I enjoy night photography and am really pushing the limits on my point 'n shoot. Any recommendations on a good dSLR for this kind of shooting?
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Montreal
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Re: Cam Recommendation
Wed, July 12, 2006 - 6:12 PMCanon's CMOS sensor is the best option for digital night photography, allowing reasonably noise free exposures up to 8-10 minutes without noise reduction.
Minimum kit: Canon Rebel with Kit Lens
Next step up: Canon 20D or 30D with Tokina 12-24, Canon 10-22
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Re: Cam Recommendation
Wed, July 12, 2006 - 10:24 PMAbout $1000 give or take a couple hundo. That's including a lens. I really need a dSLR, my Canon G6 just doesn't cut it in low light situations. -
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Re: Cam Recommendation
Wed, September 5, 2007 - 10:21 PMKay,
The brand-new Canon 40D, with a 50mm f/1.8, may well fit your budget scenario, and provide the benefits you seek. There may also be an acceptable kit lens bundling suitable for your applications. Here's a preliminary review you can look at, if you have interest:
www.dpreview.com/news/0708...eos40d.asp
A lower cost DSLR, with somewhat less capability, would be the Canon Rebel XTi:
www.dpreview.com/reviews/canoneos400d/
The 40D would be much better in low light. However, the conundrum of low light is mitigated more substantially by a very fast prime lens than it is by the camera, though at the same time the camera is not insignificant.
Blessings and Light,
Michael
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Re: Cam Recommendation
Wed, July 19, 2006 - 5:39 PMis it worth it to splurge on lenses wwith image stabalizing technology? -
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Re: Cam Recommendation
Thu, July 20, 2006 - 6:00 AMIf you're using it for night photography and using a tripod for long exposures, probably not...but if you use it for daylight photography, with or w/out a tripod, they are worth every penny you spend on them. You can gain as much as a full stop on your aperture with them. A 600 mm Canon IS lens is an absolute joy to use for moving wildlife, for example.
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Re: Cam Recommendation
Wed, September 5, 2007 - 10:42 PMIS lenses are less helpful for moving subjects than they are for slower shutter speeds on subjects that move little; IMHO there is only the exposure advantage of longer shutter speeds, IS is mostly unrelated to aperture.
Given a big professional lens with a fairly large aperture, like f/2.8, an IS lens will let you take much longer shutter speeds hand-held, as much as 3-stops faster with the latest IS lenses. The shutter speed advantage is also true for lesser lenses, but with smaller aperture this advantage is mainly useful in bright light situations, again with mostly still subject matter like landscapes.
Empirically, for a focal length < 200mm,Tv=1/60 seems to be the demarcation line between IS being useful and not being useful. For any particular aperture, you can definitely use an IS lens hand-held at Tv=1/15, for a shot that you could only do well with Tv=1/60 when hand-held by a non-IS lens. If you have a fast lens, 2 stops more light is well, a lot more light.
But this capability won't help you if you are photographing people in most contexts. It will help you obtain the blur of a river or waterfall in the shade-cover of a forest.
There is a very slight elision as to the benefits of IS though, with very fast shutter speeds. If you have a telephoto lens, the IS capability DOES help you pan around to track a moving subject, by keeping the subject reasonably cleanly in the frame ... BEFORE you take the shot. To freeze people motion, IS is not really doing that much .... but to point the lens and align it cleanly for the frame you want, while tracking movement, IS is most definitely a benefit for composition.
For larger and large telephoto lenses, the ability to track a subject without wobbliness is rather compelling. The largest telephoto prime I can hand-hold is the Canon EOS 300mm f/2.8L IS lens ... a very sweet lens. Lacking IS, panning around to find somebody would be very jumbly for sure.
