About two and a half years ago I got my first digital single-lens reflex camera (a dSLR, or digital SLR), having used a point-and-shoot consumer-level Casio digital camera for several years, and a similar Canon point-and-shoot film camera before that.
I had to do a lot of learning, and there were some really obvious things that the manuals didn’t say, but that had me baffled for a while, so I thought I’d share some of those basics!
What on earth is a dSLR?
In my case it was easy because I was given a gift certificate for Future Shop, and they only sold one digital SLR camera, the Canon Digital Rebel. Luckily this is a really good camera, and an excellent first choice, and I happend to know that already.
More likely, you’ll be faced with a bewildering choice.
The SLR has three main features that set it apart. The first is that when you look through the viewfinder, you’re looking through the actual lens. Newer dSLR cameras have “live view” in which the LCD display also looks through the lens, although usually you can’t have both live view and the viewfinder work at the same time, because the SLR uses a moving mirror to choose whether the light from the lens goes into the viewfinder or onto the sensor (the digital “film”). For professional shots, it’s essential that you get a good idea of what’s going to be in the photograph, so this feature is really important.
The second feature of the SLR is that you can swap lenses. The entire lens unmounts and you put on a different one. There are literally hundreds of lenses to choose from, which of course paralyses me totally. It does mean you can get a telephoto (long-distance) lens, and also a macro lens; the point-and-shoot Casio camera had fabulous macro (close-up) performance, but absolutely terrible long-distance results.
The third feature is that the lens is bigger, and so is the sensor. Some of the newer point-and-shoot cameras are changing this, but what it means for now is that the pictures from a dSLR are massively clearer and sharper than you’d ever imagine possible. Of course, you can go up from the dSLR to a medium or large format camera and get even better, but that’s another story!
So, a digital single-lens-reflex is an SLR camera, so that you look into the viewfinder and see through the lens. It has interchangeable lenses, and it usually has much higher picture quality than a point-and-shoot camera. It’s also usually much bigger and heavier, and you’ll be noticed more, and you might find you can’t take it into rock concerts, or that you can take it into museums because they trust you to turn off the flash.
Choosing a dSLR
The first thing to say here is, for all intents and purposes, if you are not a professional photographer, forget about “megapixels,” “auto-red-eye-elimination,” “face detection” and all the other features touted by the tiny cameras. Buy a dSLR so that you can take professional-quality photographs, and so that you can do photographic art, but not so that you can quickly whip out a camera and snap a high-school friend on the bus. A lot of pro photographers carry something like a Casio Exilim pocket camera for exactly that pupose!
The main entry-level dSLR cameras all have roughly comparable image quality. You can make an A4/US letter-sized print with any of them: 8 megapixels is about enough for that. The advantage of more pixels is that you can use your favourite image editor (e.g. gimp) to choose a smaller portion of an image, and print that instead. You can also do more processing without degrading the quality.
The main things to look for are
- Someone local who can repair the camera, sell you accessories, and make you feel inferior.
- Compatibility with other equipment.
Let’s take these one at a time. first, someone local. It’s usually best to buy from a local shop, because you help the local economy, you help keep the shop in business, and the shopkeeper probably knows more about the camera than someone working in some big box chain. Cameras are hard to buy by mail order because shipping can damage them, so for my part I’d always go somewhere local, although, as I said at the start, I actually bought mine at a big box store. At least it was a local franchise.
Second, compatibility. Often people have older SLR cameras, and want to use the lenses. It turns out that if you want to use a variety of lenses from other cameras, especially film cameras, your best bet is likely a Canon dSLR. You can use Nikon, Olympus, Canon, Pentax, and many more lens brands, by getting adaptors. You might think this would work for any camera, but it turns out not to. You can only get a useable adaptor to go from a larger camera to a smaller one. The technical bit is the distance from the end of the lens to the film (or sensor in a digital camera). You have to end up with the right distance, or the lens won’t focus properly. The Canon Digital Rebel series (EOS), for example, has a smaller distance between lens and sensor than the Nikon digital cameras. This means that if you use a Nikon lens on a Canon, the adaptor is a couple of mm (about a tenth of an inch) thick, and spaces the lens properly, as well as containing electronics to make the focusing work better. But if you tried to use a canon lens on a Nikon, the Nicon camera is too big, and the lens can’t get close enough to the sensor without some serious modifications to the camera. It’s possible to correct for this with glass,but that reduces the image quality and makes the whole thing pointless in most cases.
