calarrick

<p>Has anyone pointed out that the 50/1.4 is available as AF-S now. Not cheap, but not $1000+ exotic, either. Would seem to meet the OPs portrait interest.<br>

Wide is a different issue - you'll have to have a zoom, but for an ultra-wide AF-S won't likely be available (e.g. the Tokina 11-16 or 12-25 lenses). One of the kit zooms that starts at 18mm (or 16) is likely your best bet, and frankly a good bet for 'starter wide-angle' (although if you like it you'll quickly want to go wider). They aren't *that* slow at the wide end. REALLY fast wide-angle lenses will be way more costly and way more heavy/bulky than most people will want, anyway.<br>

Also, Joe, you mention sitting farther to the right and aiming a little to the left to straighten the boxes and the kid into the same plane of focus. Yep, good thinking. I'd amend that, though, to *crouching* a little to the right of where you were... get that camera a little lower to about your son's eye level and see what happens.</p>

<p>Newborns are little. For most purposes, working distance with a long-ish lens (like all those cheap fast 50s) won't be a problem. <br>

That said, the suggestions for something like the Sigma 30 also seem very reasonable.</p>

Most of the baby pictures here ("Levi" collection) were taken with a D80 and the ($100) 50mm/1.8:

 

The SB-600 is also a great investment for these kinds of shots, and would be especially so if using the 18-55 zoom instead of the fast 50.

The lenses you are using (or could afford!) would come into this too!

 

A D200 well-exposed should not be grainy at 400, I don't think, although you could effectively lose some exposure latitude compared to 100 ISO since you sometimes need to "expose to the right" more to avoid noise but still have to avoid blowing highlights.

 

I might actually wait, if possible, to know how the D300 noise 'in the field' (as versus on lab tests) will compare with the 5D noise in situations like yours. Look at the photo sharing sites for examples from other photographers. Assuming you can't afford a D3, I would figure those are your plausible upgrade candidates. If you can't wait for a better sense of the D300, or have little investment in Nikon accessories, the 5D is the camera that seems to have a 'proven reputation' for shooting like you describe.

Canon and Nikon... also Pentax, Sony, Olympus.

 

There is a lot of information on these forums about the various entry-level models... you might want to browse each of the brand/system-specific forums a bit.

 

Depending on how big a "few hundred" is you might want to look at the lower-end Pentax models, which (i think) are currently the lowest end of the 'respectable' market -- the Nikon D40 is also fairly inexpensive, and comes with an optically decent, if somewhat flimsy, kit lens.

er... doh!

 

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I want to add a couple points specific to the "new parent" angle. We also got a DSLR six months or so before our first baby was born, with that as at the very least the excuse (and certainly part of the reason) for going ahead with it.

 

To augment and amplify some of the advice above:

 

1) Babies are small, and at least at first they don't move fast. This means that the working distance from the 50mm being a little "long" on a DSLR don't matter. GET A 50mm PRIME. It will likely be your main lens for the first several months of baby, for this and for the reason below...

 

2) You will want a fast maximum aperture. Babies are indoors a lot, and it isn't that light. Even with flash, if you are bouncing, you'll want the lens fairly wide open much of the time. Also, see point "1" about babies being small... often you'll need/want even less depth of field than you would for adult portraits. Back to that fast 50.

 

3) Since you won't be shooting 'fast action' until the kid is a little older (say 6 months and maybe crawling) you *could* even get prime lenses instead of a zoom. That way you get speed, which the inexpensive kit zooms don't offer, but get away pretty cheap (fast zooms are expensive). We started with a D80 with just the 50mmf1.8 and a used 24mm f2.8. Together they cost barely more than the kit 18-70 (the better among the Nikon kit zooms) and are substantially faster for low-light photography.

