Edging closer to a DSLR

I’m sitting here with a shitload of of Minolta Maxxum/Dynax/Alpha lenses.

They work with the Sony ‘A’ NOT ‘E’ mount.

The autofocus isn’t as fast, but it does work as well as it did on the film SLR’s (I still have my first 7000 body).

If you don’t have any glass that can be used on a DSLR, consider the Sony Alpha with the “A” mount (Sony is screwing around and using the name Alpha on both A and E mount bodies).
With an A mount, ebay is full of some very nice Maxxum glass dirt-cheap.

In 1985, Minolta thought it could break into the pro market with the 9000 - and made some great glass to support the effort.
That didn’t work, and Minolta managed to destroy even its original market. Konica-Minolta now makes industrial lenses. Sad.

I know! I’m nearsighted so with the screen I have to take off my glasses to take pictures. And autofocus sucks. I’m tempted by a DSLR body and lenses off my late brother’s old Minolta so I can focus manually. I know the exposures to get what I want (lens stopped way down and a tripod because it’s going to take 20 seconds) and my Canon PowerShot S3is bridge can’t do it without a software hack, and that won’t squeeze down my aperture to a pinhole.

These have view finders and some of them are adjustable to your eye. You’re looking at what the chip is looking at. These are not the next models down from TTL’s but a leap ahead. The speed and ISO ratings are scary and you have the same control as any other camera body with replaceable lenses. All that’s missing is the unnecessary mirror flipping back and forth and that’s what slows the camera down. Given their performance you may not see TTL’s in the future.

I’m with Magiver on this.

If you are totally against mirrorless gear, go ahead and skip the rest of this post :slight_smile:
(and you might want to, as it appears that I wrote a book)

But I would suggest that you look at the mirrorless camera world to see if anything fits your style.

Like street photography? Go mirrorless
Like sports photography? DSLR is the only way

What you get in the mirrorless world:
Very compact; Silent; High ISO; Quality lenses; Lightweight; Unobtrusive; More likely to be with you

What you don’t get:
Full frame sensor; Lightning-fast autofocus; Thousands of bells and whistles; Fifty pounds of gear

Mirrorless cameras are great at day to day photography, portrait photography, and travel photography, and they excel in street photography; however, they are likely the wrong choice for sports photography–that is the realm of high end DSLRs with far better autofocus. They respectable pro cameras: I am an active member of a forum dedicated to Fuji gear, and most of the folks there are pros, doing weddings, event shoots, portrait shoots, product shots, and other professional work, using only their mirrorless cameras. Naturally, there is the obligatory “Has your Fuji camera totally replaced your DSLR gear” thread that goes on and on and on with debate.

My own kit is all Fujifilm gear, and I have a small bag that I carry all over the place that contains an XT1 body, 21mm, 50mm, and 85mm (equiv) lenses, an x100s body with its fixed 35mm lens, a stack of filters, extra batteries, two compact flashes, and some color balancing gear.

The x100 series cameras have an optical viewfinder which many people prefer, and a little lever that you can flip that slides a prism in place and switches optical for LCD.
Because of the inherent permanent “live view” mode, manual focus with these mirrorless cameras is an entirely different game: they provide either a digital split screen or focus peaking (where things in focus have edges highlighted with white or red pixels). It’s something that once you use it you wonder how you ever did without it.

The XT1 body doesn’t have an optical viewfinder, but they have one of the best electronic viewfinders in the business, with virtually no lag. They put all of the important controls on the outside of the camera with traditional knobs: there is even an ISO knob. That’s what sold me on the body. I liked the old-school manual controls.

The x100 series cameras have a leaf shutter that can handle flash sync up to 1/4000s, meaning you can pretty much shut off the noonday sun with it. The shutter is so quiet that you normally won’t hear it above any background noise; the camera comes with a faux shutter sound enabled, but many users turn that off for perfect stealth.

Fujifilm just released updated firmware in December for the XT1 body that added an electronic shutter (cool!) feature that can be toggled. This means that as long as your subject isn’t moving too quickly you can take silent photos, like an iPhone does. If you have fast horizontal movement you will may see sharp in-focus distortion, because the pixels are read line by line. If that happens, just turn on the mechanical shutter.

There are times when I pine for a full frame sensor, imagining the awesome bokeh I would be able to achieve, then I put that famed 56mm (85 eq) portrait lens on and take some beautiful photos and I stop thinking about DSLRs.

The reason why I mentioned that they perform poorly for sports photography is because that kind of work requires crisp instant autofocus. Many mirrorless cameras focus by hunting until max contrast is obtained: this obtains perfect focus, but usually takes a second. DSLRs use phase detection hardware that acts like the split prism of old and gives an instant reading of “how far out of focus” the camera is, so it can focus instantly. They have the edge when focusing on a subject that is approaching or receding (like a football player running toward you).

Some mirrorless cameras support your 35mm camera lens selection: Fuji makes adapters that work quite well for everything from Canon to Leica. You lose electronic features, but the camera works perfectly well in manual mode.

Sony has full frame mirrorless.

