-
Folks, if you've recently upgraded or renewed your annual club membership but it's still not active, please reach out to the BOD or a moderator. The PayPal system has a slight bug which it doesn't allow it to activate the account on it's own.
is this camera good?
- Thread starter mott768
- Start date
Hey Tom. I've used both the Rebel and the Nikon D70. In point and shoot mode, in bright settings (IE: Outside), the Nikon has a faster response time, and seems more true to the color. In dim settings (IE: Inside with ONLY the onboard flash) the Canon responded faster and with more deep rich colors.
I would reccomend looking into a mount on top flash pretty quickly. The built in flashes are generally limited to 15 feet and under, and don't have a very intense fill. One thing I noticed was the Nikon built in flash created a good deal more shadow than the Canon did. Most likely the Nikon is a little more intense, but the Nikon D70 kit came with a lens shield to help with at lens shadowing a bit.
I also find the Nikon fits my hand a bit better than the Canon, but that is a personal issue you will have to decide on. Each person is a bit different in that respect.
Weight feels like a negligable difference to me. They are both weighted about the same in my opinion without lens. Different lenses will add front loaded weight to the body, so you will want to try that out if you can.
Truly, the quality of your final product is going to depend a great deal on the lens.
Again, just opinion, the Nikon stock kit lens was a bit better than the Canon stock kit lens, but I have multiple lenses from my Canon SLR film camera, and don't use the stock lens much.
Everybody is right about the megapixel issue being fairly negligible at that size. UNLESS you are taking shots and want a very small portion of it cropped out. In which case, the higher MP will give you more options.
In all honesty, the last wedding I shot, I used both cameras for different tasks. But with macro and tank shots, you will depend primarily on your lens.
The last recomendation is to make sure you spend the extra few bucks on good fast highly rated memory storage. The cheap ones are just that, cheap. They are also slower to record. I didn't used to think there could be that much of a difference, but once I compared a good fast card to the normal everyday "walmart special", I was amazed at the difference in speed in recording the images to the card.
I think you will be happy with either rig. Hope some of this information helped.
I would reccomend looking into a mount on top flash pretty quickly. The built in flashes are generally limited to 15 feet and under, and don't have a very intense fill. One thing I noticed was the Nikon built in flash created a good deal more shadow than the Canon did. Most likely the Nikon is a little more intense, but the Nikon D70 kit came with a lens shield to help with at lens shadowing a bit.
I also find the Nikon fits my hand a bit better than the Canon, but that is a personal issue you will have to decide on. Each person is a bit different in that respect.
Weight feels like a negligable difference to me. They are both weighted about the same in my opinion without lens. Different lenses will add front loaded weight to the body, so you will want to try that out if you can.
Truly, the quality of your final product is going to depend a great deal on the lens.
Again, just opinion, the Nikon stock kit lens was a bit better than the Canon stock kit lens, but I have multiple lenses from my Canon SLR film camera, and don't use the stock lens much.
Everybody is right about the megapixel issue being fairly negligible at that size. UNLESS you are taking shots and want a very small portion of it cropped out. In which case, the higher MP will give you more options.
In all honesty, the last wedding I shot, I used both cameras for different tasks. But with macro and tank shots, you will depend primarily on your lens.
The last recomendation is to make sure you spend the extra few bucks on good fast highly rated memory storage. The cheap ones are just that, cheap. They are also slower to record. I didn't used to think there could be that much of a difference, but once I compared a good fast card to the normal everyday "walmart special", I was amazed at the difference in speed in recording the images to the card.
I think you will be happy with either rig. Hope some of this information helped.
Well after looking at both camera's over the weekend I was still undecided and unsure about what one to get, so today the wife comes home with her hands behind her back and says how much do you love me, then Say's happy anniversary and hands me a Canon eos rebel XT slr camera
Just a couple pic's I took (with reading the directions)
Just a couple pic's I took (with reading the directions)
Congrats on the new camera. Practic Practice Practice.