 

4) GET A FLASH. One of the key advantages of a DSLR over (most) point and shoots for kid photography is going to be your ability to bounce flash off of the wall or cieling. Modern DSLRs automate a lot with the flash, so while it is still useful to know fundamentals you don't need to manually calculate a lot, and getting good flash exposures is not technically hard. My wife took this picture of me in the hospital room with the new baby... without a dSLR with a bounce-able speedlight, this would not have been possible. Flash was needed to balance the indoor and outdoor light, and on-camera flash would have looked bad on us, and glared off the window:

 

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Yeah... once upon a time 35mm cameras were "miniature cameras" with a premium on compactness that survived beyond the heydey of the rangefinders. There has certainly been, um, growth... I'd trace it back in terms of Nikon to the F4s, at least. Up to the F3 the pro (F) models were bigger than the parallel line of models marketed as compact (Nikkormats, FE, etc.), but not big by today's standards (smaller than a D200, much less the D2/D3 series'). And of course Olympus models (especially, and others) were prized by some for how compact they were compared to the relatively rather big Nikon SLRs.

 

(I learned on, and still have, a Pentax ME Super, so I "grew up" thinking that the old mechanical Nikons were kind of huge)

 

Some picture I saw on someone's page recently had a Nikon F next to their brand new D300. The F (it was with the non-metered finder rather than the big Photomic one, but still) looked rather strikingly *small*

 

I have to imagine that part of the large size of even the "small sensor" DSLRs has to do with constraints of the digital technology - higher power requirements than even electronic film cameras, image-processing electronics of whatever sort, etc.

 

But part of this has to be that a lot of people want these cameras to pair up with big honking fast zoom lenses now, not with the fairly compact primes of the past.

 

Maybe the "small camera" shooter doesn't actually need all that much more functionality than a D40 or D40X, but could use a 'compact' model like that designed for someone who knows what they are doing (e.g. the finder from the D80, a focus motor for AF-but-non-AFS-lenses, no need for scene modes, two control dials if possible, etc). The actual changes required of the D40 platform might be fairly minimal. Although I guess the more caveats I keep thinking of the more this sounds a little bit like the "digital FM series" that people keep talking about.

 

But maybe 4/3rds is the solution for those who really want compactness... interesting brand history in Olympus leading that.

Oh... one more point/possible misconception.

 

You state: "If looking thought small hole (higher f.stop f22 had focused background) gives a clear picture and a (lower F.stop 3.5 blury background) not as clear."

 

It is a common misconception that very narrow apertures like f16 or f22 are sharper. They are not. In fact, the sharpness of the in-focus subject is generally going to be much lower than it would be at f5.6 or f8 (or likely even f2.8 or f4). The amount of 'depth' in front or behind the plane of focus in which subjects are approximately in focus will be wider, however. In other words, moderately wide apertures will have blurry foregrounds or backgrounds, but more well-focused subjects.

 

Lenses vary in terms of what f-stop is actually sharpest... but it is very commonly around f8.

To the OP... try not to be so hung up on the equipment specs per se (it is your cut and paste of the sentence-long full name of the 18-70 kit lens that gives me pause...)

 

The f2.8 "constant-aperture" zooms (like the 17-55 you mention) are quite expensive because they are optically excellent, fast (wide max. aperture), and built to stand up to the sort of knocks they'd take in a photojournalists bag. It is expensive to build fast lenses, especially zooms or very long or very short primes, if only because the size of the individual glass lenses that must be manufactured increases. You don't need them and, as an amateur, can't afford them unless you are both fairly affluent and willing to devote extensive resources to the hobby. The 12-24 you mention is not constant-aperture, but is relatively fast at fairly extreme (and hard/expensive to design for) focal-length ranges.

 

The 18-70 kit lens you have is reputedly a very good one. You don't say which exact "cheap 70-300" you have, but I suspect you have a decent lens there too, but a slow one (probably the f4-5.6 AF?). From what I've heard about the 18-200VR, and what I can surmise about the sacrifices to design such an extreme zoom range, that lens is likely optically much poorer than the 70-300 you already have (and no faster for the equivalent focal lengths). The "ED-IF AFS" version of the 70-300 you mention is, I think, just the newer version. It adds some features of value (including VR) but they are features for convenience, etc., not essentials. It is no faster - still a f4-f5.6 variable aperture zoom.

