I bought a Canon Rebel K2 new for $5 from my store. I have a Nikon D50 digital SLR though and I’d like to get a nikon film camera for my photo class so I can mix and match my lenses. I think it’d be awesome to have a depth of field preview button, and I’m seeing the Nikon FM10 on craigslist, but I don’t want to get something thats worse than the Canon K2 (which by judging by the prices for the 2 cameras online it looks like its a worse camera?) I really dont want to spend a lot of money for a camera, since i got one for $5.. But I dont want something thats a waste of money because its not worth spending money on. What are my options?
i see a fm2n for $75 with some minor body damage and a broken, but functional rewind handle.. should I go for that?
Since you already have a good D-SLR (D50), you should try a basic camera like the FM10 first. Get it from a reliable source of used cameras. Never buy a broken camera. It may cost $100’s to fix.
The FM10 lets you do all the things with a camera like manual focus, depth of field, manually metering the light and set the best combination of aperture and shutter speed. The D50 lens will only expose half the area of a 35 mm film frame, so get a good 35 mm lens. I started way back with a 105 mm Nikon lens and I still use it. Great for beautiful portraits (your models will love you) and it just isolates the thing in focus from the background. You may also be able to get a cheap 28 mm or 24 mm wide angle. Always use lens hoods with these lenses. Have fun with silver.
The Nikon D90 is now probably one of the most popular cameras available on the market at the moment. With a hefty 12.9 megapixels the quality of the photos from this camera is just staggering. Even though this is one very sought after camera at the moment it doesn’t mean that you should pay over the odds for it. Following some research I was shocked to discover that there can be more than £100 difference in the Nikon D90 prices between stores.
The only way to get the best Nikon D90 prices is by shopping about and comparing all the prices. You will have to start by deciding which Nikon D90 package you want and then you need to shop about and compare all the prices for this package remembering to take note of any postage and packaging costs and VAT. Although the price may seem cheap, it is not until you add VAT and delivery that you find out that it actually works out to be more expensive. Also do not think that the price comparison sites will give you a realistic comparison of all the prices as they show many prices that are not inclusive of VAT.
This kind of research can take a long time to do properly and many people simply donâ??t have the time so I have done it for you. I have put together the best Nikon D90 prices available for you, so there are no excuses not to buy at the best price!
I have a Nikon D50 digital camera and just bought on line a digital accessory kit which includes a 52mm UV filter. This is useless for me, and I thought the filter was going to be a universal size, but it does not fit on the end of the lens. The lens is a 28-80mm, which is the one most commonly bundled with the D50 SLR, so i feel a bit foolish at having bought this.
I have read the answers posted so far and am still a bit confused–I am very new to this. The symbol on the lens for filter size has a 58 after it. The lens is a Nikon AF Nikkor 28-80mm 1:3.3-5.6 G, I had trouble finding this on the B&H site and felt a bit overhwelmed by the Nikonians boards.
Unfortunately, the other answers for 62mm and 77mm are wrong.
The Nikkor 28-80mm f/3.3-5.6G Autofocus Lens has a 58mm filter size! That’s what the 58 after the filter symbol (O with a line through it) means. The 52mm filter you bought should appear to be just slightly too small.
Go to Nikon USA: http://www.nikonusa.com/template.php?cat=1&grp=5&productNr=1927 and click on the "Tech Specs" tab or download specs and you’ll see that Nikon itself says it’s 58mm.
Ahhâ?¦wide angle photography, probably one of the easiest types of photo to take; but also one of the hardest to excel at.
Have you ever tried to cram 30 people into a single photograph? Youâ??d try to stack them, have some of them on the floor or even ask some of them at the back to jump at the press of the shutter!? Youâ??re also trying to make sure that you are able to see the faces of these people in the photograph. Difficult if your cameraâ??s lens is not wide enough and you have to move yourself further back to accommodate, which may not be possible if space is limited. When shooting indoors with flash, moving back may even give you an underexposed photograph, as flash is often not powerful enough to reach longer distances.
Apart from the utilitarian purpose of getting good group photographs, shooting wide angle lets you portray the scene in full detail with unusual and sometimes, exaggerated perspectives. This is especially true of super wide angle. Small objects can be made to appear larger than larger objects within the same scene, effectively shifting the balance of the image composition. When used well, it can bring attention to the subject of interest in the foreground, at the same time preserving the context of the whole image by showing the location or event in the background.