Sony A7 family

If these are your criteria, then I’d add another vote for either Fuji or Sony mirrorless. Since you’re not going to specifically seek out situations to photograph, it sounds like you’d benefit from having something small that you can carry with you easily at all times. I hear great things about them, but haven’t had the chance to try them out myself. I have a Pentax K-3 and love it, but if one of your main interests is video, you’d be better served by a different brand.

Micro 4/3 owner here. I’ve been in the Micro-4/3 world for a year now (before that I went through prosumer compacts with manual controls) and I love it. I love being able to use different lenses (getting my first prime was amazing). I love that the form factor is small and light compared to my husband’s huge Nikon DSLR. I understand the video is quite good too, but I haven’t used it very much and don’t know much about it.

So yeah, I agree with the advice to check out mirrorless. Check out the Panasonic/Olympus micro-4/3 world as well as Fuji and Sony.

I finally went for the Nikon D3300 with a Nikkor 18-55 mm lens. Some of the other suggestions were just too expensive. The D3300 was one-half to one-third the cost of the other Nikons I looked at.

We did shoot the film on super-16 (and Ultra 16). I don’t have time to make my own films, though I have a couple shorts I might be able to pull off if I could get some collaborators. Actually, one I can do solo using my Beaulieu 4008 ZM II super-8. But it would cost around $2,000 so I’ll have to do it another year. Anyway, as I said, I don’t need ‘pro video’ in a DSLR. The D3300 seems to have what I need.

I expect the memory card to arrive today, and I’m waiting to play with the new camera until it does.

You’ll like it. An Adobe CC account will do a person good with that. $9.99 a month for the photography package.

Don’t use AF in video mode. Slow and the noise from the kit lens transfers quite loudly.

Enjoy!

By “noise” I mean audio.

Better get used to it.
DLSRs are not made for manual focus - all the screens are ground glass with no split-image or microprisim focusing aids. Once you understand how the autofocus works, you will find it better and easier than manual focusing.
I use manual focus occasionally, but only for static images, and always using “live view” for perfect focus.

I believe we are exiting a trough in the usability of manual focus on digital cameras.

In the 90’s we watched as the split image focus screens went the way of the dodo, and looked on in dismay as lens manufacturers added manual focus rings as an afterthought, with a terrible sloppy feel.

Today, many cameras support multiple kinds of manual focus–the most basic is the ability to zoom in with one touch (or automatically when you twist the focus ring).
Better still is Focus Peaking, where the camera shows a live view of the scene with all sharp edges highlighted in red or white. It sounds weird, but is very good in actual practice. Here’s a guy demonstrating focus peaking on a Sony NEX-7.

Yet one more manual focus aid that some cameras provide is a digital split screen. Split screen focus aids require prisms that take in light from one side of the lens and not the other, and the same is true for digital split screen: in order to support this, there still must be optical elements that are aimed to one side or another, such as a field of special pixels. Fuji does this in their higher end cameras, though I don’t find myself using this as often. I feel that focus peaking is better than optical split screen.

When I do portraiture, all I use is manual focus–I can’t trust autofocus when I’m dealing with such a narrow depth of field that only eye is ever in sharp focus. I do not find my cameras lacking in any way for manual.

I managed to get a few cat pics. I don’t know if I can put them on the computer without using the CD that came with the camera, as my CD drive isn’t working.

I’m confused about focusing. It looks like it’s focusing automatically (and I won’t really be able to tell until I get the pics uploaded), but the focusing indicator ‘flashes red’ instead of green indicating that it’s not focusing.

If you shot in jpeg, your computer will likely see them either from the cord or from a card reader. If shot in raw (NEF), you’ll need a program to view them or do any adjustments. A current version of PS, LR, ACDSee, Nikon’s programs, etc…

.

I just put it in Auto mode to start out. No idea what the format is set to. I’ll take the disc to the office on Monday and copy it onto a flash drive. (I hope my flash drive is big enough.)

I’ll say this: I like looking through a viewfinder better than I do looking at a screen on the back of the camera!

Oh, something I forgot to mention earlier: The camera is lighter than I expected. It feels much lighter than my SLRs.

I’ve been using a d3300 for about a year and couldn’t be happier. It’s a great mid range camera with amazing clarity and high fps rate for sports. Definitely 500x better than the coolpix we were using before.

Eta: to find the format, press ‘i’ and look for quality. It’s almost certainly set to norm which means jpeg.

Do you mean the focus points in the viewfinder?
In all the Nikon DSLRs I’ve used, they always flash red to indicate which one has focus.
I don’t think they ever flash another color (but, I’ve never used the D3300).

OK, I was looking at taking photos using the monitor, which says the focus point will be green.

Although back on page 17, focusing through the viewfinder, it does give the helpful advice to not put your finger or fingernail in your eye.

Yes, it’s always important to practice safe photography!

(I saw that warning in my manual, also).
If I can be so bold: Don’t use live view.
Required for movies, it’s worse than useless for general shooting, and defeats the purpose of a DSLR. There are some exceptions (Astrophotography, studio work), but in general, you should shoot with the viewfinder.

Well, if you’re going to compost your shot, I’d suggest something with a leaf shutter.