Err…there are “proper Canon lenses” without ring-type ultrasonic focus motors, most notably the EF-S 18-55mm kit zoom that is almost certainly the lens that would be mounted on a demo model. In my experience kit zooms do tend to be audible when autofocusing, though I’ve not played with any Canons recently. And of course there are third party lenses that do have ring motors - any Sigma tagged HSM, etc.
I’ve had an Olympus E520 (14-42, 40-150 lenses…double for 35mm equivalent, I’m covered from 28-300mm) for about a month. So far I like it a lot.
Some pics here:
http://picasaweb.google.com/lobotomyboy63
Note that before 4/22, the photos were all taken with PS cameras.
I haven’t mastered the touch on fast action stuff. I tend to bias toward lower ISOs and more DOF but I’m still sometimes surprised I’m not getting the subject frozen. Ah well. I tend more toward landscape, still life, etc.
One drawback to four thirds cameras is the lens selection. I yearn for the old inexpensive fast lens, but am getting an adapter for some old Minolta lenses I have (they’ll be MF, manual exposure, like the old preset lenses). Yeah, I could get a Sigma 30mm f/1.4 but that runs $400+, whereas that little 50mm f/1.8 Canon is about $100. Apples to oranges, but low light is low light.
IIRC the 420 has digital stabilization but not image shift. I used to shoot 35mm and didn’t find stabilization that big of a deal, but I’ve been using the PS cameras and they’ve spoiled me I guess.
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I don’t know if I like the Olympus software for images. Literally. It bogs down my computer so much that it’s too much trouble and I’ve never been able to use it. My puter is 5 years old so take that with a grain.
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The 520 is almost too small for my hands and I’m not Mr. Meat Hooks. You could add a battery pack I guess.
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The Olympus AF can really struggle with low light, and the viewfinder is small. I don’t like the MF…it’s focus by wire, not a mechanical linkage as I understand it. 847,000 turns to get where you want to go. No distance markings or DOF scales either. Ah well.
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Do all DSLRs have exposure bracketing? I love that. I set it so I fire off three shots by holding the release down. The first is per the meter. The second is over-exposed (according to the meter) and the third is under. I can set for +/- 1/3 or 1/2 or 1 full stop IIRC. It will also make raw+jpg simultaneously, but without the software, I’ve given up on raw.
But I’m learning ways around some of these things. Maybe some could be applied to any DSLR, I don’t know, but for instance I have an old shoe mount flash. The onboard is wimpy, and this cheap ($25?) Sunpak is 50% stronger. If you’re willing to go manual, it should extend battery life.
Yes, and many advanced P&S cameras do as well.
Actually the bottom end Nikon DSLRs don’t have bracketing. Canon de-features the bottom end by stripping out the spot meter, instead. If you want all the goodies you have to pay a bit more. Some of the others leave more features in the bottom end bodies, but you pay for it with sparser lens selection - but if you’ll only ever own two or three lenses, that might not matter.
Disclaimer: anything I say carries the “I can’t compare it to other brands because I haven’t used them” caveat.
I read people criticize Olympus (since it’s the primary 4/3 maker at the moment), saying that those lenses can’t be anything but. It’s funny though: one review said that maybe the 4/3 sensor was maxed out, since Olympus hadn’t made this update (420, 520, 620) capable of >10Mp. They overlooked the 620, which is 12Mp. And IIRC it was the same site, reviewing a Panasonic/Leica offering, said basically that their new cam is 10 Mp, and aren’t they wise to stop chasing the folly that more Mp gives better pictures etc. Oog. Biased much?
If you buy a Canon and later to upgrade for a better body, the image circles of the lenses will cover the entire format of the larger sensor. However it would seem that you’re paying extra for every lens for Canon (and having to stabilize extra weight). IOW you’re paying for a capability you may never use. I know, it’s the whole system thing and who can predict how far you’ll carry your love of photography?
With my E520, I guess the IS is built in so you’re not paying for IS in every lens and it will work even with adapted lenses(?). The more lenses you buy or retrofit, the more of an issue that will be.
I’m not stumping for Olympus, really: I heard somewhere in here that there were some sweet deals on Canon/Nikon via Costco and I was kicking myself a bit. I don’t know if I can really use more than 3 point AF through the optical viewfinder, though a bigger/brighter image would be nice. And a flip out, articulating finder like Sonys have, mmboy, that I would use!
If I could trade it back without losing money and switching, I’m not sure I would. For $550 I got the body and two zoom lenses that cover 28mm-300mm. I’d like to go a bit wider (and certainly, faster) but that can wait.
OP, you might check out the pics I took today, via the above link. Others, how do your moving-and-unpredictable bird shots compare to mine? I can get plenty of shots with him sitting on the reeds, but I wanted him in flight, colors exposed, etc.
