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Anonymous
I consider buying my first DSLR.

I'd like something about 10 MP.

Any Ideas?
>> Anonymous
MP means almost nothing, Ignore that fact when looking at camera's.

Lenses are everything
Price is in the lens not the camera
>> Anonymous
So then, any suggestions?
>> Anonymous
>>57743

i dont know where this myth has come from but its absolute garbage.

mp is a very important factor in choosing your camera. you cant just rule something out that quickly.

>>57740

nikon d40x or canon 400d. either is fantastic.
>> Anonymous
>>57754
I can vouch for the 400D. Great camera.
>> Anonymous
>>57743
>>57754
Depending on how large you want to make your prints, megapixels do matter. If you're only going to be making 4x6 prints at maximum, then going for a camera with 10 MP is overkill. It's not that MP count is useless, it just might not be practical for someone's situation.
>> Anonymous
d40 or 400d?
>> Anonymous
Since you're still stuck in the megapixel count phase, I'd actually recommend a compact superzoom camera. Like the panasonic FZ series or canon s3 is. The D40x and the eos 400d are nice and all, but you need to understand what you're compromising for when you're choosing between those SLR's, and slightly more advanced ones, like the nikon d200 and the eos30d/20d. Or even the canon 5d, but that's a different league D:
>> Anonymous
>>57761
oh, and responding to>>57743, yes, lenses mean a LOT. But since you're making that huge capital investment on a piece of glass, you might as well understand how a SLR body works, and go for a body that might give you the edge an entry level SLR can't offer you. Like extra flash modes support, spot metering, iso performance, yadda, yadda.

Of course, a body is replaceable, but you might as well throw in the extra $300 and get a body which will let you even do pro work and give you calm of mind when shooting at extreme situations. An SLR is quite an investment in itself.
>> Anonymous
i can vouch for the d40 and the d40x. i have a d40x and its fucking fantastic.

>>57761

>>Since you're still stuck in the megapixel count phase

is that some dig at ppl in the thread? the mp make a massive difference if you want to crop your pictures.
>> Anonymous
>>57780
I think they're implying that if all you're really worried about is the MP count and not the various features available on DSLR cameras, then sticking to point and shoot with high MP would be just as good.
>> ac !!VPzQAxYPAMA
>>57780
http://pogue.blogs.nytimes.com/2006/11/21/21pogues-posts-2/

TLDR summary: It's nigh-impossible to tell the difference between a 6MP or 8MP image from a D40 or Rebel XT and the 10MP image coming out of a D40x or Rebel XTi. Maybe if you print larger than 16x20 and carry a loupe.
>> Anonymous
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D80 is good, but it is about the lenses, if you are looking for something point and shoot but with some DSLR style control(apature, shutter control) flash hot shoe you could look at the Nikon P5000.
>> Anonymous
>>57780
if you really care about cropping, get a large format camera :P
>> Anonymous
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>>57805
Imagining an SB-800 sitting on top of that tiny camera makes me laugh.
>> Anonymous
>>57810

yeah cus no one ever crops. fucking moron.
>> ac !!VPzQAxYPAMA
>>57834
You know, you can save yourself a lot of cropping time by framing the shot correctly to begin with.
>> Anonymous
>>57838

again cus no one crops, ever.
>> Anonymous
>>57838

Photography is an artificial construct to begin with fuck dummy. Cropping doesn't make someone a worse photographer or detract from the merit of a photo.
>> Anonymous
>>57834
You're the moron. cropping is a commodity. not a need.

>>57855
If a photographer doesn't need to post process, he IS better than the photographer who needs to post process. Don't fool yourself. However, MERIT and ABILITY are two different things, two equal things are worth the same, of course, but the one who takes less time to accomplish the same thing as the other is, indeed, a better technician than the other.
>> Anonymous
>>57865

what do you consider post processing?
>> Anonymous
>>Maybe if you print larger than 16x20 and carry a loupe.