Choose your foreground interest wisely
-Wider Options
Lenses are categorized by their focal lengths. Typically, lenses fall into one of these categories:
· super wide angle (10~24mm)
· wide angle (24~35mm)
· standard (about 50mm)
· telephoto (70~300mm)
· super telephoto (300mm and beyond)
These numbers indicate the focal length, which describes the field of view achievable using that lens. Incidentally, the field of view of a 50mm lens is considered to be an approximation to what the human eye sees. For the DSLR owners, they can choose from a variety of lenses ranging from a super wide lens all the way up to a super telephoto. But what about the rest of us?
Digital compact camera owners are not left out of the picture. There are a multitude of wide-angle adapters for digital compacts; both made available as accessories as well as by third-party manufacturers. These can be attached via lens threads or bayonet mounts on their bodies. There are also some from third-party lenses which can be attached magnetically!
-Focal Length Multiplier
Note: The â??focal lengthâ?? of the lens determines the â??field of viewâ??, which is the angle of view seen using this lens. â??Field-of-view cropâ?? is often referred to as â??focal length multiplierâ?? for the sake of simplicity.
Digital photography, from the hardware perspective, is based on principles of 35mm film cameras. For a photographer who shoots with film, there is no such thing as a â??focal length multiplierâ??, because to them, everything is 1x. This means that a 50mm lens is a 50mm lens. Not so for a digital SLR. A 50mm lens virtually becomes a 75mm lens, when attached to a Nikon D200 digital SLR. This is because the â??focal length multiplierâ?? of 1.5x causes the 50mm lens to have a field of view equivalent to a 75mm lens.
Shooting wide angle is basically one way of depicting a scene using a wider field of view, which in turn is achieved by using a lens with a focal length of less than 50mm on a 35mm film SLR camera. These days, with the proliferation of digital SLR cameras, there might be some confusion to how focal lengths are calculated.
To keep things simple, we can use this rule of thumb. If you are using a 35mm film SLR, your focal length multiplier is 1x. If you are using a digital SLR, your focal length multiplier could be any one of these, depending on the model of DSLR camera: 1x (eg Canon 1Ds Mk II), 1.3x (eg Canon 1D Mk II), 1.5x (eg Nikon D200 or D70) or 1.6x (eg Canon 30D).
To get the actual focal length (and hence field of view achievable) of your lens, multiply the lens focal length with the multiplier.
Example 1
Nikon D200 (multiplier is 1.5x) with a 17~70mm lens
The actual focal length range of this combination is 25.5mm-105mm, achieved by multiplying the lens range with 1.5
Example 2
Canon 1Ds Mk II (multiplier is 1x) with a 70~300mm lens
The actual focal length range of this combination is still 70-300mm.
Example 3
Nikon F5 (35mm film camera with multiplier of 1x) with a 15mm fisheye lens
The actual focal length of this combination is still 15mm.
The reason behind the focal length multiplier falls to the size of the recording media, the CCD or CMOS. Different cameras use different sized CCD/CMOS for different reasons eg. to make a smaller camera and for better power efficiency. For compact digital cameras which do not fall under the digital SLR category, focal length multipliers are rarely used because they donâ??t have interchangeable lenses. What they do have are wide angle adapters or telephoto adapters. A wide angle adapter may be referred to as a 0.7x wide adapter. What this number means is that this adapter shortens the focal length of the built-in lens by multiplying it with 0.7, effectively creating a wider field of view.
Super wide angle shots sometimes appear distorted, but they do show a lot more in the background, lending context to an image
-Focusing with Wide Angle Lenses
An inherent characteristic of camera lenses is that wide angle lenses come with more depth-of-field compared to telephoto lenses. This reduces focusing errors to some extent, which means that you can focus on almost anything around the center of the frame and get an acceptably sharp image. In this case, a small aperture further increases the chance of a sharp image. For best results though, we can use the â??1/3 of the distance rule”. Look inside your camera viewfinder, estimate the distance from the nearest point that is visible in the viewfinder, to the furthest point that is also visible in your viewfinder. Focus on a point that is roughly one-third of the distance away from you. If you cannot use autofocus effectively on that point (perhaps due to very dim light levels or low contrast early in the morning on a mountain), you can estimate the distance and manually focus your lens, using the distance scale on your lens. A small aperture (eg. f16) gives you more depth-of-field, so use it if possible. Thatâ??s why itâ??s good to carry a tripod, which will let you use smaller apertures without camera shake.