I wish they were sharper but some of it is probably limited depth of field and might have been better if I’d gone above ISO 400. At least with sports, there’s a line of scrimmage or free throw line or batter’s box in a somewhat confined space and therefore, a little (?) more predictability.
Be careful there - Canon’s EF lenses will interchange to any of their digital SLRs, whether cropped or full-frame, and they’ll even work on EOS 35mm film bodies with EF mounts, but the EF-S lenses are built for crop sensors, and can not be mounted to an EF-only body - they’re physically incompatible.
When I bought my camera recently, I went with an EF lens, on the odd chance that I might want to upgrade the body some day, but not need to re-buy the lens. (The lens I bought cost nearly twice as much as the camera itself.)
As for “proper” lenses that I mentioned the other day. I was caffeine-deprived, and didn’t realize that nearly 15 years after introducing USM, Canon was still selling mass-market non-USM lenses.
Thanks for fighting my ignorance. Had I gone with Canon I probably would have botched that decision.
From what I understand, the distance from lens mount flange to sensor on the E-System Olympus is shorter than the corresponding distance on 35mm. The difference between them is the effective thickness of the adapter to put a 35mm lens on the four thirds system. With the 35mm lens positioned at the distance where the designers intended, it’s all good.
The other way, trying to fit a smaller format lens onto a larger format camera, doesn’t cut it. I guess the light rays are converging at a point in front of the sensor. And of course the image circle may not cover the format.
Like back in the day, some photogs would have custom adapters made so they could use a Hasselblad lens on a 35mm camera, but not the other way around. OP, if you buy Canon, be very sure what you’re buying WRT lenses.
It’s not unique to Canon. Nikon also produces a whole alphabet soup of lenses, so you need to keep track of AF vs AF-S and DX or not DX.
Except that Nikon’s DX lenses will mount on full frame bodies, unlike Canon’s EF-S. Just you get massive vignetting is all.
But this whole idea that you have to only buy “future-proof” lenses with 35mm film-sized image circles strikes me as misguided for most DSLR purchasers. The APS-sized bodies are here to stay, and will be entirely adequate for pretty much anyone. What do you get for moving to 35mm-sized sensors? Slightly better dynamic range and ISO performance, and slightly shallower depth of field. And bigger, heavier lenses required. The crop bodies already perform quite adequately in these regards. Given that the cost of silicon by area isn’t dropping very fast (Cost per transistor follows Moore’s Law, but that’s because the transistors get smaller. Camera sensors don’t.) there will be a hefty surcharge for full-frame sensor bodies for a long time to come, and the mass market DSLR buyer won’t ever pay that surcharge when the output of entry-level DSLR’s is as good as it is.
Unless you know that you’re eventually going to find that one extra stop of dynamic range indispensable, there’s very little reason not to build up a kit around the APS-sized format.
I know this thread is a few days old, but I’m on the the very cusp of purchasing my very first DSLR, which will also be my very first ever SLR. Therefore… what do you look for in ergonomics? Over the course of the last year, a lot of reviews for some of the entry-level DSLRs indicate that such-and-such camera may be awkward for large hands, which I have. However I have the sense that until I’ve spent many, many hours in all kinds of different shooting situations, I won’t have any idea on what’s “awkward” for my large hands? Any suggestions on what I should check?
I’d been considering the Canon XSi for a long while, but with the new T1I, I’m about ready to jump. I’m not at all invested in glass, so I’d equally consider Nikkon or Sony.
Can anyone with large hands tell me how they feel about the use of any of these three brands’ entry-level models?
You really are going to want to go to a store and hold them in your hands. It’s hard to describe what feels “right” to someone without much camera experience, but I think you’ll know fairly quickly.
Yeah, you just have to get your hands on some cameras. Pick them up, press the buttons, turn the knobs, hold it up to your eye and take some pictures, hold it with one hand curled around the grip by your side, carry it around a bit, take some more pictures, change some settings, and so on.
I’ve got big hands, (most “XL” gloves don’t fit me very well) and recently bought a Canon XSi. It may not feel like it was carved to fit my hands, but it doesn’t annoy or worry me. (Most of today’s pocket-sized cameras scare me - feels like I’m going to snap them in half or press three buttons at once.) No such worries with the XSi. When I played with a Nikon D60, it just didn’t feel quite as right. Not bad, mind you, but not right.
FWIW, I don’t think the T1i offers that much over the XSi in actual photography. The most obvious feature differences are a few more megapixels, and that they wedged a mediocre video camera into an already good SLR. Being able to shoot HD video just wasn’t worth the $200 premium to me, so I rolled that money into a better lens.
