What do you shoot?
In the photography world, we all have our biases in regards to what manufacturer of camera equipment we prefer. Anyone who has spent any amount of time reading this blog knows that I am a big proponent of Canon gear. However, it wasn't always this way.
In my film shooting days of the eighties and early nineties, I was a large fan of Nikon. My primary cameras were the FE and FM2 models. I loved the sturdiness of these cameras plus they were "just right" in the size department. I shot literally thousands of photos between these two bodies and never had any type of failure. These were great cameras.
When I decided to make the move to digital SLRs a few years back, I did a bit of research. I knew that I would be "marrying" a manufacturer and wanted to make the right decision. It was a close call between Nikon and Canon, but Canon ultimately won. The deciding factor for me was the selection of bodies and the room to grow. This was a hard decision for me, since I had always been such a "Nikon Guy".
Here it is a couple of years later and I am still pleased that I went with Canon. However, if I had gone with Nikon I am sure I would be nearly as happy. Nikon's lack of a full-frame sensor is the only thing I think that would be holding me back.
Today, most of the photographers I know shoot either Nikon or Canon except for the occasional Olympus. The Canon Rebel line (especially the XTi) is very popular as is the Nikon D80. These are all great cameras.
Today's capture is a shot I did of my main camera, the Canon 5D, for the masthead at the top of the blog. I took this using my backup 30D with a simple one light studio setup.
What brand/model did you choose? And why?
Canon 30D, Canon 18-55 f/3.5-5.6 - 1/60 second, f/8, ISO 100
7 Comments:
I love my Panasonics. I bought the DMC FZ10 for the zoom, as my daughter swam for her high school, and I needed to be able to take pics of far away things.
I bought a smaller Panasonic, to have one that I can reasonably carry almost all the time, and I am happy with it, too. It "only" has a 6x optical zoom.....
I love that I can take pics of things Really Far Away, and Right Close Up, with the same exact equipment. No lenses to carry or mess with -- one camera zooms in, and zooms out. Excellent.
I LOVE the image stabilization, especially with the little camera. I can't focus on the screen (damned presbyopia!), but I can see well enough to frame the image, and the combination of autofocus and image stabilization get me sharp images, more often than not.
I think it is majorly cool that I can take a pic of a singer, lit on stage, from the middle of a dark auditorium. Excellent, again.
The downside is that these cameras do a lousy job of stopping motion. Oh -- and they have a pronounced objection to remembering purples and bluish reds.... I 'shop pretty much everything, so correcting the color isn't a big issue for me, and I don't care enough about stopping motion to put me off these cameras.
Oh -- I should add -- I find the menus and icons very easy to understand and follow. I do not need to carry the manuals around.....
I plan to replace my (first generation!) "big black camera" with the new version this summer.....
When I bought my dSLR, I chose the Konica Minolta Maxxum 7D. Of course, this was before I knew they'd be selling out to Sony.
Prior to this camera, I had been shooting with a KM ultra-zoom camera, and I really liked it. That's what got me interested in staying with KM, but that's not what sold me on the camera. I did a ton of research, read reviews, put cameras in my hands, and in the end I chose the Maxxum 7D. Everybody who has ever owned one had nothing but great things to say about it too.
I like it because it has a big body (I have big hands) and almost every camera control is a manual button, knob, wheel, lever, etc. It was hard to use at first -- but now that I know the buttons, I have total control without ever having to take my eye away from the viewfinder.
The fact that this camera only has a 6MP sensor is kind of good and bad at the same time. It's bad because it's on the low end of the scale for dSLRs and it probably wouldn't produce a stunning print at huge proportions without using something like genuine fractals. It's good because I've RARELY ever had to deal with noise in my images -- I get very clean photos out of the camera.
It will be a sad day when my Maxxum dies. I'm hoping that Sony will bring out a few more dSLRs (and I understand they have two new ones in the works).
Pentax *istDS - it was a bargain at 400$, I bought it because I can use my old lenses and also my old flash.
"it was a bargain at 400$, I bought it because I can use my old lenses and also my old flash"
Are the newer Pentax DSLR's (like your *ist) able to use the old Pentax K mount lenses like we used to use on the ME Super and K1000? If so, that's cool.
I shoot Nikon D80!!!
I like how you give descriptions of the setup of your shots (as in "I took this using my backup 30D with a simple one light studio setup.") but, as a keen beginner, I am not always sure exactly how you do it. I would love to see a shot of your studio in action for a shot like the Canon 5D today - the lights and also the backdrop or lightbox or whatever it is you use to get those great white background effects (also nicely described in the shot of the socks last week - but again I can't visualize exactly what is being described).
Hope you'll excuse a dumb beginner question, but if you ever had a chance to snap a shot of how you are setting up for these shots I, for one, would be very interested.
I've been visiting your blog off and on for a year or so, and I think only a couple of times have chimmed in.
I'm a Canon girl myself. Just moved from the XT to the 30D. I actually didn't chose it, my husband chose it for me as a wedding gift, but I love Canon so much, I'm sticking with it.
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