DSLR advice needed

[YorkieBen]

Originally Posted by kalniel

Have you tried just using a more vivid picture style? If there's no preset then just bump up saturation and contrast and I bet you can get a similar 'pop' to holiday shots but without the light loss. It's not like film days where it was hard work to adjust the colours of a shot! (Kodachrome.. here's looking at you!)

Polorisers are still very useful when trying to cut out reflections of course, but anything colour-wise is so easily done in post-process/camera adjustments with digital.

I disagree, I think that to replicate the benefits of a polariser is very hard if not impossible to do post processing without the results looking fake.

A circular polariser is probably the only filter that everyone should have

[GSte]

Thanks for all the input chaps, it's been great.

Think I'm going for a 500D with stock 18-55mm lens (can get it for £480) and then going to buy an additional zoom..... anyone know of sites with good lens reviews other than dpreview, and is it worth buying second hand lenses? Is there anywhere particular to get them from if so?

[BUFF]

Originally Posted by GSte

anyone know of sites with good lens reviews other than dpreview

http://www.photozone.de/

[GSte]

Originally Posted by BUFF

http://www.photozone.de/

Looking on that site the barrel distortion at 18mm looks dreadful, and might cause me some real problems as I want to photograph landscapes..... thinking I may as well just buy the camera body only and then a decent 18-55 lens instead of the stock one?

edit- they all seem to suffer from that, and it actually looks fine at 24mm which will probably be okay.

[BUFF]

a kit zoom lens is still a kit lens made to a price even though they have improved markedly over the years.

Spending more will see improvements so it depends upon how much you are paying for the kit lens (sometimes the kit is no dearer than body only) & if you have the budget for something better.

[TheAnimus]

Originally Posted by YorkieBen

I disagree, I think that to replicate the benefits of a polariser is very hard if not impossible to do post processing without the results looking fake.

A circular polariser is probably the only filter that everyone should have

Indeed, a good quality CPL is well worth having, you can't begin to simulate it in post processing, most sensors lack the dynamic range required to be able to.

The cheap ones on ebay are really useless in my experiance, I borrowed a loverly B+W multicoated superthin for my wide angle, those cost £115~........

It is very worth having a decent quality skylight/UV filter just to protect the lense. Often if your doing night shots, and the filter isn't top quality, you will want to take it off, as you get star effects (enless you are wanting the star effects of course!)

[GSte]

Originally Posted by BUFF

Spending more will see improvements so it depends upon how much you are paying for the kit lens (sometimes the kit is no dearer than body only) & if you have the budget for something better.

From all the reviews I've read though it seems that all zoom lenses under £400 suffer from achromatic abberation, lack of sharpness and focussing issues at their long end..... so am I just best buying the cheapest I can? I don't mind paying for a decent quality one, but if a £140 one is going to be virtually as good as a £350 one....

At what sort of price point do you start seeing increasing quality?

Or if I've got it wrong and there are some decent zooms under £400, which should I be looking at? Maybe I've missed a good review somewhere.....

[YorkieBen]

ALL zooms with a wide angle (16-18mm on APS, 24mm on full frame) have barrel distortion - even professional grade lenses, its the nature of the beast. Unless you are doing extreme architectural photography you are unlikely to notice. And you can easily correct alot of barrel distortion in photoshop etc as long as the distortion follows a regular pattern (some lenses have a 'mustache' shaped distortion). if you want distortion free lenses then you are looking at prime lenses, although even wide angle primes will have distortion. If you want no distortion at all then you are looking at normal to moderate telephoto lenses.

As much as a slating 'kit' lenses get, they aren't that bad - its all relative, although the higher the megapixel resolution of the camera the better lenses required - a high MP camera will show the flaws of a cheap lens more.

You are unlikely to notice 3% barrel distortion on landscapes imo. the problem for landscapes with most kit zooms including the canon 18-55mm is that the front element rotates during focusing which makes using a circular polariser harder (but not impossible).

If you want to buy an improvement over the kit zoom you could do alot worse than look at either the sigma 17-70mm or the tamron 17-50mm. That said I think you should play with the kit zoom first, the degree of difference between the kit zoom and 'better' standard zooms are actually quite small.