 

(In other words, I think you should keep and use the 70-300)

 

A comparatively affordable way to get into fast lenses, should you want to do that, might be to get a prime or two. The 50mmf1.8 is famously inexpensive. Depending on your tastes, also consider (and consider used) the 24mmf2.8, the 28mmf2.8, 35mmf2, or 85mmf1.8. These all let a lot more light in than any of the zooms.

 

The faster maximum apertures are desireable because, by letting in more light, you can keep the ISO lower while having shutter-speed flexibility. And, perhaps more importantly, the wider apertures allow more control over depth-of-field and selective focus. This latter is less important with your 70-300, because for most things you'll do at that focal length, f5.6 is wide enough to give you selective focus. So, if you are able to work from a tripod and are not shooting subjects that move quickly across your field of view, it is probably a fine way to cover that range.

 

Basically -- a decent tripod and head might actually be the best next investment to get better use out of the 70-300.

One additional peice of advice I feel qualified to give -- when you have the opportunity to "chimp" (look at the lcd and adjust exposure for another shot), do it.

 

Ideally, you will typically (there are exceptions to everything) want to "expose to the right" (on the histogram) as far as you can without pushing anything all the way over the edge -- i.e. as bright an exposure as you can get without blowing highlights. This is because digital blows highlights catastrophically (like slide film, but worse) but lower value areas (or underexposed scenes) are susceptible to 'noise'. If you can take a test exposure of the lighting of your scene before the "real action" happens, it is useful.

 

One very good piece of advice that (I think) Ken Rockwell does give is to pay attention to the histogram values for all three RGB values -- it can be pretty easy to badly blow out some highlight in just, say, red. This can have very bad color-shift effects if you try to bring it back, and is one thing you are trying to avoid if (with what I think is an overabundance of caution) you try to stick to the "always -.7 compensation" approach.

"- adjusting exposure to -0.7 - vivid colour and saturation settings - Auto ISO threshold at 1/15 - function button set to operate FV lock - AE-L/AF-L button set to AE-L "

 

Well.... those are good settings if you want chronically underexposed pictures as 'insurance' that you'll less-frequently have blown highlights (better to just learn how to meter each scene individually -- sometimes when in a hurry in high-contrast light that 'insurance policy' approach is right, but it is certainly not always the case). Also if you like "Velvia style" (over?)saturation (this will depend on what you take pictures of and how you like them to look. This setting also doesn't matter at all if you post-process from NEF). Oh, and setting the func button to FV lock (which I do) is only useful if you are using flash.

 

I do really suspect that, especially as a beginner, you don't (normally) want to hand-hold down to 1/15, so I'd really question that as an auto-ISO threshold for most applications.

 

I can't speak much to white balance, etc., as I have found it (partly for this reason) actually easier to work from RAW (using Capture NX, which lets you use all the in-camera settings as a starting point). As long as the in-camera jpeg that I use for reference and preview is 'close enough' I can generally have good luck non-destructively tweaking it after the fact.

Depending on the details of your "events in low light situations" (i.e. how far away would the action be, would you be bounding on high cielings, etc?) the SB600 might well be enough.

If this diagnosis is correct, though, shouldn't you be getting a similar problem with the F601? Film SLRs also meter with the aperture fully open and close it down for the exposure using the aperture coupling lever. Though I suppose there could be some difference in the mechanicals of the cameras such that the F601 had enough more lag for other reasons that there was still time for the aperture to close.

