Nope the beauty of a 50 is that they're so simple to produce which means they're both small and cheap, as well as very good optically. There are better 50s around but the 1.8 is pretty phenomenal bang for your buck
Sub £600 DSLR
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Nope the beauty of a 50 is that they're so simple to produce which means they're both small and cheap, as well as very good optically. There are better 50s around but the 1.8 is pretty phenomenal bang for your buck
Soldato
Typical, everyone jumping in with suggestions yet no one has asked the priority question, what do you want from your camera? 
DLSR's are the best option imho, especially if you go full frame. However, start adding lenses, tripod, flashes (which you will) and your kit suddenly become quite heavy. Even when I take out just my D700 + 70-200mm f2.8 its quite cumbersome.
You've got bridge cameras / micro 4/3's to take in to consideration as well. Not the same quality as the DSLR's but very good all the same, lighter and more portable, although as far as I am aware the 4/3's have not got the vast choice of lenses available to DLSRs.
What do you want to photograph, and what do you want from your gear?
DLSR's are the best option imho, especially if you go full frame. However, start adding lenses, tripod, flashes (which you will) and your kit suddenly become quite heavy. Even when I take out just my D700 + 70-200mm f2.8 its quite cumbersome.
You've got bridge cameras / micro 4/3's to take in to consideration as well. Not the same quality as the DSLR's but very good all the same, lighter and more portable, although as far as I am aware the 4/3's have not got the vast choice of lenses available to DLSRs.
What do you want to photograph, and what do you want from your gear?
Soldato
don't discount the D5100 also, its a great camera
Typical, everyone jumping in with suggestions yet no one has asked the priority question, what do you want from your camera?
DLSR's are the best option imho, especially if you go full frame. However, start adding lenses, tripod, flashes (which you will) and your kit suddenly become quite heavy. Even when I take out just my D700 + 70-200mm f2.8 its quite cumbersome.
You've got bridge cameras / micro 4/3's to take in to consideration as well. Not the same quality as the DSLR's but very good all the same, lighter and more portable, although as far as I am aware the 4/3's have not got the vast choice of lenses available to DLSRs.
What do you want to photograph, and what do you want from your gear?
Initially just wanting to get a camera of a high enough quality that'll still give me room to play around with advanced features as I learn what they do and DSLR seems to have fit nicely. It'll be for carrying around taking photos when I'm visiting castles, nature trails etc. It'll be mostly landscape and "tourist" pictures I'll be taking. Any impromptu pics my One X does a nice enough job for that.
Probably won't be getting external flashes, tripods etc for a while down the line.
Then you might find the 5D a fair bit big. Maybe a compact camera like the Fuji X10 which is well within budget and is gorgeous, gorgeous little thing
I don't mind big, I'm a pretty big lad lol
Soldato
I've just bought a D5100 - £485 (with QuidCo) from Jessops as my "first" DSLR.
I did consider the cheaper D3100, but the impression I got was the extra £150 was worth it.
I think you can get a bit carried away - I managed to "budget creep" upto about £750 until I came to my senses and realised that even a D3100 would be *more* than enough for my skills, but warranted a little extra to the D5100.
These cameras have very good resale value too, it seems, so I'm not too concerned about it being a mistake.
Soldato
yeah its well worth the extra, has the same sensor as the d7000
I wouldn't get a 50mm f/1.8 as a sole lens on crop of FF, it is not an interesting focal length and will be quite restrictive, the Canon lens is very soft wide open and the Bokeh is extremely ugly, in fact the whole whole rendition is pretty ugly. The Older Nikon 50mm f/1.8 D was marginally better but suffered much the same problems, the newer AF-S Nikon version has much cleaner out of focus rendering and much sharper from f/1.8. I have the older Nikon 50mm AF-D which is basically untouched because unless you get it down to f/5.6 it is less sharp than any of my zooms, and even at f/5.6 my 16-85mm has higher micro-contrast.
I just don't get why people hype up these lenses and talk about Bokeh and shallow DoF. The Canon 50mm f/1.8 has one of the worst Bokeh qualities you can get in a conventional lens! The Canon 18-50mm kit lens i nicer!
I just don't get why people hype up these lenses and talk about Bokeh and shallow DoF. The Canon 50mm f/1.8 has one of the worst Bokeh qualities you can get in a conventional lens! The Canon 18-50mm kit lens i nicer!
Must you be so difficult in every single thread you come into?
The 5D is a fantastic camera, and at the price point the 50 1.8 unlocks a lot of things that would usually not be able to be explored as a new photographer. The bokeh might not be great but there's no other way of getting that sort of image at this price point, and a lot of the time the bokeh can be just fine. Most people care more about the fact that there /is/ bokeh rather than the quality of it.
As for 50 being restrictive that's a load of pap. Unless you absolutely have to shoot birds, landscapes, insects and sports (which you can't do remotely well on this budget), a 50 is all you really need in a camera, and the portfolios of photography greats built on 50 lenses back me up there. For the first 4 months of owning my 5D I owned and shot nothing but a 50 1.4. As for why they get hyped up it's because they're really cheap, fun lenses, and because of the nature of primes when you stop them down even a little the image quality (bar bokeh) gets pretty fantastic for the price.