So if you’re after the ability to use lots of lenses, right now Canon is the best bet, it seems. But, is that really important? The newer dSLR lenses have image stabilisation, which counteracts movements of your hand when you’re taking the picture, and helps reduce blur. Some digital cameras have image stabilization built in, but the higher-end manufacturers point out that different lenses need different stabilisation, put the technology in the lenses, and charge you more money for a better result. So with a Canon, with image stabilisation in the lens, you’re much less likely to want to use an older lens, than with a Pentax with image stabilisation in the camera.
Choosing a Lens
When you buy your camera, it will probably come with a dreadfully cheap plastic lens. If you find a good dealer, you can get the camera with an upgraded lens, or without a lens at all, and buy the lens separately. Do it!
Lenses have three main things you need to know.
- The maximum aperture
- The focal length
- The quality (including whether it’s stabilised)
The aperture is described as a ratio, with lower numbers meaning a wider ratio and a better lens. You should aim to get at least one lens with a ratio of 2.8:1 or better (i.e. lower, 2.8:1 is much better than 3.5:1). These are also called f-stops, and 2.8:1 is written as f/2.8, so look for an f/2.8 lens. I’ll explain why in a bit.
The focal length is the zoominess. An 18-180 mm lens is a 10× zoom. The kit lens is usually 18-55mm, which is about a 3× zoom. A 300mm lens starts to be useful for photographing wildlife, although you’ll also want a tripod and a remote shutter control so that you can be out of sight.
The 50mm f/1.8 lens that both Canon and Nikon sell is the best value lens. With a really wide aperture, you can get good shots in low light (even moonlight, with a long exposure) and you can also play with “depth of field” to get the subject in focus and a blurry background, excellent for portraits.
On lens quality, you generally get what you pay for, but read some reviews. The Nikon Nikkor lenses, and the Canon “L” series lenses, are fabulous, but expect to pay over a thousand dollars for one lens. Image Stabilisation is essential (i’d say) for a walk-about lens, and less important for macro photography or with a tripod.
So, I’d get the 50mm f/1.8 lens, and maybe one of the third party “super zoom” lenses that go from 18 to 180 or even 18 to 300mm, to start with, today. I actually have the canon 17-85mm lens with image stabilisation, because it’s the best I could afford; I also have the 70-300 mm lens, although I’d like to upgrade that one day, and the 50mm f/1.8 lens. The 50mm lens was about $100, and i got the 17-85mm lens used at a camera store (Peace Camera, in Raleigh, NC, in fact). The super-zooms with image stabilisation from Tamron and Sigma are new since I bought my camera, though.
Taking a Shot
OK, so you’ve got the camera, and you want to take a shot, what do you do? The manual for my camera didn’t say, really, and I had to work it out!
- Take off the lens cap!
- Turn on the camera (I leave my camera on for weeks at a time; the batteries last for ages) and, for now, put it in “Programmed” or “Auto” mode, “P”.
- Point the camera at something interesting, such as a friend’s ankle.
- Look through the viewfinder
- If you want to zoom, you turn the big ribbed part of the lens with your hand. This really stumped me at first, I was looking for a button, and the manual never said how to zoom with a digital SLR! All you do is turn that part of the lens, and it zooms (if it’s a zoom lens: the 50mm f/1.8 I mentioned earlier does not zoom at all!)
- Press the shutter button half-way
- You should see one or more red dots light up in the viewfinder. This is showing you that the picture is in focus where the dot is lit.
- Holding the camera steady (elbows together can help), press the shutter button down the rest of the way. The loud click is not a recorded sound: it is because an SLR camera has a mirror or prism in it to make the light go into the viewfinds, and that must be moved out of the way to take the photo.
Of course, there’s a bit more to it than this when you get technical, but you can take really good photos like this.
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