Yes. Note, though, that the cameras being recommended all have approximately a 1.6 “crop” factor due to the size of their sensors. So even a 17mm wide is only going to be about a 27mm equivalent. Which is probably plenty wide for the desired kind of photography. But the “crop” cameras don’t really do the wide angle thing very well (they’re great for telephoto work), so if this was going to be the primary use for the camera, I’d suggest maybe trying to score a used full-frame digital. A full-frame digital would also have better low-light capabilities.
That’s kinda true, kinda not. The crop cameras all have equivalents of the 18-35mm full-frame focal range, which is generally as wide as you really want to go, unless you really like fish-eye imagery. (And some people do, of course. Even then, I know Nikon, at least, has a crop-sensor fisheye, and I’d guess Canon does, too.)
Canon doesn’t seem to have a crop-sensor fisheye lens, but it does have the EF-S 10-22mm lens, which is equivalent to 16-35mm on a 35mm camera. I have one, and it is probably the lens that I use most, especially for taking pictures of buildings.
Hi Finagle. If someone was shooting theater professionally, then a full-frame DSLR would be very nice. Getting an extra two f-stops for lower noise or a faster shutter speed would be a definite advantage.
But for someone unknowledgeable buying their first DSLR, a used Rebel XT with a 17-50 2.8 zoom seems like the right way to go.
The package can be had for $700, which leaves enough bucks for a fine tripod and maybe another lens.
The Tamron lens is good/cheap/light enough to be useful for a walk around lens even if you ultimately want something with an ultrasonic motor.
As for wide angle view using C-sensor cameras, it’s not the problem it once was. Tokina sells an 11-16 f2.8 zoom. Nikon has a 10-24 f3.5. Those should satisfy 99% of wide angle needs, and I’m guessing the situation will continue to get better
It hasn’t been a problem in a long time. Nikon’s 12-24mm, for example, has been around since 2003.
Hi Pulykamell. Yeah, I knew there wasn’t a serious lack of wide angle lenses, but I only did 6 minutes of searching and added in some ambiguity (“the problem it once was”). Thanks for the specifics.
For the OP, my official recommendation is to go Adorama.com and get:
–A used Canon Rebel XT or XTi body ($239 and $299 respectively.)
–A new Tamron 17-55mm 2.8 lens ( $414 after rebate. )
–A tripod in the range of $200 bucks. Maybe a Manfrotto, 190 with a 3-way head, or the SunPak 523PX carbon fiber. I’m really not informed enough to give an exact recommendation.
Generally I prefer shopping at bhphotovideo.com to Adorama, but right now B&H doesn’t have a good selection of used DSLRs. They do have lots of reader ratings on their tripods (the tripod link is to B&H.)
I haven’t got time to comment on everything right now, but this is all very helpful. Thanks, and keep 'em coming!
First of all, a budget of $1,000 for serious photographic equipment is, and pardon me for being blunt, ridiculous in view of your objectives.
Here are some questions to consider in resolving this issue:
[ul]Is this a situation that is likely to be repeated again within the next 1-3 years?[/ul]
[ul]What reasonable level of cooperation could you get from the actors in terms of doing a “posed” shot?[/ul]
[ul]What size photographs do you require for your portfolio?[/ul]
If your answer to the first question is anything greater than 2-3 years, or the answer to the second question is limited cooperation, or you desire any picture greater than 8" by 12", then I would seriously recommend that you hire a professional to come in and take the photos that you need. They will have the equipment and knowledge to get the job done correctly.
If you can get reasonable cooperation then I would suggest setting setting up a time where you can pose the actors under “normal production” lighting and, using a tripod, take the pictures with your P&S and see how they turn out. It will likely require a long exposure time (>0.5 sec) requiring everyone to remain still and, ideally, should be done in aperature priority mode where you can set the aperature to give you the desired background effect (in focus or out-of-focus)
If you want an 8" by 12" final picture printed at 250 ppi then you will need an 18 mp final picture in RGB color mode, which you have already indicated that you will need to do at an ISO setting >200 on a ~$400 DSLR. This will require something short of a miracle. Higher ISO settings result in greater “graininess” which can be equated to loss of sharpness. Attempts at applying sharpness will just create further problems. In short, the answer here is to hire a professional.