[GSte]

Sorry, I meant the super zooms such as 55-250mm, 70-300mm, etc.

Think I'm happy that the wide angles should be okay for what I need.

[kalniel]

Originally Posted by GSte

From all the reviews I've read though it seems that all zoom lenses under £400 suffer from achromatic abberation, lack of sharpness and focussing issues at their long end..... so am I just best buying the cheapest I can? I don't mind paying for a decent quality one, but if a £140 one is going to be virtually as good as a £350 one....

At what sort of price point do you start seeing increasing quality?

Or if I've got it wrong and there are some decent zooms under £400, which should I be looking at? Maybe I've missed a good review somewhere.....

Zoom lenses are inherently compromised - but the point is that any photo that you managed to capture because you had the lens flexibility is better than no photo at all.

As for prices.. it depends on the system, but I'd say that for the same type of lens then the next step up in quality does usually occur around the 300-400 pound mark.. or you buy a different type of lens like a prime for less.

However, don't forget that these test sites are serving a particular purpose - splitting the hairs and sorting out the very fine differences. To the mere mortal on a low end body you simply aren't going to notice many of these imperfections at the resolutions you use.

To that end, the kit IS lenses for the canon are certainly good enough that you won't notice quality problems for the majority of your shots. What other lenses (like the 17-50) get you is more the ability to shoot at wider apertures. Yes, it also happens to be a higher quality lens, but I bet you wouldn't notice the difference in a printed picture or one reduced for viewing on a monitor.

So, I'd basically go for the 55-250IS - you can get this secondhand quite cheaply because it did come as part of a kit for some canons.

[GSte]

Thanks. I was beginning to suspect that the cheap lenses couldn't be that bad.... even the reviews that show their "flaws" have to show extreme closeups of photographs to highlight them.

That puts my mind at rest though, cheers.

[TheAnimus]

actually this is really rather true.

So many of the lenses are designed and even fabbed by the same people, for the different companies.

You can buy any consumer DSLR and you probably won't be disappointed.

The problem becomes as you start to be more transfixed on the technical part, rather than the composition, this is something i suffer from, I have a very boring, un-interesting picture, but its free of any kind of achromatic aberration!

[GSte]

Okay, last two questions I think.....

Firstly, from what I've read the 500D having a 15mp sensor could be detrimental to me..... apparently it shows up the flaws of cheap lenses? So would the 450D actually be better unless I'm spending thousands on glass?

Also, I can't get my head round the Nikon offerings.... every review I read says that not having an AF motor in the body is a bad thing, but I don't really understand what that means!? Though they all seem to have fantastic image quality, which puts them above the Canons in my mind.....

Can anyone shed any light on the above please?

[kalniel]

Sure.

The 15MP 'problem' only occurs when you're looking at prints massively blown up or zoomed in 100% on a computer screen. Each pixel you are seeing on the screen represents a smaller area with the 500D, and as such you're more likely to see any tiny flaws or softness etc. because you're basically looking more closely. This has 0 effect when you're looking at a normal resolution (resized for viewing on a monitor) or when printed at normal sizes.

So basically to take advantage of the extra MP of the 500D you need to both blow up your pictures massively, and also use sharp glass. However, at worse it's equal to the 450D with the same glass, no more so.

Not having AF in the body isn't a big thing anymore. It's a problem if you want to use legacy Nikon lenses, but all modern lenses from Nikon and just about everyone else include an AF motor so it's a non-issue.

They do have fantastic image quality. But so do Canon, or Sony, or Olympus, or Pentax, or Panasonic. You wouldn't be able to tell the difference in real use. They all feel very different in the hand though.

[GSte]

Cheers. Think that makes my mind up.

[BUFF]

diffraction limiting will also occur slightly earlier on a 15Mp sensor than on a 12Mp one of the same size.

not having the ability to drive older AF lense from the body means that you can't fully utilise the millions of s/h older & cheaper screw driven lenses.

& as kalniel says the IQ of any modern DSLR is comparable with any of it's equivalent peers from any other manufacturer - we are definitely seeing performance plateau as the law of diminishing returns is kicking in with a vengeance atm.