Great P&S or cheap SLR?

[simonbaush]

I am currently shopping a new camera and I do hesitate between some top-of-the-line point&shoot cameras from Nikkon and such compared to starter level SLR cameras like Digital Rebel, they both are around the 1000$ bar I cant go over. Any recommendations?

[JCW3]

Its all going to depend on what your doing with it and what your plans are in the future...

I see you said you limit was a $1000. Well thats fine, but you must also consider a few more things to though into the pot. The biggest and most important is your memory. The included memory will be full in a few minutes, so start looking at the cost of bigger memory cards. You will see that can add a hundred dollars or more quickly. Also dont forget batteries, whether is rechargeable AA or factory batteries. And if you got the batteries you will need a good charger or two. This is a large investment, have you thought about a extended warrenty, it could actually save you alot in the long run (this is from personal experiance). Wow I even forgot about the case, nothing makes photography more convent than a good case to put it in.

Wow thats just a quick little list with the Proconsumer camera your talking about. If your talking about the D300 then you have to also consider lenses ($$$). I mean the one on it will work, but the useable zoom range is much smaller than the Proconsumer you looking at. Again a nice case just became really important here, and the warrenty is still a nice extra...

Over all I may recommend listing some of you needs in a camera and the type of photography you will be using it for. Post it up and we will see if we can help find a system that will fit YOU! Nows the time to think about all of this, not two months from now

[simonbaush]

I do mostly glamour model photography targeted for the web, I already have a basic consumer camera (Canon A70) with memory (256mb), 8 AA nimh batteries and charger. So I guess I would need another 256 memory card and I'd be ready to go.

What im looking for is picture quality and accurate skin tones. I dont plan to buy any lense or anything. I do most effects and transformation in post. Does Single Lens Reflex really improve picture quality? Thanx for the input by the way!

[JCW3]

Well since you have a far amount of useable stuff, it would be nice to lean toward a camera that would used similar products.

As for your queation does SLR lens improve quality, well yes but no. I mean if your willing to add decent glass infront of that camera, then you will find the results are much better. But you must also consider what some of these High End proconsumer cameras have as well. A lot of companies have been putting ED glass in there lenses for a while now, so you proconsumer end cameras are greatly improved...

The big advantage with the DSLR is that the sensers are usually much cleaner and made of higher standards. You will find the differance here fairly amazing...

As for your type of photography, I would think a BIG feature to look at would be DOF section, lighting (external flashs), hands free useablity, and manual controls of lighting and stuff... Over all alot of this can be done with a cheap proconsumer VERY effectivly if your finished results are only web. If your doing mags. or blowing up, then thats a differant story...

I will admit the jump for a A70 to a Proconsumer/DSLR are maybe a BIG shock at first. The controls may be over welming. The thing with the A70, its a good point and shutter with LIMITED manual controls. On the other hand the Proconsumer/DSLR camera will put out excellent results, but P&S is not the way to get them. For maximum results you will be doing much more manually....

Over all these are fairly entry level questions for the jump your talking about. I may recommend doing a little research on theses cameras and see if there fitting your needs or if its more than what you need. Start compairing reviews of fellow poster and sites. BUT the biggest thing is do your own home work. Use both of these cameras, compair them out and see if its really what you need. Get some images (FULL SIZE) and print them or process them as you do with your A70 images and see how you like them...

As far as improvement, you will see a big differance. I mean the A70 is a nice little camera, but the quality of the output will be a BIG supprise to you. But for web posting, you may not need that, but it depends on your future work...

I just went through what you are going through. I had a Nikon 885 3.2 MP point and shoot. I loved it. Took wonderful pic's. See red and white flowers and moon in my galery. (JZaun). Now I had set a limit of the D Rebel price. Just at $1000. But after weeks of reading canon and nikon group's forums I found that $1K for me was not realistic. I wanted a great camera not just a better one than I had. I wanted on that I could live with for some years. Now I could have started with a lesser amount but I decided to get what I wanted and pay for it over several months with a cr card.. Canon 10D with a 24mm- 85mm USM lens and a 512 mb mem. After 2 weeks of learning the camera I know I made the right choice. I can now use a compliment of lens, canon and others. Long lens, short lens, macro lens, tele photo lens, you name it. I have the quality to do what ever I want. I would not have had that with a lesser camera. Now having said that don't put yourself in a financial bind over a camera but get all you can afford and you will not be sorry. I have only posted 1 phote with the 10D. Look at the cat!!

