Looking to get a DSLR :)

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hey all, so im looking to get a good camera, these pocket ones are just not cutting it, i have been looking at the Canon 60D, after reading a lot of reviews it seems nice (cant find much on the 650d) , but everyone says the main kit lens is a bit slow.

Seems everyone i talk to say to get a faster lens also a F2.8 lens to start, looking on jessops their bundle with 60d + 18-55mm f2.8 is £1599, which in mind seems a little pricey.

Im looking to take general portraits / landscapes, but i do love motorsport and want to get some DOF etc in. Making the car / bike look ace and backgrounds a blur i think looks awsome :)

anyways after any tips on picking the right camera of the pro's, now im still learning manual mode, i havent got into all that for around 15 years when i used to develop pics for college!, but youtube seems to have some great tutorials.

anyways , What camera do you think is best, and what lens for general / fast work, thanks for any advice

Rich
 
I'd personally recommend Nikon the bodies feel more substantial, but in all honesty hold a Nikon and a Canon and see which you prefer, the layout is different and I personally find Canon to be rather cramped but others disagree and think it feels more intuitive.

If you go down the Nikon route it might be a better bet to grab a second hand body and spend the money on a better lens; for motor sports you're generally going to get decent light so a wide aperture will only really be to throw the background out of focus... my recommendations would be something like a second hand D300 due to the 6fps native shooting and 8fps max with a grip, then add yourself a Nikon 300mm f4 lens and you should be good to go, it's not as fast as an f2.8 lens but the longer the focal length the smaller DoF anyway so should be adequate. If the light gets tough then you can bump the ISO up a bit to keep the shutter speed fast enough and it'll be a lot cheaper than buying a 300mm f2.8 lens. The other alternative is the 80-200mm f2.8 lens which is faster, has a decent zoom range but isn't quite as long.

For portraits the D300 is more than enough, however the 300mm lens will probably be too much so getting a 50mm 1.8 or even an 85mm 1.8 lens would be a good idea as they are cheap, small, light and will give you that creamy background you want.
 
On the Canon side, I'd again say go for a second hand body. If you don't NEED video, I'd recommend picking up a 40D (around £300-400).

As for lenses, motorsport very much depends on the track. For instance, all my motorsport work has been done with a 70-200 f4, as my local track has the barriers fairly close, whereas Silverstone, for instance, has huge runoffs, so you'd ideally want 300mm there. Canon also do a 300mm f/4, but you also have the option of the 100-400mm for a bit of variation. Both these lenses come in at the better part of a grand though, whereas the 70-200f4 can be had for £350ish 2nd hand. As another option, for both systems, there's the Sigma 120-300mm f/2.8. It wont be as sharp as the primes, but it does give you a stop more light and some zoom. Again this usually goes for ~£900 second hand

You say you want portraits and landscapes too. Landscapes can be done with any focal length, but typically you'll want a wide lens. Could pick up a Sigma 10-20mm for around £250, or even just buy a kit lens for ~£50. For portraits, the Canon 50mm 1.8 or the 85mm 1.8, purely preference on focal length. The 50mm can be had for ~£80 new, the 85mm for around £200 2nd hand
 
Speaking of the Sigma 120-300 f2.8, here's a shot I took on Wednesday with it and a D300. It is pricey if you're new to photography, but an incredible lens!

Mitsubishi+FTO+2+litre+V6+Action.jpg


The kit lens is good for landscapes as you'll generally want a tripod anyway (again, the Nikon kit lens has better IQ than the Canon, but both can easily be beaten with a prime). I'd recommend avoiding the ultrawides as they are, in my opinion, more specialised and not for taking normal landscape photos but more for emphasising an object (an example I took of a Super Guppy here where I was only about 6 inches away from the wheel). At 28mm (around 35mm in 35mm terms) is what I would class as the optimum landscape focal length as you get a balance between how wide a photo is, but you don't make everything look tiny and miles away like the ultrawides do.
 
[Death];22349349 said:
Im looking to take general portraits / landscapes, but i do love motorsport and want to get some DOF etc in. Making the car / bike look ace and backgrounds a blur i think looks awsome :)
Click to expand...

I think you're confused over two things - what we mean by a fast lens and what DOF entails.

A fast lens doesn't mean quick autofocus, confusingly. What it means is that it's bright - it can let a lot of light through which means that shorter shutter speeds are needed - fast lens -> fast shutter speeds

For the motorsport stuff I think what you're referring to isn't in fact depth of field, but panning. Depth of field is granted by a big aperture/fast lens which tends to mean fast shutter speeds which freeze motion - not generally desirable in motorsport shots as it makes it look like the car is standing still on the track. Panning refers to moving your camera so that the car is in the same place for the duration of an exposure, while the rest of the elements in the scene move around; instead of the car moving as a blur to the left at 200mph, you have the background moving as a blur to the right at 200mph.

Depth of field: Note how the front wheels are slightly out of focus, and that the wheels don't look like they're moving and there's very little sense of speed in the image

4808693889_a1399e5287_b.jpg


Panning: Note how the wheels are blurred but the car itself is in focus, and how the crowd in the background are blurred out by the motion - this generates the sense of speed

7127875633_6c4c7e0604_b.jpg
 
yes u got it m8, i think i was a bit off, DOF for the family portraits and good lenses / fast for panning etc :) .

as u can tell im very new to it! , but its the effects i think would boost my photography, and what i dont want is to get a cheaper alternative camera now, to upgrade in the soon future.

what lens took that second pic btw?



random pic of portraits :

dof-featured-480x330.jpg


not best eample but u get idea, and ure 2nd pic is what i wanna aim for too :)

thanks for everyones replys btw!
 