-Composing with Wide Angle Lenses
Wide angle photography has its own set of challenges. While it lets you show more of the scene, sometimes less is more. If not properly framed, a super wide angle image may include distracting elements which detract from your image, because a wide angle lens sees a wider field of view than a normal lens. Therefore itâ??s good to fill the frame well, composing it in such a way that only the necessary elements are included. Landscape photography is a classic candidate for using wide angle lenses. In order to shoot great landscape photography, foreground interest is important. Wide angle lenses let you include a sizeable portion of the foreground in the frame, so use it well by choosing a foreground that is actually interesting.
When shooting super wide angle, we can also get away with a slower shutter speed because the shorter focal length downplays slight camera shake errors, opening up new possibilites with photography. One example is hand-holding your SLR camera in a busy street downtown, capturing a sharp image of your subject while rendering the pedestrian traffic as a blur, due to the slower shutter speed.
-Wide Angle Care
Exercise more caution when handling your DSLR or digicam with a wide-angle lens/adapter. Some wide angle lenses have protruding glass which is more exposed and susceptible to accidental contact with dirty fingers or worse, it may end up getting scratched. If your lens accepts a UV filter, get one. It will protect your lens from countless dangers. Many wide angle lenses allow you to focus closer than a telephoto lens, so a lens hood helps to some extent to protect your lens from your overzealous attempts to get a closer shot.
Wide angle photography is exciting, go forth and experiment!
Enjoy !
Warmly,
Bernard Tan Min Chun
Photographic Artist
http://www.dreamentry4u.com/photo.html
BERNARD TAN MIN CHUN http://www.articlesbase.com/graphic-design-articles/seriously-wide-110362.html
Ahhâ?¦wide angle photography, probably one of the easiest types of photo to take; but also one of the hardest to excel at.
Have you ever tried to cram 30 people into a single photograph? Youâ??d try to stack them, have some of them on the floor or even ask some of them at the back to jump at the press of the shutter!? Youâ??re also trying to make sure that you are able to see the faces of these people in the photograph. Difficult if your cameraâ??s lens is not wide enough and you have to move yourself further back to accommodate, which may not be possible if space is limited. When shooting indoors with flash, moving back may even give you an underexposed photograph, as flash is often not powerful enough to reach longer distances.
Apart from the utilitarian purpose of getting good group photographs, shooting wide angle lets you portray the scene in full detail with unusual and sometimes, exaggerated perspectives. This is especially true of super wide angle. Small objects can be made to appear larger than larger objects within the same scene, effectively shifting the balance of the image composition. When used well, it can bring attention to the subject of interest in the foreground, at the same time preserving the context of the whole image by showing the location or event in the background.
Choose your foreground interest wisely
-Wider Options
Lenses are categorized by their focal lengths. Typically, lenses fall into one of these categories:
· super wide angle (10~24mm)
· wide angle (24~35mm)
· standard (about 50mm)
· telephoto (70~300mm)
· super telephoto (300mm and beyond)
These numbers indicate the focal length, which describes the field of view achievable using that lens. Incidentally, the field of view of a 50mm lens is considered to be an approximation to what the human eye sees. For the DSLR owners, they can choose from a variety of lenses ranging from a super wide lens all the way up to a super telephoto. But what about the rest of us?
Digital compact camera owners are not left out of the picture. There are a multitude of wide-angle adapters for digital compacts; both made available as accessories as well as by third-party manufacturers. These can be attached via lens threads or bayonet mounts on their bodies. There are also some from third-party lenses which can be attached magnetically!
-Focal Length Multiplier
Note: The â??focal lengthâ?? of the lens determines the â??field of viewâ??, which is the angle of view seen using this lens. â??Field-of-view cropâ?? is often referred to as â??focal length multiplierâ?? for the sake of simplicity.