They're compressing too much on output, you're not getting a good focus on your subject (either because of film on the glass, hand shake (tripod? higher ISO? faster shutter, lower F stop), not sure if you turned the pumps off, but that helps too).
They're compressing too much on output, you're not getting a good focus on your subject (either because of film on the glass, hand shake (tripod? higher ISO? faster shutter, lower F stop), not sure if you turned the pumps off, but that helps too).
Brain overload...LOL, I took it out of the box charged the battery and started clicking... Guess I should start reading up on all that stuff A. I'm pretty sure I had it set to auto focus. I guess the lens doesn't help either?? It's funny that she got me this one, I was sort of leaning towards the Nikon but was no where near making a decision kept going back and forth between the two, now I don't have to.
arvin
NJRC Member
Here are few tips that can help in taking your "first" pictures:
1. Most pictures of yours look like they are out of focus. To get a sharp focus, first decide what you want to take a picture of. A specific fish or coral. Watch the red dots in your viewfinder. While one of the dots is on the subject, Press the camera's trigger button HALF WAY THROUGH. When the red dots in your viewfinder stops blinking and stays steady, your focus is LOCKED. Go ahead and press the button all the way down to click. This may seems like lot of things to remember, but in no time, this will come as a second nature.
2. Turn off your flash. The light from the tank is good enough to take decent pictures. Using flash sometimes throw some reflection back. There is a no-flash mode in the dial on the camera. You may want to hold the camera steady if you turn off the flash.
If you do want to use flash, point the camera slightly downward so the light doesnt reflect off the glass.
3. That is exactly what you should be doing. Dont read a lot! You dont need to know DOF, F stops & shutter speeds etc to take good pictures.
The lens that comes packaged with Canon is a great everyday lens. It is possible to take a great picture using this lens just like it is possible to take a picture that is completely out of focus with a lens that costs over a 1000$.
Hope it helps.
1. Most pictures of yours look like they are out of focus. To get a sharp focus, first decide what you want to take a picture of. A specific fish or coral. Watch the red dots in your viewfinder. While one of the dots is on the subject, Press the camera's trigger button HALF WAY THROUGH. When the red dots in your viewfinder stops blinking and stays steady, your focus is LOCKED. Go ahead and press the button all the way down to click. This may seems like lot of things to remember, but in no time, this will come as a second nature.
2. Turn off your flash. The light from the tank is good enough to take decent pictures. Using flash sometimes throw some reflection back. There is a no-flash mode in the dial on the camera. You may want to hold the camera steady if you turn off the flash.
If you do want to use flash, point the camera slightly downward so the light doesnt reflect off the glass.
3. That is exactly what you should be doing. Dont read a lot! You dont need to know DOF, F stops & shutter speeds etc to take good pictures.
The lens that comes packaged with Canon is a great everyday lens. It is possible to take a great picture using this lens just like it is possible to take a picture that is completely out of focus with a lens that costs over a 1000$.
Hope it helps.
Adding to the just previously sent comment which i find very good. First let me say that I find all that discussion about the type of camera mute, based on what you want to use your camera for. All of the SLRs can be. What I meant is that the individual circumstances of each person's tank can easily eliminate any advantages some camera might have over other. Again this is just for reef shooting. Remember you deal with highly uncommon and unnatural lights and color schemes (actinics, 10K etc.) movements in picture in several layers (water movements, background movements of corals and foreground movement of fish) very demanding depth of field and light intensity ranges (hundreds of wats of MH on top and total darkness beneath the coral or a fish. So it all comes to practice and finding what really works for you.
- First and foremost allways use the tripod
- Don't use the built in flash on the camera. It doesn't compute properly given the water column and reflection of the glass
- Be aware of the exposures and that EVERYTHING moves in the aquarium and that you can not control it.