JZaun

[jerrymeola]

I will not make a recommendation but want to include some points not mentioned in other replies.

P&S still list for around $1000 for top end but for example the Nikon 5700 can be purchases (US) model for around $650 a sizeable difference up to the $1000 Rebel which I have not seen discounted yet.

You want web work and not prints as your primary concern. So the size has to be reduced greatly from any of these cameras. You can not post 4mb JPEGs. The DSLRs will produce better prints but may not give you anything extra on the Web.

Quality of the lenses may help but remember canon reduced the price of the Rebel by lowering the quality of the lense included in the package. This lense is manufactured for this package only and not necessarily up to the quality of other lenses in the Canon line. Personally I would not use a zoom lense for your work. Fixed focal length lenses are still better quality in most cases.

I do not think the camera of itself will give you the better skin tones you desire. When shooting film you have dozens of types of film that will have suttle differences on skin tones whereas digital can be harsh on skin. And unfortuanately no one is doing test reports on the software effects of diffrenct cameras on itmes like skin tones.
The dynamic range of color in film negatives is about 8.5; in slides about 7 but digital has a range of only about 5.5. There may be a little better range in the DSLRs but they do not currently approach film quality in this regard.
Lighting may help more than the camera and here the manual controls of a DSLR may be easier to use. Post photography editing will probably produce the greatest results. Read Katrin Eisman's book Photoshop Retouching and Restoration for examples of commercial work with models and skin tones.

A big problem with the web is your pictures will be reinterpreted for each viewers monitor. What looks great on your screen will probably display differently on the final viewers screen. Few Web suffers bother to calibrate their monitor.

I do not like to consider equipment as the solution to a photographic problem unless I can convince myself that there is not other good solution. (example a longer telephoto lenses is definitely better for distant nature shots). You seem to have a goal in mind and no real evidence to show the equipment will solve the problem. Borrow or rent the equipmetn first and see if there is any difference at all in your work.

I does not seem important in your case but the Rebel is a plastic body camera and only time will tell now it holds up.

I also agree with all the other comments so far in this thread.

[simonbaush]

I would definetly like to have a higher standard, cleaner CCD but I wont be using specific lenses. Lighting features can be disregarded because I already own a 24x24 1k softbox, brella/flood kit and reflectors. I try to avoid using camera flash. Shooting using all manual controls except AiF autofocus center weighted metering then reframing.

I am still unexperienced and agree that I do need to find out if I actually need an SLR before buying it. My plans for the next few years are leaning towards the web. All I would really like is to have richer colors, less digital artifacs, sharper images, accurate skin tones (A70 do not acheive this very well, blending green and orange trying to match the color).

Another very entry level question here:

Assume the exact same subject was taken with two identical cameras, except one has 3.2mpixel and the other one has a 6mpixel CCD. Are they gonna look any different when resized to 800x600 resolution?

[jerrymeola]

from simon
Assume the exact same subject was taken with two identical cameras, except one has 3.2mpixel and the other one has a 6mpixel CCD. Are they gonna look any different when resized to 800x600 resolution?
*****************

I scanned film for years before shooting in digital so I had very large size images and had to downsize when posting on the web.

The experience may not apply directly to larger CCD images but I often got inconsistent results from the downsizing (this is after all editing and only considering the downsizing).

In general I liked the results better when I shot with digital cameras of lower size. CP4500 4mp.

I still get too many images I do not like downsized but you can not squeeze everything into a small file.

So to answer your question it is my gut feeling that you will not get a better image out of the 6mp when resized if you are using your eyesight to define better.

[simonbaush]

That's interesting Jerry, I never experienced or noticed inconsistencies when resizing but it worth take a look into that.

Is there a rating or specifications I should look at for a cleaner CCD of higher quality? I've heard the larger the better (like 2/3' over 1/1.18').

[jerrymeola]

I can not find the interneet article about resolution and CCD size, so I will try to summarize the article. The article gave good scientific reasons for the results.

The quality of the resolution of the pixels improves as the CCD gets larger. This is a result of optics. Light waves interfer with themselves as they expand. A CCD is like a silicone wafer that is etched in lines across its face. As they are squeezed together the resolution suffers for the same numebr of pixels. As a result a larger surface enables better resolution.

This is overly simplified, but you get the point.