I have a Nikon D2Xs camera that I would use with a Nikkor 17-35 mm lens (or perhaps a 10.5 mm rectilinear fisheye), assuming I could get reasonable access to the stage during a live performance, on a tripod and probably get an excellent picture for you but it would be expensive.:D:eek:
I can’t agree with the above. The first time I photographed live dance professionally, I used a Rebel with a 50mm 1.8 lens and “out-shot” a photographer using a D200 and a Nikon 2.8 zoom. Stage lighting is different than dance (darker, slower, bigger) but $1000 is more than enough for great results. …Unless the photographer is just sitting in a seat trying to snap pictures during a live performance, in which case it’s borderline.
As for printing, with my Canon Pixma Pro 9000, 180ppi is indistinguishable from 300ppi. Even 140ppi can still produce very good prints.
At 180ppi a 6 MP image can easily produce 11x 14" prints.
I’ve gotten great looking 8x10s (from professional photo printing companies) shooting the Rebel at ISO 800 – and any newer camera will have better ISO 800 noise than the original Rebel.
I think for the OP’s needs, sub-$1000 is absolutely possible. And I am speaking as a professional photographer. You still have to know what you’re doing, though.
And I’ve printed 6MP files up to 13"x19", and it looks fine. I also have a portrait of Studs Terkel a friend took on a 2.7 MP D1 that I blew up to 13"x19" and it looks great at normal viewing distance. Sure, if you get in an inch away from the print, you can see the up-sampling, but it looks surprisingly good.
Any of the current crop of cameras have more than enough resolution to get a clear print up to 13"x19" with minimal artifacting.
Many fine points being made. Hard to wade through all of it, I suspect. I would throw in one very important point to correct a comment made up thread.
The comments about needing a flash to overcome that sickly yellow or orange light on stage? Here’s a quick primer on light.
Tungsten Light: Color Temperature 3400* Kelvin- if a light is dimmed up to 100%.
Day Light: Color Temperature 5600* Kelvin- of the sun at high noon in North America.
Flashes are at daylight color temperature. Most but not all theatrical lighting is done with tungsten ( sometimes called incandescent ) lights. Par Cans, Leko lights and so on use Tungsten bulbs in them.
Here’s the thing. Digital SLR’s have a wonderful thing called White Balance setting. See, film we used to buy was for the most part Daylight balanced film. You shoot outside or with day light on someone, or with a flash, and the Daylight film is exposed with the right "color temperature ".
Stage and some film or television lighting uses Tungsten. An electronic sensor like those used in a DSLR or a video camera can be adjusted for the color temperature of the lighting being used. It is called the White Balance setting, because the color of the light is read off of a white surface as it is reflected. That gives the camera a baseline from which to render all other colors.
So. You are shooting on stage. You take your new DSLR ( no matter what brand ) and find in the book where you adjust White Balance. You get close enough to stage and have the lighting board op or LD light up a cue that has no gelled lights. That is to say, all pure “white” light. Then take a white card or piece of foam core and zoom in and tell the camera to set the white balance. Most of these cameras allow you to set and remember several choices at once.
Having done this, the people standing under un-gelled lights on stage will have perfectly normal flesh tones. It is very frequently the case that lights have some level of gel on them, even if it’s just a light straw color. ( The far end of this is deep pure colors like purple, red, orange, green, blue, etc. ).
Since you have told the camera’s sensor what “white” is, the people will look okay. If there is colored lighting, know that the people will look just as they do to your eye when standing on a stage that has a mix of pure white tungsten light and colored/gelled lights.
Make sense? Do not worry that any one brand or other brand will give you nothing but garishly orange or yellow shots. The camera body can be told what “white” light is on your stage.