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I personally think things are being confused even further in this thread!

Ksanti is right that a 'Fast Lens' refers to one which has a large aperture, thus letting in more light. That is easy to confuse as a beginner because it sounds like the speed of the lens for it's auto-focusing ability. The thing is though, they kind of go hand in hand anyway, because the top 'fast' glass tends to have the quickest AF in them anyway.

Secondly, you get Depth of Field in every photo you take with a camera, its part of the optical process. What you are referring to in regards to your portrait example is Shallow Depth of Field, where by you have limited what is in focus and the background or foreground is blown out.

With Motorsports type panning shots, you don't need to be shooting wide open with a very shallow depth of field (in normal light). You are using a slow shutter speed (which lets in more light, so you need to stop down) to stop it over exposing. It's the speed of the item you are tracking, coupled with slow shutter and movement of the camera that creates a blurred background in that type of photography. When I was shooting the Formula 1 cars last weekend, I was using 1/160 of a second to get the background like that, with slower motorsport you can go even slower.
 
thanks for the reply :) , so seems i got a lot to learn! , no worries tho im in for the long haul. so nikon or cannon is next choice, and as a rule im not sure if i should ask the question as a lot of posts turn to flame wars lol.

i think its more down to the lens choice tbh
 
You honestly will just waste hours reading reviews and arguments and won't get anywhere trying to work out whether Nikon or Canon is better! :)

As you are free to choose which brand to go with, your best bet is just look at their cameras in a shop and see which you like the ergonomics and feel for better.
 
yea gonna take a trip into town tommorow, watching vids on youtube , Digital Photography 1 on 1, seems quite good, still gonna be stuck on lens choises i think.

probably will go for a 15 - 55 or similar, and a ?? - 200ish.

that way i wont be stuck when in different places, lucky i have some cash saved, think its gonna be an expensiv trip
 
You're going to be looking at a very expensive kit tbh. To get shallow depth of field like in your portraits, you'll want a fast prime and a full frame camera. Cheapest way to reliably do this is a Canon 5D Mk1 second hand and a Canon 85 1.8 which will total just a bit under £1000 together.

For motorsport you'll likely want a crop body as getting the same reach on a fulll frame body will be very tricky and the 5D AF isn't quite up to motorsport. That will probably mean a 60D and a Canon 100-400L which will run another £1500 or so.

As a setup I'd consider:
Canon 60D
Canon 50 1.4 (or Sigma 50 1.4) - this will be your portraiture lens. You won't get as shallow as full frame but if you want motorsport as well it's a sacrifice you pretty much have to make
Canon 100-400L or Sigma 120-300 2.8 OS
A 2.8 zoom lens like a Tamron 17-50 f/2.8 VC just as general use lens. Normally the non-VC gets recommended over the newer VC version but tbh for a general use lens the pixel-perfect IQ isn't necessarily that important so the VC would be preferred were it down to me.

Same could go for a Nikon setup tbh just swapping the 60D for a D5100/D90 but then you have to get the Sigma pretty much.

Also with such long lenses as the 100-400 and 120-300 you'll need some way of supporting them. At the bare minimum a battery grip but preferably a monopod of sorts.

You're looking at spending around £2000 if you want both motorsports and shallow depth of field portraiture and spending that sort of money it's usually better to have an ideal of what it is you want to specialise in.

That's a hell of a lot of money so unless you're really sure about this, I'd recommend going with a slightly cheaper setup to begin with and then deciding what it is you actually want to shoot seriously.
In the meantime I'd suggest picking up a Canon 40D for about £300, a Canon 50 1.8 for about £70, the boggo 18-55 kit lens as your general lens and one of the cheaper 70-300 zoom lenses for about £150. That gives you a platform to start shooting from and then if you find you want to pursue portraiture, you can pick up a 5D second hand and 85 1.8 for about £1000, or if you want to pursue motorsport you can get the 100-400 for about that as well and use it on the 40D.

NorthstaNder said:
Ksanti...where the hell is the driver is that shot!? LOL!
Click to expand...

He's sitting really far back, his helmet is around the middle break in the windows
 
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thanks for the advice!, lease i know what to look for now, the 60d is what i have been looking at, just the lens confusion that had me, so many for different things!, motorsport i like is mainly bikes (motox etc), and would be cars when i get chance to get out there!. but least your idea of a setup gives me what to aim for :)

but ultimately i think its gonna be family stuff, i seem to be the stand in phographer anyway lol
 
It's probably best to just get a camera with lens kit, rather than going overboard to begin with. When you can appreciate why the kit lens doesn't do what you want of it is the time you know what you need in place of it.
 
Only advice I can give, buy second hand, canon or nikon doesn't matter. As long as your having fun =]

Retail prices for a fair bit of kit only seem fair if you make your living from photography :p
 
if youre new to dslr i think the canon 550d is the best bet for you, I actually just bought one the other week and its been a learning curve so far. Im looking to get more video recording done with it soon too.
 
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