- Macro (affordable) is exceedingly good but only for if the object is close. If your coral is 2' away, $400 macro will be worse then $600 telephoto.
- Even though I have really good autofocus on my 30D Canon, I use it only as a general guidance for manual focusing. And what I usually do is, I take several pictures with exactly the same settings but with the focus changed by a smallest fraction - one of them is bound to get it right.
So for example:
Your clam shot is really nice in terms of color and light but it has very small depth of field so the very large portion of the picture (front of the clam) is out of focus
Coral (greenish nana?)shot seems to slight out of the focus. Rock in the lower left corner seems to better focused. Also there is a strange contrast of colors and lights that blurs the distinction between rock and coral on the right.
Second coral has a problem of "bleeding" the depth of field blur into the whiteness of the send on the right that is too white. You should have simply cut it out.
Frogspawn is really nice.
Fish is out of focus. It is extremely difficult to get them to cooperate Professional photographers "cheat" by placing the fish between two very close panes of glass.
Fish 2 is overexposed and slightly out of focus with the rock beneath it glaringly out of focus.
Pack as much of lights as possible when you take photos, use very fast settings and fast exposures and play with the depth of field. Depth of field is extremely important in several ways. You either try to hide the "ugly" background (equipment, uneven coraline algae, glass etc.), focus attention to a subject or on the other end of spectrum try to give the "ambient" feeling of fish among the corals etc.
In the end camera body, Canon vs Nikon, is of the least importance for aquarium shots. Good lenses, plenty of strong light, clean glass and water, patience and good understanding of what works are of utmost importance. Some people also put high importance of "postproduction" in Photoshop or similar tool, though I prefer really good initial shot.
And be patient.
- First and foremost allways use the tripod
- Don't use the built in flash on the camera. It doesn't compute properly given the water column and reflection of the glass
- Be aware of the exposures and that EVERYTHING moves in the aquarium and that you can not control it.
- Macro (affordable) is exceedingly good but only for if the object is close. If your coral is 2' away, $400 macro will be worse then $600 telephoto.
- Even though I have really good autofocus on my 30D Canon, I use it only as a general guidance for manual focusing. And what I usually do is, I take several pictures with exactly the same settings but with the focus changed by a smallest fraction - one of them is bound to get it right.
So for example:
Your clam shot is really nice in terms of color and light but it has very small depth of field so the very large portion of the picture (front of the clam) is out of focus
Coral (greenish nana?)shot seems to slight out of the focus. Rock in the lower left corner seems to better focused. Also there is a strange contrast of colors and lights that blurs the distinction between rock and coral on the right.
Second coral has a problem of "bleeding" the depth of field blur into the whiteness of the send on the right that is too white. You should have simply cut it out.
Frogspawn is really nice.
Fish is out of focus. It is extremely difficult to get them to cooperate
Professional photographers "cheat" by placing the fish between two very close panes of glass.Fish 2 is overexposed and slightly out of focus with the rock beneath it glaringly out of focus.
Pack as much of lights as possible when you take photos, use very fast settings and fast exposures and play with the depth of field. Depth of field is extremely important in several ways. You either try to hide the "ugly" background (equipment, uneven coraline algae, glass etc.), focus attention to a subject or on the other end of spectrum try to give the "ambient" feeling of fish among the corals etc.
In the end camera body, Canon vs Nikon, is of the least importance for aquarium shots. Good lenses, plenty of strong light, clean glass and water, patience and good understanding of what works are of utmost importance. Some people also put high importance of "postproduction" in Photoshop or similar tool, though I prefer really good initial shot.
And be patient.
Thanks Guy's, I just read the article Brian posted and I'm starting to read about the shutter speeds and so on, the one thing I don't like with this camera is in macro auto mode you can not disable the flash ie sport, close up and so on, the is a spot on the dial that you turn to so there is no flash but I can't get any good pic's on that setting, I have a lot of playing around to do to find the setting that takes the best pic's.