A few added thoughts. If you work in the same theatre for a long time, even under the “white” lights of an uncolored stage, be aware that all lamps ( which is what bulbs are called in the biz ) slowly lose their color. Add to this the fact that it is VERY rare for a stage to be filled with white light from lamps that are dimmed up to 100% intensity.
When a light is dimmed down and it is an incandescent lamp, the darker the light looks, the more “orange” the color temperature goes. A lamp at 3400* Kelvin at 100% will be white to your camera if you have set it as such. As the lighting board operator slowly dims down the lights, the color shifts way into yellow then orange.
Interesting test to do. Get on stage. Make sure the lights are un-gelled. Take a white balance with your new camera. Then ask the LD or lighting board op to take the light cue down, 10% exactly at a time. Make sure that person understand you need UN gelled lights, that you are learning the color sensitivity of your new camera. They’ll understand. After all, they want the photographic record of their work to have extremely accurate colors.
I’m a Nikon man and always have been. My two cents. I would say that considering the huge investment, you should borrow a few cameras from people at work or friends. Get them to show you how to set the White Balance. Then shoot some stills in the theater.
Learning the fundamentals of using a Digital SLR will stand you in good stead, regardless of which brand you pick and how much you spend.
One last thought. You do not need to buy new. The newest DSLR cameras can come in scary resolutions such as 14 Megapixels. If you are shooting billboards, you will want that. If you are shooting images that won’t be blown up much bigger than 16x20, you will do quite well with a DSLR that is around 8 Megapixels, maybe 9. Don’t blow all the money on a new body that has a huge capacity to shoot these immense files. Remember the fundamental of photography ( film, video, motion picture ). The glass is everything. An average camera with a spectacular lens will give you better results than a very expensive new camera body with off-brand lenses.
Enjoy !!! Feel free to PM me if you have more questions. I’ve been shooting stills for 34 of my 48 years. 
Cartooniverse
I was actually going to comment on the fill flash and “sickly yellow” color myself, but was feeling a bit lazy. Usually, when you shoot theater, you don’t want flash. It kills the mood the whole point of stage lighting. However, I thought maybe postcards was talking fill flash (maybe setting the flash at two to two-and-a-half stops under) on the order of just a little extra light to narrow the dynamic range. I’ve never found need to do so myself. Theater light is contrasty, but usually that high contrast is pleasing. If your pictures are turning out too yellow, all you need to do (as you said) is adjust the white balance. Most cameras have a setting for tungsten lighting, and the better ones have the ability to set manual white balance. Heck, the auto settings on a lot of these cameras are pretty good, too. But, better still, if you shoot the files RAW rather than JPEG, you can twiddle to your heart’s content after the fact.
Personally, I would advise staying away from using flash for theater. The other problem is using (ungelled) flash is now you’re introducing yet another color temperature source. So you have daylight (flash) color temp mixing with tungsten color temp, wreaking havoc on the lighting design. I could see maybe using a full CTO (a color gel that matches daylight to tungsten) on a fill flash in order to flatten out the dynamic range in a theater lighting situation, but I personally have never seen the need to do so.
OK. Way too much tech talk. I’d tell the OP basically what you said. Shoot it ambient (no flash), and white balance properly. Or just shoot RAW and white balance in post.
Cartooniverse and pulykamell, thanks for the advice. I’m quite familiar with color temperature and the like (it’s important in lighting design, as you can imagine) but I didn’t know anything about white balance. Thanks!
This thread has been a huge help- I feel a lot more comfortable now. Thanks, Dopers!
Hi Cartooniverse. Fine post on color balance. I currently shoot Nikon and have warm feelings about the brand, however recommended Canon upstream.
Reasons:
1.Canon was using CMOS sensors before Nikon and eventually Nikon came around. My feeling is that some of the early Nikon DSLRs aren’t as good at high ISOs as the Canons. So it’s easier to find good/cheap used Canons.
