The Official Camera Thread

I just wanted you to know about the lenses...I would not be worried as that cam is well accepted in the industry.

I have bought 2 cameras from cameta plus another for my sister-in-law, I highly recommend them!!

As for a macro....dont get a zoom type macro go with a primary lens for your macro.
They will happily put together a kit for you as that is what I did for my sister-in-laws setup.

Good luck!!

eins

 

I use a 10.0 Megapixel Cannon SD900 Digital Elph. I'd really like to get a nice DSLR and a couple of lenses, but that probably won't happen for quite some time. I might get a tripod to see if it helps me take better aquarium photos.

 

Thanks Everyone for the helpful advice in this thread. I ordered a Nikon D40x today from Cameta Camera. Thank you for the recomendation Bill.
Anyone looking to order a camera on the internet. Be extremely careful. There are many prominent scams going on and I almost fell into some of them. But I did my research and checked them out. As is stated over and over, if something seems to good to be true it usually is. The scam going on with many places when you search and come up with a camera that is a couple of hundred less is they won't actually send you camera unless you buy the extras that they charge 2-3 times as much for. If you don't buy them they tell you they are out of stock or in some cases keep your money and don't send you anything or send your peice of sh%&. Then try to go and get a return or get your money back. The reviews of these companies are pretty easy to find. Cameta where Bill reccomended has a very good reputation and a very good price. They aren't as cheap as some but beware of those low prices many have been burned.
The other things to look out for when searching for a Nikon ... greymarket Nikons. Its the same camera but Nikon will not warranty them in the US. They are made for other countries where the costs are less for the dealers so theese dealers sell them to companies in the US for less. Again the cameras are fine but if somthing goes wrong with it you are sort of SOL unless the shop you bought it from is still in business and can fix it under their warranty. Cameta does not sell greymarket but I had to pay about $100 more.

 

Well said Joel...That is excellent advice....

I learned about Grey market Nikons about 7 years ago the hard way....I ended up out about 600.00 due to that scam.

Cameta is great they dont try to power you into an upsell, and they give good advice.

Congratz on the new purchase......cant wait to see pics!

eins

 

Hey Bill, thanks for the tips below, they made sense since I also have a Nikon now. These work good for stationary corals, but what advice do you have for a getting shots of fish or better yet my Blue Xenia. I can't get the shutter speed high enough to stop motion and be light enough. I guess I could try to lighten the picture afterwards.
Also, does it matter whether you get the picture in Raw or Jpeg format. I am going to be doing some high res shots for work and I am not sure which to use.
P.S. I didn't splurge on the high quality Macro lens, so my pics saren't nearly as awesome as yours. Yours are absolutely magnificent.

 

Raw is definetly the format to work in, however you need software that will allow you to work with the raw files.

I shoot almost exclusively in raw and make all exposure, whitebalance, shadow and highlight adjustments and color balance all in the raw editor. PS cs3 has an incredible raw editor if you have access to that program. Another amazing raw editor is Adobe Lightroom, it has many organizational features for cataloging all of your photos.

As for the xenia....what settings are you using....is the ISO set to a low number?
if it is...I would try to set it higher as that will allow a much quicker shutter speed in low light conditions...however the drawback is that higher ISO= more noise in the picture...so you have to play with it a bit to get where you want to be...
Hope that will get you started.
Remember that for every pic that you see of mine, I had probably taken 10 or more trial shots, testing aperature, exposure compensation, focus, etc.
Thats the great thing about digital....take the pic ...if its not good delete and move on....TRY EVERYTHING! it does not cost you anything but some time.

Good luck!

eins

 

Oh yeah...one other thing....

Got to amazon or Barns and Noble and buy a book about your camera.
They are great to have, and go into so much more detail than your manual will.

eins

 

Buy the book "Understanding Exposure" or get it at your library. It is the best book for taking good pictures.

 

Thanks Bill,
I will lookminto some of the books. I used to do a bunch of camera work with film years ago, both Cannon and Nikon. I even had my own complete darkroom setup. But things have changed so much.
We have Photoshop CS3, but the raw format has a different extension (.raw). I hadn't tried but I guess PS will read the .NEF format from Nikon? I had messed with the ISO setting. I even put it on HI1 which actually has a picture of clown hosting, I assumed this would be the perfect ISO setting. I didn't spend much time though it got late. I will try more tonight and this weekend.
Thanks alot, I only bought Macro filters so I won't get the pictures you do. But hopfully something close.

 

CS3 reads all proprietary raw formats like .NEF you will have no problems with it. once you select a NEF photo CS3 opens an extension that you make all of the raw adjustments to. then it converts and opens the photo in CS3 where you can tweek it even more.
Dont use the sharpen in the Raw editor....wait and use smart sharpen in CS3....it is a much better sharpening filter.

Good luck
eins

 

We only have CS2 right now and the Raw plugin for CS2 does not support the D40x. But Adobe has a free converter that will convert it to DNG and still not lose anything. This worked awesome, its sooooo much better than the JPegs the camera produces. Night and day difference. I am just working with boring computer software shots today which is why I bought th camera. Hopefully tonight I can mess with more fun Coral shots.

 

Canon 30d