Digital photography, from the hardware perspective, is based on principles of 35mm film cameras. For a photographer who shoots with film, there is no such thing as a â??focal length multiplierâ??, because to them, everything is 1x. This means that a 50mm lens is a 50mm lens. Not so for a digital SLR. A 50mm lens virtually becomes a 75mm lens, when attached to a Nikon D200 digital SLR. This is because the â??focal length multiplierâ?? of 1.5x causes the 50mm lens to have a field of view equivalent to a 75mm lens.
Shooting wide angle is basically one way of depicting a scene using a wider field of view, which in turn is achieved by using a lens with a focal length of less than 50mm on a 35mm film SLR camera. These days, with the proliferation of digital SLR cameras, there might be some confusion to how focal lengths are calculated.
To keep things simple, we can use this rule of thumb. If you are using a 35mm film SLR, your focal length multiplier is 1x. If you are using a digital SLR, your focal length multiplier could be any one of these, depending on the model of DSLR camera: 1x (eg Canon 1Ds Mk II), 1.3x (eg Canon 1D Mk II), 1.5x (eg Nikon D200 or D70) or 1.6x (eg Canon 30D).
To get the actual focal length (and hence field of view achievable) of your lens, multiply the lens focal length with the multiplier.
Example 1
Nikon D200 (multiplier is 1.5x) with a 17~70mm lens
The actual focal length range of this combination is 25.5mm-105mm, achieved by multiplying the lens range with 1.5
Example 2
Canon 1Ds Mk II (multiplier is 1x) with a 70~300mm lens
The actual focal length range of this combination is still 70-300mm.
Example 3
Nikon F5 (35mm film camera with multiplier of 1x) with a 15mm fisheye lens
The actual focal length of this combination is still 15mm.
The reason behind the focal length multiplier falls to the size of the recording media, the CCD or CMOS. Different cameras use different sized CCD/CMOS for different reasons eg. to make a smaller camera and for better power efficiency. For compact digital cameras which do not fall under the digital SLR category, focal length multipliers are rarely used because they donâ??t have interchangeable lenses. What they do have are wide angle adapters or telephoto adapters. A wide angle adapter may be referred to as a 0.7x wide adapter. What this number means is that this adapter shortens the focal length of the built-in lens by multiplying it with 0.7, effectively creating a wider field of view.
Super wide angle shots sometimes appear distorted, but they do show a lot more in the background, lending context to an image
-Focusing with Wide Angle Lenses
An inherent characteristic of camera lenses is that wide angle lenses come with more depth-of-field compared to telephoto lenses. This reduces focusing errors to some extent, which means that you can focus on almost anything around the center of the frame and get an acceptably sharp image. In this case, a small aperture further increases the chance of a sharp image. For best results though, we can use the â??1/3 of the distance rule”. Look inside your camera viewfinder, estimate the distance from the nearest point that is visible in the viewfinder, to the furthest point that is also visible in your viewfinder. Focus on a point that is roughly one-third of the distance away from you. If you cannot use autofocus effectively on that point (perhaps due to very dim light levels or low contrast early in the morning on a mountain), you can estimate the distance and manually focus your lens, using the distance scale on your lens. A small aperture (eg. f16) gives you more depth-of-field, so use it if possible. Thatâ??s why itâ??s good to carry a tripod, which will let you use smaller apertures without camera shake.
-Composing with Wide Angle Lenses
Wide angle photography has its own set of challenges. While it lets you show more of the scene, sometimes less is more. If not properly framed, a super wide angle image may include distracting elements which detract from your image, because a wide angle lens sees a wider field of view than a normal lens. Therefore itâ??s good to fill the frame well, composing it in such a way that only the necessary elements are included. Landscape photography is a classic candidate for using wide angle lenses. In order to shoot great landscape photography, foreground interest is important. Wide angle lenses let you include a sizeable portion of the foreground in the frame, so use it well by choosing a foreground that is actually interesting.
When shooting super wide angle, we can also get away with a slower shutter speed because the shorter focal length downplays slight camera shake errors, opening up new possibilites with photography. One example is hand-holding your SLR camera in a busy street downtown, capturing a sharp image of your subject while rendering the pedestrian traffic as a blur, due to the slower shutter speed.