Do none of you guys ever print large? 20 x 16 isn't that big. If you ever intend to sell prints its not strange to print to larger sizes.
>> Anonymous
>>57875
I'll stick with cropping and exposure compensation.
>> Anonymous
>>57881

so what you think cropping somehow devalues a photographers work or the photographers skill?
>> Anonymous
>>57884
having to compensate for exposure in pp definitely shows a lack of skill and the same thing goes for cropping

Having to compensate for exposure means you wasted some of the limited dynamic range you have to work with which lowers the quality of your picture and by cropping a picture you're throwing away valuable pictures which again reduces the quality of the shot

I'm sure if you asked a real pro (ie. someone that makes their living solely on their photography) they would tell you the same

thats not to say i don't compensate for exposure or occasionally heavily crop an image ^_^; but i don't make big prints or sell my pics either so it doesn't really matter
>> Anonymous
>>57891
>I'm sure if you asked a real pro (ie. someone that makes their living solely on their photography) they would tell you the same
http://www.luminous-landscape.com/essays/und-crop.shtml

Pwned.

Of course getting everything perfect in the field is the ideal, but that isn't always possible. Street shooting with a prime when "the decisive moment" happens across the street in the shade of a tree? Crop that, use shadows and highlights and the dodge tool, and there will be a much better photograph out of it.

Shot a photograph in 3:2 that really would look better in 1:1? Crop it. (I do this all the time. Shooting horizontal or vertical often includes irrelevent and distracting stuff, so I crop it to 1:1, or more often, something almost 1:1 but slightly rectangular.) Go for 42394/23421:49592358/42525262 aspect ratio, if that's what works. A camera and Photoshop are creative tools, not surgical scalpels.

Speaking of dodging, Ansel Adams would spend hours over each photograph he shot, dodging, burning, and so on, basically doing the film version of Photoshopping his work.
>> ac !!VPzQAxYPAMA
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>>57880
I've made one 16x20 print. It looked really good (although I was just starting out, so the subject was kinda boring. Pic related).

It was taken with my five megapixel camera.

Most of the photos I've seen for sale max out at 11x14 or so. Maybe matted to 16x20, but not even 16x20 themselves.

As for the cropping argument, yeah, there are certainly times when it makes sense to crop. I crop a lot when printing because I'm too cheap to have my stuff professional printed and so need to chop it down to fit an 8.5x11 or 5x7 aspect ratio. And I certainly won't argue that it's a bad thing to crop for a more dynamic composition if you just happened to be carrying a camera with the wrong aspect ratio when a good shot appeared. But most people who bring up the cropping topic in favor of the 'NEED MOAR MEGAPIXULS!!!11!1one!' argument are doing a *lot* of cropping. As in, not bothering to frame their shots much at all before hitting the button.

I just think that if you routinely have to crop so much that you're turning your 6 megapixel image into a 3 megapixel image, you ought to work on your compositional technique before buying a higher-resolution camera.
>> Anonymous
>>57915
I like this pic...

I wish I could figure out how to do something like that with my digital camera (Nikon Coolpix 5.1 Megapixel )
>> ac !!VPzQAxYPAMA
>>57951
1. Find a large body of water on which there are boats.
2. Wait for boat to enter frame with sun and reflection of sun in the aforementioned large body of water
3. Press button
4. Receive bacon... wait, no, that's something else.

I may have set an EV compensation on that one to make it a bit darker, or I might have just relied on the fact that there was a massive flaming ball of nuclear hydrogen in the picture to get my camera to reduce its exposure time. I think the latter.

Since that resized version doesn't have exif attached, here it is:
File date : 2005:07:20 08:01:28
Camera make : Canon
Camera model : Canon PowerShot A95
Date/Time : 2005:07:19 20:13:51
Resolution : 2592 x 1944
Orientation : rotate 90
Flash used : No
Focal length : 13.6mm (35mm equivalent: 68mm)
CCD width : 7.19mm
Exposure time: 0.0063 s (1/160)
Aperture : f/8.0
ISO equiv. : 50
Whitebalance : Manual
Light Source : Daylight
Metering Mode: matrix
>> Anonymous
>>57915
>I'm too cheap to have my stuff professional printed and so need to chop it down to fit an 8.5x11 or 5x7 aspect ratio

1. Print the full frame (if one wishes the full frame printed, of course) on a 8.5x11 or 5x7 with whatever border is needed to make it fit.
2. Use a papercutter to neatly remove the borders.
3. ???
4. Profit, i.e. a print slightly smaller than those sizes that has no border and is uncropped.
>> ac !!VPzQAxYPAMA
>>57966
Yeah, I'm too lazy to do that most of the time, too. That's what I do when I make a print from a picture that comes out of my TLR (which takes pictures on a 6x6cm chunk of film).