...and of course it depends on what you are trying to accomplish. I'd join most here in noting that (even with the hypothesized slow lens) aperture matters photographically more often (or at least over a more complete range of possible settings) than does shutter speed. Shutter speed need only be fast enough to freeze (or sometimes slow enough not to speed) any motion you are concerned with. Aperture always matters. With our slow-lens hypothetical (and assuming a moderate focal length), let's just say that the difference between f5.6 and f8 is likely to matter much more than the difference between 1/125 and 1/250. Now... if we are talking the difference between 1/40 and 1/80?... maybe then the shutter matters more, at least for people or other subjects that are likely to move.

It is possible (especially with a slow lens) that you set a shutter speed for which the lens simply cannot be opened wide enough to get an acceptable exposure, so the camera would have no choice but to underexpose.

 

With aperture priority, the camera could (at least in any reasonable situation) always set a long enough shutter speed to get the exposure for any given aperture. It might be really long, in which case your exposure will be blurry if you aren't using a tripod and/or your subject is moving... but you'll get an exposure.

I'm curious about this - what is the exercise where they want your histograms to come out a certain way? Is this designed to teach you something specific about exposure?

...oh, and regarding the Sigma lenses. On the site you linked to, if you click to read the description of each lens look at the section of the chart that reads "corresponding AF mounts." Sigma (and Tamron, Tokina, etc.) will tend to make variants of their lenses in both the Canon and Nikon mounts (and often also Pentax, Sony/Minolta, etc) as well as in their own proprietary Sigma mount. If you bought a Nikon, for example, you could use Sigma lenses but would have to buy the Nikon mount versions of those lenses.

 

I haven't looked at them all, but I'd be really surprised if there are any for which they don't make both a Canon and a Nikon mount version.

The XTi and D80 are both used very effectively by a lot of people out there. One thing that would have me in the D80 camp is that the XTi only has one control wheel, the D80 has two... ultimately, that's twice as much that you can control with simple, immediately at your fingers, controls (e.g. aperture and shutter at once). But everyone's 'feel' for these things is different.

 

One thing about the Nikon and Canon lines is they tend not to line camera bodies up directly against one another. So the D80 is a more 'premium' camera than the XTi, in terms of price and also build/ergonomics/features. But then it is another notch up (to the 30D/40D) for alternate Canon bodies. And then the Nikon D200/D300 are "up" again from being slotted directly against those. And so on.

 

(When I was shopping, I hated the XTi ergonomically, but did think seriously about the 20D, which was discounted because of the new 30D. Something similar may happen to the 30D on account of the 40D.)

...as for your "what kind of lens" question, all I'd say is get at least one 'fast' (wide maximum aperture) one. This will open up control over the depth of field for you in a way that the (rather slow) kit zooms don't -- and also allow you to use lower ISO settings more often (f2.0 lets in four times as much light (two stops) compared to the maximum aperture of f4 on a lot of kit zooms). Fast zooms are expensive, so this will mean getting 'primes' (lenses that have only one focal length). You might also find you learn a lot about framing and perspective from using a prime lens.

 

For Nikon, I'd recommend either the 50mm f1.4 lens, the 50mm f1.8 lens (also very inexpensive) or the 35mm f2 as affordable primes in moderate, familiar, focal-length ranges. The 35mm, given the so-called digital crop factor, is actually functionally closest to the standard 50mm lenses that came bundled in all the 35mm SLR kits back in the day when zooms were lower quality and not so commonly used. The 50mm f1.8, however, is the most spectacularly good buy of the bunch. (and Canon's equivalent, if you went that route, is even cheaper)

for a budget up to $1500 you could get the D80 (certainly the best camera of those you list) with one of the kit lenses, and still have money left over for a nice fast prime lens (or possibly even two, if you buy them used, or a nice fast lens and also the SB-600 flash). But it is quite true that you won't go far wrong with any of these options. (I just checked the B&H price to make sure of what I just said, and yup... you could do it... It is remarkable that the D80 has come down only about $100 from its launch price a year ago, while the once similarly-priced a100 and (to a lesser extent) the XTi have come down in price so much more. As the consumer, that must be frustrating when looking at the D80 but on the other hand it is also a real seal of approval from the market.)