Being a beginner DSLR shooter (but a pioneer digital shooter; I paid full price for an Epson Photo-PC 500 back in the 90’s!), I’m not sure if any of this is important: The T1I has the upgraded processor and also the 14 bit D-A channels. Faster? Better? I dunno. The extra pixels don’t influence me, either. The draw really, really is the 720p video. Not because I want a video camera, but because I don’t want a separate video camera (I sold all that video gear years ago). When I purchased my current P&S Lumix (which is only my 3d ever digital camera), the video capabilities actually turned out to be useful, for stupid little stuff that I’d never expected. Is it worth $200 to me? Not sure… I didn’t realize the Xsi had dropped so much! That equates to a cheap (learning!) tele-zoom or fair prime, when you put it in those terms. (In the end, I’m not too worried about the glass, because if I get good and piqued, all these digital-only lenses will be worthless if I move into full-sized sensors down the road.)
IMO, the video is pretty damn good. It’s a nice implementation if you plan on using the video feature.
Before I toss my opinion into the ring, I’ll tell how I use my camera. If you don’t use a camera like this, don’t bother reading the rest of the post. I’m a simple photographer. I set the camera to Aperture Control then adjust the ISO and autofocus mode when needed. Any artsy stuff goes on in the Photoshop Elements. Actually, the camera only has to get the image close to perfect. I usually tweak the final shots before printing. I print on either A4 or A3+ (13x19 inches) paper.
I have a Canon 40D and an Olympus E-520. The Canon has been sitting at a friend’s house after I got the Olympus. The smaller size, the in-body stablization, and the ease of changing common settings sold me on it.
I don’t miss many good scenes because I carry the Olympus almost everywhere. It fits in my glove box with the long lens installed. There are many times I’ll stop on the road to snap a few shots. The smaller size and weight aren’t tiresome after long days in the field. The Canon, well…
I can take handheld shots with the Oly at lower light levels with “ordinary” lenses than I could with the Canon with similar lenses. By ordinary, I mean these Olympus lenses: the kit lens 14-42mm F3.5-F5.6 and the 70-300mm F4.0-F5.6. These cover the focus ranges I need yet didn’t cost a boatload of money. With the Canon I kept buying lenses to find something that would work well in less than perfect light so common here in England. I gave up on the quest when I was seriously looking at professional Canon lenses.
The Olympus has buttons all over the body to access settings directly. No scrolling through menus to change the ISO or autofocus. Very handy. The 40D has a flat round wheel almost flush to the body to move the menu selector. I have to take my gloves off in cold weather to use it. The power switch? Small almost flush 3-position lever (40D) versus knob surrounding the shutter release button (E-520). Just a quick flick with my thumb and the Oly is ready to go.
Live view? I rarely use it. It really sucks the life out of your battery. Seriously. I can get hundreds of shots (without flash) on one charge using the optical viewfinder. If you think you’re going to use live view a lot, check on the focus method on your prospective cameras. Some can’t use the full autofocus capabilities–my Canon can’t. I think some early models couldn’t autofocus after going into live view.
If you do go with an Olympus, definitely move up to the 500-series. In-body image stabilization is worth the difference in price.
Don’t skimp on a good bag that fits your needs, BTW. I had a bag that the body and the lens could not be attached to the body, so when I took it on hikes it was a royal pain in the ass. Got myself a great sling bag and it has improved the usefulness of my camera. It won’t effect the quality of your pictures per se but the right bag will improve the usefulness of your camera.
My favorite bags are M-rock.
And don’t get a bag that screams I’M A FANCY CAMERA! STEAL ME! It’s not hard to either stick a “real” camera bag into a scruffy old backpack, or get some foam and line a scruffy old backpack or even a messenger bag.
**Gangster **and passwords, what do you put in a camera bag? I don’t carry one. Sorry for the digression, Banquet Bear.
Lenses, flash, extra battery, and I can even carry a small tripod on my bag. But it all depends on what you really plan to use it for. I like to go hiking and don’t really want to carry my camera or leave it exposed during the hike, but I also want easy access and to have options.
Back in the day, my bag would carry one or more 35mm bodies, as many as five or so lenses, a motor drive, flash, spare batteries for all of these things, filters, a small tripod and rolls and rolls and rolls of film. Traveling light was probably 20 pounds.
Now, I’m down to one body with one lens (a 24-105 zoom). If I’m traveling, the camera’s battery charger goes in, and maybe an extra SD card and reader so I can pull images off at the nearest USB port and email them. Total weight is maybe 5 pounds.
One of these days, I’ll probably pick up a monopod or small tripod. The deciding factor would be if I need some occasional stabilization, or something to attach the camera to and be able to walk away from.