Another thing about IS is that is often 2-axis stabilizing, with the ability to turn off one of the axes ... this is of major benefit for example to wildlife photographers working a 600mm prime lens on a tripod. The tripod provides stability for one axis, and the IS for the other, where lateral motion is used to follow birds, or other wildlife. So, for certain IS lenses, tripods are not an anathma to IS, they are in fact required because the lens is too heavy to hand-hold. But IS is still incredibly useful in that same mechanical context.
Hope this helps. As a side note, there are some medium fast (not fast) telephoto zoom lenses that offer IS, while being only modestly expensive (not very expensive).
Blessings and Light,
Michael
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Re: Cam Recommendation
Fri, December 8, 2006 - 1:28 PM
> I enjoy night photography and am really pushing the limits on my point 'n shoot.
>
> Any recommendations on a good dSLR for this kind of shooting?
> About $1000 give or take a couple hundo. That's including a lens.
Canon is really the low-light king. Nikon is widely-held to have the best flash system going.
If you prefer natural low-light, I'd go Canon; if you're into flash in a big way, go Nikon.
I'd avoid the newest megapixel craze (e.g. Canon's Rebel XTi (aka 400D)) -- get the Canon XT (aka 350D); not *quite* as sharp, but cheaper and with better low-light performance.
LENSES: Hmmmm. What's your subject or technique? People? Tripod-mounted looooong exposures?
Most likenly, you want *fast* lenses... 2.8 at least; 2.0 - 1.8 - 1.4 will be better. Drool over Canon's 50/1.2 but IIRC it's out of your price range.
BUT, do realize that the fastest lenses are pricey. Also pricey is "IS" (Image Stabilization, which comes in-lens on some Canon glass). Still, an IS lens can render previously-impossible shots possible. Realistically, the best / fastest glass is outside your price-range; compromise for now, and plan to get one or two pieces of Dream Glass in a couple of years...
To begin with, the 350D + 50/1.8 (or maybe 50/1.4) + a semi-fast 3rd-party zoom. Probably avoid the "mega-zooms" with lots of focal-length range... they just won't be fast enough, through most of the range (very typically, you'll see that their biggest aperture *STARTS* where you want, but rapidly becomes less, e.g. "2.8/4.5 - 22" with 85% of the zoom-range at f/3.5 and darker, & many of 'em won't even START as bright as you'll want 'em.)
3rd-party glass:
Tamron sells a *very* nice little zoom, the "SP AF17-50mm F/2.8 XR Di II LD Aspherical [IF]" -- it's a stop and a half slower than the 50/1.8 prime (but it's winning lots of awards). Lower-light, or the zoom range... sorry, the truth is that the "improvement" from SLR cameras really comes mainly when you consider the different lenses/etc you can get. P/S often does better, out-of-the-box, than an SLR (over on the digital SLR tribe, a Nikon dSLR owner was griping about was being "out-shot" & embarassed by a P/S owner at a wedding...) . Other nice Tamron offerings you might consider:
"SP AF28-75mm F/2.8 XR Di LD Aspherical (IF) "
"SP AF90mm F/2.8 Di Macro 1:1"
Note that these are both "full frame" lenses -- if you decide to move up to (say) the 5D or another full-frame Canon model, these will move with you. The 17-50 (above) is digital-ONLY, and will vignette on a FF camera. The Macro is a particularly nice lens, IMHO; it's an ideal portrait lens in addition to its extraordinary macro capability.
Sigma's offerings include 18-50/2.8's in macro and non-macro versions, a VERY fast 30/1.4, a 50-150/2.8, and other worthies.
The Tamron 17-50 + Sigma 50-150 (Or Tokina's 50-135/2.8) look like a very nice pairing, & a Can50/1.x or that Sig30/1.4 for the REALLY low-light, and you've got a fine trio indeed!
- Steve
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Re: Cam Recommendation
Wed, September 5, 2007 - 11:48 AMI use a Nikon CoolPix 8400. Has a great wide angle, no tele to speak of. Has Bulb and Time, so you can shoot as long as you want.