I am sorry if I appear to be argumentative but I simply do not agree with what you are saying.
What you are saying is just not true though. A good crop camera and a kit lens like the Nikon 18-105 open up so many doors for landscape, cityscapes, seascapes, still life, architecture, interior, flowers, basic wildlife, PJ street photography, travel, nature, abstract, texture, etc. and will do portraits just fine for a beginner. That is a fact. Not everyone wants to make razor thin DoF photos of someones nose hairs all the time. Shallow DoF is a particular affect that can be useful and pleasing under certain circumstances, much like HDR, stitching, cross-processing, B&W. If you are especially interested in portraiture then fast glass and a larger sensor can be helpful. However, not everyone want to only take photos of other people. It is a fact that most people, especially when starting out, want to photograph many different things.
You also seem to massively misunderstand what Bokeh is and how one can achieve bokeh or shallow DOF photography. Shallow DoF and Bokeh are NOT synonyms, they are very distinct. Bokeh is the aesthetic quality of the blur and rendering in out of focus areas of a photo. If a lens has very ugly OOF rendering then it has no Bokeh quality, even if the aperture allows a shallow DoF. Getting shallow DoF also does not require the fastest apertures or large sensor, the distance to the subject has a bigger effect. And the quality of OOF rendering is far more dependent on the distance to the background behind the point of focus on the subject and the specular and textural nature of the background scene.
Throw a Nikon 18-105 to the far end and properly compose your subject and you can achieve great Bokeh and shallow DoF portraiture that looks nicer than the 50mm f/1.8 a lot of the time. Caveats with perspective changes.
The 50mm prime lens is very restrictive and clearly not a good idea for a beginner to have as an only lens but could be useful to support a kit lens. That is the main point I made, and you cannot argue that. A good quality kit lens with a reasonable focal range combined with a fast prime or 2 makes for a far more versatile setup. The optial qualities of most kit lenses re vastly under estimated,t he Nikon 18-105 has great optical quality and is much better value for money than the 50mm prime considering what it allows you to do.
And if you are such fan of larger sensor why are you using a piddly 35mm small format camera and not a proper medium or large format setup. If you think the small difference between APS-C crop and 35MM FF is big, then you must wet yourself if you were to get a large format film camera with 16-20 times the surface area of your tiny 35mm toy camera.
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Can't be bothered to argue any more than these final points:
1. A prime makes you think about compositions in ways a zoom doesn't - great for beginners. Speaking from my experience I used my dad's 18-55 on his D5000 for my first few months and made pretty much no progress in my shooting. Got a 35 1.8 and suddenly really started coming on, and not just from DoF. Not to mention it's a hell of a lot more fun
2. Being locked into one perspective may be restrictive but it makes you really understand what that perspective does, and also gives a more consistent aesthetic through the body of your work. With just zooms it doesn't cross beginner photographers' minds to consider the perspective for the most part; they just put the camera to their eye and zoom until the subject fills most of the frame.
3. Maybe not everyone wants shallow depth of field but the vast majority of people like them. That's just a fact.
4. I know the difference between bokeh and shallow depth of field. Find one quote where I get them mixed up. The point I was making was the majority of people care more that the background is blurred (i.e. bokeh is there to be assessed by pixel peepers), than the creamy smooth bokeh you might get from other lenses. In any case for the most part it's a 2 second job in lightroom to smooth out particularly harsh bokeh if it ever really bothers you.
5. It has ugly OOF rendering if you're not careful with how you use it, but if you're careful with what you shoot that either doesn't matter or you can use it effectively.
As for why I don't shoot larger formats, it's party down to budget, partly down to the speed of the systems, and partly down to that level of detail being generally superfluous for what I shoot while sacrificing the ability to go for the crazy thin DoF you can get on 35mm systems. Fine, it may not be the pinnacle of quality for every single possible application, but DSLRs are by far the most versatile system in the market. The detail of medium and large format systems is useful when printing billboards. I'm not printing billboards, rarely printing above 18*12. Crops may be as/more capable for nature and sports but those aren't things I shoot.
I realised 50 won't be all most people ever want to shoot, and it's fair enough particularly coming from a world of zooms only, but I reckon coming from a phone camera he won't mind. Also a 70-300 +5d will wildly outperform a 70-300 + 40d. Though it might sacrifice a bit of reach, most of the time I've seen shots at the 300 end from crop cameras particularly in beginners, it's just been a function of not wanting to step forward rather than actually needing the speed.
There are definitely applications for crop cameras and if you absolutely want to do everything then it's usually more cost effective, I'll give you that. But for a beginner, learning photography I'll always push the 5d + 50 combo over say a 40d + 17-50 2.8.
