The last major purchase I made for myself was over two years ago, an iRiver H320 for a whopping $280, so it could be said that I often do not treat myself to the finer things in this tech-life. With the hospital bills and major new home costs receding like some fiscal tide we are finding ourselves with a new found discretionary income and one of the things that I have been grumbling about is my lack of a good digital camera. My janky Kodak is serviceable in that it takes pictures, maybe not great ones but if I press the button eventually something will be written to a jpg file on the memory card. What I want is an entry level DSLR that will allow me to have the pretense of being all artsy-fartsy (I might even trow in a beret to solidify the fantasy).
Seeing as I hardly spend a dime on myself the thought of dropping some $700-800 on myself is making me break out in hives. If you think that is silly, the discussion of replacing my laptop, while a constant ongoing one-way conversation, has me lying awake at night thinking about how much $1700 really is–1.5 mortgage payments, 6 months of groceries, 6 months of car payments, etc. Anyway, I’m sitting on the fence between the Canon and the Nikon camps largely split between the Digital Rebel XT and the Nikon D40x. Knowing next to nothing about photography let alone the pros and cons of the various technologies used by the companies I am left sort of scratching my head and thinking more about price over performance which is not really a good place to start.
So here’s what I do know:
Canon Digital Rebel XT (gratefully cribbed from dpreview.com)
- Around $650 with Canon 18-55mm lens kit
- 8MP
- Image Formats
- RAW
- RAW + JPEG Large/Fine
- JPEG (EXIF 2.21) - Fine, Normal
- 22.2 x 14.8 mm CMOS sensor
- Compact Flash Type I or II
- 1.6 lbs (Body plus battery,CF and 18-55 mm II lens)
Nikon D40x (gratefully cribbed from dpreview.com)
- Around $799 with Nikon 18-55mm lens kit
- 10.2MP
- Image Formats
- NEF (12-bit compressed RAW)
- JPEG fine
- JPEG normal
- JPEG basic
- NEF (RAW) + JPEG basic
- 23.7 x 15.6 mm CCD sensor
- Secure Digital / Secure Digital HC
- 1.2lbs (Body plus battery)
Fleshing things out a little further, digitalreview.ca has a side by side comparison of Nikon’s D50 with the D70 and the Digital Rebel XT which at least gives me a little better understanding how the lines compare.
After doing some research about RAW format I’m relatively confident that UFRaw plugin for Gimp will take care of my modest needs so I’m not too worried about NEF versus CR2. So, it would seem that it comes down to price again. The Nikon D40x is about $90 more than the Digital Rebel XT (and the XTi is $185 more) for what I can tell is 2MP more. Management suggests that I should get the Canon and a really good memory card for the savings and I am very inclined to agree. Anyone have an argument why I should go Nikon instead?
Canon or Nikon. Nikon or Canon. I’ll be dithering for one more month as I screw up my courage to drop that kind of cash on myself then I pull the trigger.
I was going over a similar situation myself a few months back. I went Nikon with the D80.
I can give this advice to you. Don’t buy either of the two cameras you are looking at. The Canon kit lens is not as good as Nikons. The D40X may sound impressive with its 10MP sensor but don’t fall into the Megapixel myth.
http://www.kenrockwell.com/tech/mpmyth.htm
I can tell you that a clean 6 Megapixels is better than a noisy 10. At the very least save your money and buy the D40(non X) and get a better lens to go with it. The D40 is considered one the best in image noise in the entire Nikon line. The only problem you have with the D40 series of cameras is that they do not focus older non AFS lenses.
If I were you I would go with the now discontinued D50 or D70s. They both have internal focus motors unlike the D40, but they all have the same CCD as the D40. They can be had for as low as $500 for the body then you spend your money on some better glass, I have the Nikkor 18-55 F3.5-5.6 and it is not that great of a lens, better than the Canon 18-55 but still a cheap lens.
Hope this helps.