-Wide Angle Care
Exercise more caution when handling your DSLR or digicam with a wide-angle lens/adapter. Some wide angle lenses have protruding glass which is more exposed and susceptible to accidental contact with dirty fingers or worse, it may end up getting scratched. If your lens accepts a UV filter, get one. It will protect your lens from countless dangers. Many wide angle lenses allow you to focus closer than a telephoto lens, so a lens hood helps to some extent to protect your lens from your overzealous attempts to get a closer shot.
Wide angle photography is exciting, go forth and experiment!
Enjoy !
Warmly,
Bernard Tan Min Chun
Photographic Artist
http://www.dreamentry4u.com/photo.html
BERNARD TAN MIN CHUN http://www.articlesbase.com/graphic-design-articles/seriously-wide-110362.html
I am interested in getting into Astro-photography as a hobby I have a Nikon D50 digital SLR camera and a Meade 8800 Telescope with a camera mount and T adapter since my camera has several different setting which is the best to use for astro-photgraphy 100% manual or combination of Auto and manual settings? Any advice will be appreciated.
Yes, its fine. I notice another answerer has stated that it filters out wavelengths that you are interested it: ignore it. That refers to IR which you generally don’t want in your images anyway. Although you are using a Newtonian and so chromatic aberration is less of an issue it will still bite you if you use eyepiece projection to gain magnification or a focal reducer to lose it. Good quality optical components are designed to reduce chromatic aberration in visible wavelengths, and completely ignore IR. Nikon cameras have quite a following in the astrophotography community.
As for settings, yes, all manual. Use a slow ISO setting and the remote control if you have one (this reduces vibration when you open and close the shutter). For longer exposures you want a bulb mode but your camera has one so no problems there.
Output your images in RAW format. JPEG compression is good for photos of everyday objects but bad for astrophotography where many details are inherently low contrast, which is not something JPEG was designed to deal with.
Astrophotography is ultimately a specialist and complex area, though. You really need to read a few guides on the subject since a detailed treatment of the subject is not appropriate here.
When I purchased my first digital SLR camera I was given a great beginning photography tip: don’t buy more than you need. I was a beginning photographer who had never tried a film SLR camera, who didn’t know the definition of aperture, and who basically didn’t know much at all. I ended up purchasing the Nikon D50, which was Nikon’s introductory digital
SLR at the time, and I am very glad I did.
I have spent a few years learning the basics of digital photography and for the first year or so I
almost never felt that I needed more than what my Nikon D50 has to offer. Of course, now I am ready to move up to a model with more features, but
had I paid for those features initially I would have wasted several hundred, if not thousands, of dollar on features I never would have used.
Had I not listened to that beginning photography tip I probably would have purchased the Nikon D100, which was an amazing camera at the time. I would have spent at least one thousand more dollars, had a heavier camera, and had a few more features.
However, today I would still be wanting to
upgrade my six megapixel Nikon D100 to the newer and much better Nikon D300 or the Nikon D3. I’m not saying that those who purchased the D100 back then made a mistake by any means. It is a great camera. What I’m saying is that for me, purchasing it would have been a mistake because I would not have used the additional features that the D50 does not have.
Learning how to use a digital SLR camera takes time, especially if you are a complete beginner in the photography world.
You have to learn what aperture, ISO, white balance, shutter speed, f-stop, focal distance, and
many other things mean. And then, after knowing the definition of those terms, you have to learn how to manipulate them and how they work together to help you take and create great photographs. More simple, entry-level cameras are designed just for this purpose to help you learn the basics.
You can spend around $500 and get a great beginner camera that will enable you to learn the fundamental principles of photography. And the best part about buying a entry-level camera is that you generally don’t sacrifice much at all on the most important aspect of photography, the picture quality. I have seen amazing prints from both introductory-level digital SLR’s and pro-level cameras and many times I cannot tell the different.
In fact, if you read many photographer blogs, you will find out that most professional photographers do not just have one camera, they almost always
have a backup camera, and that backup camera is usually an entry level digital SLR just like the one I purchased.
So, remember this great beginning photography tip: if you are a beginning photographer, then start with a introductory DSLR. Then, when you understand how to use aperture and ISO and shutter speed together, you
will be ready to upgrade to a newer, better camera. You will never regret it.
Michael Clark http://www.articlesbase.com/gadgets-and-gizmos-articles/beginning-photography-tips-for-buying-a-camera-529769.html
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