1. A prime makes you think about compositions in ways a zoom doesn't - great for beginners. Speaking from my experience I used my dad's 18-55 on his D5000 for my first few months and made pretty much no progress in my shooting. Got a 35 1.8 and suddenly really started coming on, and not just from DoF. Not to mention it's a hell of a lot more fun
2. Being locked into one perspective may be restrictive but it makes you really understand what that perspective does, and also gives a more consistent aesthetic through the body of your work. With just zooms it doesn't cross beginner photographers' minds to consider the perspective for the most part; they just put the camera to their eye and zoom until the subject fills most of the frame.
3. Maybe not everyone wants shallow depth of field but the vast majority of people like them. That's just a fact.
4. I know the difference between bokeh and shallow depth of field. Find one quote where I get them mixed up. The point I was making was the majority of people care more that the background is blurred (i.e. bokeh is there to be assessed by pixel peepers), than the creamy smooth bokeh you might get from other lenses. In any case for the most part it's a 2 second job in lightroom to smooth out particularly harsh bokeh if it ever really bothers you.
5. It has ugly OOF rendering if you're not careful with how you use it, but if you're careful with what you shoot that either doesn't matter or you can use it effectively.
As for why I don't shoot larger formats, it's party down to budget, partly down to the speed of the systems, and partly down to that level of detail being generally superfluous for what I shoot while sacrificing the ability to go for the crazy thin DoF you can get on 35mm systems. Fine, it may not be the pinnacle of quality for every single possible application, but DSLRs are by far the most versatile system in the market. The detail of medium and large format systems is useful when printing billboards. I'm not printing billboards, rarely printing above 18*12. Crops may be as/more capable for nature and sports but those aren't things I shoot.
I realised 50 won't be all most people ever want to shoot, and it's fair enough particularly coming from a world of zooms only, but I reckon coming from a phone camera he won't mind. Also a 70-300 +5d will wildly outperform a 70-300 + 40d. Though it might sacrifice a bit of reach, most of the time I've seen shots at the 300 end from crop cameras particularly in beginners, it's just been a function of not wanting to step forward rather than actually needing the speed.
There are definitely applications for crop cameras and if you absolutely want to do everything then it's usually more cost effective, I'll give you that. But for a beginner, learning photography I'll always push the 5d + 50 combo over say a 40d + 17-50 2.8.
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lol most of the cameras talked about will be fine for a beginner some a little better than others but none are really bad. Getting a kit zoom as a first lens is usually the way to go as they can do widish angle through to a bit zoomed in allowing you to play with different lens lengths. Primes are great but you kinda need to know what you want before you buy them.
Probably first one to deal with is Cannon or Nikon
do you have any mates/family with either make that you can borrow lenses with? if you don't then get in to a camera shop and ask to handle both to see how they feel in your hands.
some a little better than others but none are really bad. Getting a kit zoom as a first lens is usually the way to go as they can do widish angle through to a bit zoomed in allowing you to play with different lens lengths. Primes are great but you kinda need to know what you want before you buy them.Probably first one to deal with is Cannon or Nikon
do you have any mates/family with either make that you can borrow lenses with? if you don't then get in to a camera shop and ask to handle both to see how they feel in your hands.Now I am very confused
I think you should go to a high street camera shop and have a play of various camera in your budget and see what the different lenses offer you. I can assure you that you will find a cheap zoom lens very useful to get the photos that want i different situations, and these lenses are very cheap when included with the camera. Once you have learned the basics you will have a better idea of what you will want photograph and what lenses you will need to achieve that.
I would recommend a Nikon D5100 with the 18-105 lens with an eye on buying either the Nikon 35mm f.1.8 or 50mm f/1.8 with the camera or at a later date. This makes for an excellent setup for a beginner but has the quality for professional grade photographs. Even if you decide that you have rapidly outgrown the equipment (unlikely) you can sell this gear on with a marginal loss compared to the investments required in higher end equipment. E.g. you might loose 150 quid but a new FF camera and lens setup might cost you 5 grand easily so the loss is pretty insignificant.
Also look second hand, often times if you buy second hand and hen resell on a year or 2 later you wont loose any money.
You can get a similar setup from Canon or Sony. IQ of all new cameras are great. Actually, pretty much all the new cameras are excellent, you could pick one at random and be happy, just soem smaller differences. E.g. The nikona dn Sony sensors are a little better than Canon at this point in time althought hings were reversed a few years back. Sony are going a slightly different route with special translucent mirrors, a bonus if you are into videos.
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Soldato
Now I am very confused
Just grab a Nikon D5100 body (£420) and a 35mm f1.G lens (£150).
That's a great place to start. You can always add a Tamron 70-300 VC USD (£285) at a later date.
Some interesting arguments here. Having recently got into photography myself, I personally went for a D3100 with the 18-55mm kit lens, and have since added a 35mm 1.8 and recently picked up a used 55-200 too.
What I would say is keep your costs down until you know it's for you. You can take amazing shots with a crop body and a decent lens whilst keeping costs down. I personally didn't want a used body either which swayed my decision further.
What I would say is keep your costs down until you know it's for you. You can take amazing shots with a crop body and a decent lens whilst keeping costs down. I personally didn't want a used body either which swayed my decision further.