-
The cheap Nikons (mostly the D40) have more lens compatibility issues than the cheap Canons. The Nikon 50mm 1.8 won’t autofocus on the D40.
-
The Canons are often smaller… which I like.
The base model Nikon D3000 has below average high ISO performance.
However, the Nikon D5000 and the new D3100 are both very good in the dark. They run $500-$600 for a body though, which doesn’t leave a lot for a lens or tripod.
I just checked out the D3100 on Imaging Resources Comparometer and it was impressive.
(And Mr. Appleciders, the Comparometer is a useful tool to compare high ISO performance. I normally check out the mannequin’s face and hair at 1600 or 3200. However even when the images from two cameras look very different at full size on your screen, the real life results might not vary much. Looking at something full size and seeing it at typical printing or viewing size are two different things.
I’m weird. I’m bi- and shoot both. Nikon is my heart, though.
Canon high ISO kicked Nikon’s ass through the D300s. That’s why I almost switched completely to Canon. (It was the Mark III AF issues that held me back, thankfully). It wasn’t until the D3 and everything after that (D700) that Nikon caught up and is on par (actually a little bit better) than Canon in high ISO.
Yes and no. The Canon lenses are more limited. You need the EOS mount lenses (late 80s and forward) for the Canons. The Nikon dSLRs use the AI F-mount lenses that date back to the late 70s. The pre-AI lenses won’t work (so far as I understant) but AI or AI-converted lenses are fine. Some will lose some functionality (like metering or autofocus on some.) Here’s a link to a compatibility chart. The screw-focus lenses won’t work in AF mode on the lower-market Nikon dSLRs. Overall, I think Nikon’s lenses have more compatibility than the Canon lenses.
Yes. It’s surprising how much better something in print looks than something on the screen. I always have to remind myself to sharpen much more aggressively than I think is necessary onscreen, as it looks fine in print. Also, we’ve really been spoiled as photographers. I’ve scanned a bunch of old color negs a few months ago and, I swear, the grain in 800 film looks like the equivalent of 6400-12800 digital noise. Absolutely incredible where we’re at.
Hi Puly. Yeah, shooting DSLRs at high ISOs is like free money. With film there was the cold prison of --grain
–motion blur
–depth of field
Something had to be sacrificed to get something else.
Now with digital you shoot at 1600 (or higher with FX) and it looks better than 400. You shoot at 1/60 instead of 1/15. If you want depth of field the DX format gives it to you. If you want shallow field you can still get it with the FX.
As for Canon vs Nikon lens compatibility, the Canon autofocus system is a newer mount, but there’s not much to remember beyond not getting a DX lens for an FX body. If you’re shooting a Nikon pro camera you’re in Fat City, but not so much if you’re using a budget DSLR. The compatibility charts are useful because it is complicated. Not every current autofocus Nikon FX lens works with every current Nikon DSLR. Feh!
I grew up with manual focus, and I’ve hand metered a lot of studio flash and a lot of view camera set ups, but really don’t want to muck with manual focus and exposure if there’s an easy alternative. I’ll use a wide angle manual focus when needed, but I’ll still be instinctively pushing the shutter halfway to focus.
I almost never manually focus these days, either. Maybe some macro lenses that seem to have trouble, but otherwise, very rare. (And I personally keep my AF separate from my shutter. AF is on the back-button, shutter on the front.)
This is why I love the Dope. I’m learning a TON in this thread!
I have a Nikon D70s .
This thread makes me wanna go shoot
So in researching the matter, I find that my mother has an old Canon T70 SLR in her attic which she hasn’t been using for the last fifteen years, with a couple of (then) nice lenses; one 35-70mm lens and one 80-200mm lens. Is there a way to tell if those would be compatible with a new(ish) Rebel? Also, how do I tell if the lens is in good shape? They’ve been in the soft camera bag the whole time, so I feel like they might still be perfectly fine. I saw the nice compatibility chart for the Nikon lenses; is there one for Canon lenses? Google didn’t help much, but then, maybe I’m missing something?