Jon
Here is a link for a D50 Body
http://www.amazon.com/Nikon-6-1MP-Digital-Camera-Body/dp/B0009GZAGO/ref=pd_bbs_sr_3/002-4965449-9008050?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1175726043&sr=8-3
Hey James,
During the Christmas season, I too had the longing for a new camera. I wanted to get away from point-and-shoot and re-learn the manual settings. The XT was on my list as well, but I couldn’t bring myself to spring for it (I tend to feel guilty after I spend a lit on myself.)
But after doing some research, I found the Canon 300D, which is a model that’s a couple years old, but was a good setup for an entry DSLR for me.
After becoming more comfortable with the manual settings, I then bought myself the Canon Speedlight 430EX and a Lumiquest 80-20 bounce. So far I love my setup and am thinking of adding a couple more lenses soon. Let me know if you want to come by and check it out!
I’m still getting used to the settings, but here are some of the shots I’ve taken recently.
Here is another D50 Body, it is a demo unit but appears to be in good condition. It is only 409.
http://www.adorama.com/US 254976.html?searchinfo=d50&item_no=19
Yeah, after you mentioned the D40 and the lack of AFS I read up a little more on it and the lack of that takes it out of the running due to the cost of AFS lenses which would double the price of the set up. I’ll check out the links on the D50 which looks to be reasonably priced now that it is discontinued.
I am wondering about the noise though as dapreview.com in the summary of the 350D stated “Noise free ’silky smooth’ images at ISO 100, 200 and 400″ but recommend like you to get a different lens package rather than the default (they recommend a $600 lens assuming wrongly that the money tree in my backyard is a vast and mighty giant offering bushels of cash on a daily basis). Is there a resource you can point me to that spell out the concept of noise. The rockwell article was great but I’m still sort of scratching my head over the relationship between ISO level and noise.
Thankfully I have a month to continue dithering, that is if my better half doesn’t smother me in my sleep.
Kara, I would totally love to check out the set up your rockin’! I’ve been following your shots and at least on flickr the color and clarity are great.
My boss is using a Nikon D200 (Capt. Money Bags, Esquire) and while it is nice to talk to him about it the fact is his setup is a dream setup ($6k of gear, don’t get me started on how many mortgage payments that is!).
ISO is light sensitivity, so the higher the ISO the faster your shutter speed can be to get the correct exposure. So as the ISO number increases so does the noise, the CCD has less time to sample the light that is coming through the lens thus it has errors. Those errors translate into digital noise.
Every one of the cameras that everyone has mentioned so far are all virtually noise free up to ISO 400. ISO 100-400 is great for nice bright sunny days, but for shooting inside without a flash you will need either to get a fast lens F2.8 or bigger or increase the ISO speed.
Here is an example of what the noise looks like for a few different cameras. Keep in mind they were using JPEG mode for these cameras, this will almost always give you alot more noise than shooting in RAW (NEF). My suggestion is get a bigger HD and shoot in RAW and you will get much better results.
http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/nikond50/page17.asp
Avoid built in flashes if possible, it make pictures look horrible. To get good results with a flash, you need to get a speedlite of some kind to bounce the flash off the wall or the ceiling.
I have used UFRAW on Ubuntu, both the standalone and GIMP plugin, it is by far the best open source RAW converter that I have used. You can get quite stunning results with it.
But when it all comes down do it, any one of these cameras that everyone has mentioned will knock your socks off as far as quality is concerned compared to a Point and Shoot. You can’t go wrong, I suggest going down to your local camera shop and feel what each of the contenders feels like. The D40’s and Digital rebels are small in my hand. The Nikon D80 and Canon 30D are a much better fit for my hand.
Remember that camera bodies come and go, but good glass can last you a long time. Whether you Canon Or Nikon, getting the 50mm F1.8 is a must, these lenses are super sharp, super fast, and super cheap. I bought mine for $110 at Ritz Camera. That lens stays on my camera 90% of the time. It awesome for low light and the huge aperture will give you great bokeh.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bokeh
Just get something and have fun shooting your family and friends it is great.
Ooo! I want great bokeh! (thanks for the link I had no idea what that was before now!)
I see what you mean by the noise now, like static on the TV, but yeah each and everyone of them looks better than my $99 Kodak special by a factor of 10^n.
I’ll pop into Ritz and fondly some hardware to get a feel for things. Better than buying blind.
Thanks!