 

It also might be very worthwhile to look at Pentax.

I don't understand why some here seem to find it incredible that DX and FX format could exist in parallel for a long while to come. Clearly the FX name was given at least in part to move us away from talking in terms of "Full Frame" as if there was something magical about 24x36mm film frames -- but that was just a format, and for much of its functional life considered a rather small one.

 

Among relatively portable cameras, 120 and 35mm film formats existed for decades in parallel, each favored by a different set of users with different needs. Why shouldn't FX and DX be the same? Some of us have cognitive dissonance with DX only because we moved to it from 35mm film, and because the same manufacturers use the same lens mounts on this new format. But over time that dissonance is likely to fade as a new generation of DX-format users emerges, and the rest of us just get used to it. As far as equipment, some lenses (because of their focal lengths or focal length ranges for zooms) are likely to work well on both formats and be shared between the two markets, and some will become more specialized to one format or the other.

 

No one can see the future, but it seems entirely plausible to me that FX and DX can both (or neither?) be major, popular, formats for the medium or even long-term future. Even if FX comes down in price enough that it ultimately predominates, DX is likely to continue in at least a dual role as the consumer format of the future and as a format for wildlife/nature.

I should add that the Nikon site gives field-of-view specs for all the current lenses in both FX/35mm and DX formats -- so you can play around there to guess what is likely to seem "equivalent enough" in practice (e.g. 17mm is 79 degrees on DX, compared to your 24mm being 85 degrees on 35mm film).

D300 is still a DX sensor. To get close to 16mm you will probably be in zooms (the primes there are big and expensive, too)... The kit zooms all start at 18mm, and you can get to 17mm with the 17-55/2.8 (DX image circle only) or 17-35mm/2.8 (also covers the "full-frame" FX image circle). Those two f2.8 zooms are out of your $1000 range, by 20-50%. Also they are LOTS bigger (specs are all on the Nikonusa.com page) in size and weight than your 85mm/1.8, though.

 

The 12-24mm/f4 zoom is closer in size and weight to what you want, and also under $1000. It is DX-format only.

As for the kit lenses, I believe that the 18-70 has by far the best reputation of the bunch.

 

I don't know how casual you want to be about this kit, but if you figure on being an "enthusiast" for the long haul, you *might* want to consider somthing like the more "radical" alternative path I took to getting into a digital body on a (relative) budget -- I bought the D80 with just the 50mmf1.8 prime. This was "odd" of me, particularly because the crop factor means the 50 is a short telephoto, but I knew from a youth spent with a cheap 35-70 zoom on 35mm that I like being around that 70mm range a whole lot of the time. I then quickly added a used 24mmf2.8 and (soon) 35mmf2. Those three lenses fit in a small bag and give *most* (not all... but most) of the compositional options for subject-distance and perspective that the basic kit zooms do (the only exception that I find problematic is that the kit zooms go a little wider than 24).

 

Ultimately, I'll add a moderate-telephoto prime or two (except for the 85mm1.4 these are still reasonably priced) and *eventually* maybe an ultrawide zoom (here, my strategy runs into real expense). All told, a lot of flexibility without a lot of weight or expense or hand-wringing over those 2.8 zooms I can't afford.

 

This isn't because I'm a "prime purist" -- hypothetically, I'd be fine with fast zooms -- but I wanted faster lenses than the f4-5.6 or f3.5-5.6 kit-zoom maximum apertures.

 

 

(I also have the AI version of the 50mm1.4, which I like better for a lot of things when I can live without autofocus and metering)

 

The 18-55 is so cheap that it would be basically painless to use that "prime" strategy but *also* add it for times when you don't need the fast apertures (good lighting, or with flash) and want the flexibility and convenience of zoom.