Cameras and stuff.
In February Kirstin and I are going over to visit Amy in China. We’re flying to Hong Kong then going up to Hangzhou and thereafter to Beijing from which we fly home.
I have been toying with buying a DSLR to take with me. I love my wee Leica but I’d like something with more oomph for a ‘once in a lifetime’ trip like China I think. I don’t really want to carry film with me for my SLRs so a DSLR is in my mind and i have been looking around at reviews and stuff. This has been enlightening.
My first camera, which I still have, was a Canon AT1. This camera had the convenience of match needle TTL metering and that is it. I had it refurbished last year and it remains a great camera especally with the 50mm f1.4 lens. The upshot of this was that you really had to understand what the effects were of changing the aperture or the shutter speed or using different films. Focusing was, of course, manual. At some point around 1988 I got a second hand Canon A1 which I still think was the best camera I’ve ever had. It had all sorts of exposure modes and focus was still by hand. It too was refurbished last year. I also have a Canon T-90 and some Contax SLRs which have their own charm.
What I have observed by looking at reviews of DSLRs is that there is at least one generation of people which has no idea at all what it is like to use a camera which does not do everything for you if you let it and whose judgements are formed accordingly. And it gets worse.
I have been looking at “entry level” Canons and a Nikon, specifically a Canon 650D and a Nikon D5100 plus other similar models. I have also been looking at Hong Kong pricing as well as UK. The Nikon has caught my eye because they have just announced a D5200 and are trying to shift the earlier model at increasingly low prices and it is looking attractive to get it and a couple of decent lenses (of which more later). What I have observed is that in all the comparative reviews of the two cameras and their respective features, very few reviews mention that the Nikon seems to offer (imho) better image quality with slightly cooler, contrastier results. It seems to me that in amongst the techno-geekery image quality ought to be a reasonably important consideration 🙂
As for lenses, as any ful no, the f stop numbers are a good rule of thumb to optical quality (not guaranteed but a good indicator). As the f number is a ratio there are some optimum numbers to look for at the low end which are f 1.4, 2, 2.8, 4. Ideally you want the minimum rating of the lens to be one of those numbers and not some midpoint. It seems to me that, because most of the cameras come with zoom lenses these days, people are increasingly treating as “normal” an acceptable but average performance from the glass. If you go looking for a decent lens you are looking at a premium price.
So I am currently thinking of getting hold of a Nikon 5100 body in a falling market, especially after Christmas, and with the money ‘saved’ getting a couple of decent lenses which will make the most of its image quality. Incidentally, when did it become the norm not to offer the camera out of the box with a reasonable prime lens? Back in my day, as they say, that was not the norm.
I should say that I haven’t actually made up my mind whether or not actually to buy a DSLR and I am not limiting my thoughts to Nikon and Canon. Also, nothing in this post should suggest that I am not well aware that in the end the key factor is the photographer not the camera.
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