has and the Canon that Fjorab has and just... dizzy with wondering what to get.
Cranberry
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Re: Camera help!

Post by Cranberry »

I like mine and people can get nice photos with it, but it can be finicky -- sometimes in bright sunlight it makes the dark areas TOO dark, or sometimes it decides it wants to capture color differently from how I want it to. :P However, you can set more stuff manually on it than you can with a lot of point-and-shoots, so I'm sure that can be overcome; I'm just lazy. It does well in low light for sure. Apparently its successor is out now, so maybe take a look at that.

(I love Flickr... you can click on any of those photos and see the settings used, so you can try to duplicate the look.)
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