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Digital SLR

Blzebub

Well-Known Member
Could any camera gurus offer an opinion about the Canon EOS 350D digital SLR, please? I'm very far from being an expert photographer.

TIA.
 
Bub,

Are you starting from scratch or are you looking for a digital body on which to mount existing Canon glass?

Joe
 
Hi,

Shot a little with my brothers 350D. Didn't like the viewfinder or the build quality. Other than that it is a perfectly competent camera, if not the best value in the market.

Have you considered what lens' you'll want to get? If you want to go down the SLR route you ought to give this some thought and price out a system including the basic glass and other accessories you want.

Any particular reason you're looking at the 350D?

Regards,

Stuart.
 
Howdy, bub.

The sensor and processing electronics in the 350D are very good, certainly near the top of the heap in the price range, but its shortcoming -- a critical one for some people -- is the camera's small viewfinder. If that's an issue for you, I'd suggest looking at the much more expensive Canon or Nikon models... or the similarly priced Pentax model that Matthew and James bought.

I'd also strongly suggest not getting the cheapest kit lens no matter what you buy.

Joe
 
Joe Petrik said:
I'd also strongly suggest not getting the cheapest kit lens no matter what you buy.

How's this for some cheap rubbish which has 10 X Optical Zoom and 4 X Digital Zoom,takes SD cards and nice macro shots - with a better than good (non SLR ) diopter adjustable viewfinder and cost less than 65UKP (110US) last fall new and unused off ebay

A couple of macro photo's
Vivitar38262-7-05002.jpg

Derek_ShekDAC19-08-2005014.jpg

and this is the cheapo with a real cheapo lens
VIVITAR3755b.jpg

VIVITAR3755a.jpg
 
you can't use an aperture ring on lenses with a canon DSLR. this makes it the audio equivalent of those plastic turntables from a few decades ago on which you could stack a pile of LPs that would drop down one by one, complete with plastic arm to hold everything in place.

btw--photography, unlike audio, is not something you can buy your way into.

vuk.
 
To buy a digital SLR you need to care a lot about photography or a lot about impressing the sort of people who buy £15,000 preamps. Unless you have specific requirements, most of it is just e-peen.

For most people a decent, mid-price high quality compact will do everything you want and be far more convenient and cheaper. Something like this Olympus which looks a bargain at £230.

Read some reviews (See http://http://www.dpreview.com/, http://www.steves-digicams.com, http://www.imaging-resource.com/), make a shortlist of recommend models and go to a decent shop to try them out. Having eliminated the ones that suck, buy the one with which you are most comfortable -- handling and ease-of-use are huge things for digital cameras.

Matthew
 
only if you're not about to go to bed or plan to liberate innocent people.

vuk.
 
Up early not awake late for once.

It's hard to tell from Bub's one line post but in my experience people who don't know why they might want an SLR are generally better off with something cheaper and more convenient. Bub doesn't seem like the sort to spend £1000 to take pictures of car parks in Arizona.

Matthew
 
matthewr said:
Bub doesn't seem like the sort to spend £1000 to take pictures of car parks in Arizona.

Curiously enough, that's the theme of my soon-to-be-released coffee table photography book.
 
Bub

As has been already said, the Canon is a good camera. It does feel cheap compared to some of the alternatives though and it has some user interface 'features' that I couldn't live with. As a long term Canon film SLR user, the handling of the 350D seemed wrong to me - the buttons to change the metering, AF, etc don't actually change the setting, they are shortcuts to the menu system and there is no feedback of what you've done in the viewfinder, so it's difficult to make changes on the fly (these are firmware issues and Canon may have rectified it if they had enough complaints). I haven't tried the more expensive Canons, so I'm not sure if it's the same on them. As Vuk has pointed out, Canon lenses don't have aperture rings and if you need to set this manually, you use the command dial on the camera - the 350D only has one command dial though, so if you are using manual settings, it's awkward to set both aperture and shutter speed quickly (other cameras use two command dials, one for shutter speed, one for aperture). In my view, the drawbacks of the 350D were significant enough to convince me to sell all of my Canon gear and switch to Nikon, but if you're starting from scratch and don't have expectations of what the camera should be doing or if the drawbacks aren't a problem for you then the Canon is an excellent camera.

Heath
 
Artioneer said:
A couple of macro photo's
Vivitar38262-7-05002.jpg
Either that's the smallest Tipp-Ex mouse ever, or these aren't real macro shots. :D A true macro lens will project a life size image on the sensor/film.

Heath
 
vuk said:
p.s. that said, i will continue to look down upon people with zoom lenses and/or without aperture rings.

Can't imagine why. Its just a matter of what you are used to, certainly for someone without deeply entrenched photography habits I can't see it matters.

Even shitty viewfinders are something you can learn to live with.

Want my opinion, get a decent point and shoot, it'll do just fine
--
tom
 
vuk said:
i will continue to look down upon people with zoom lenses and/or without aperture rings.
why? that's like getting upset about amps which have the volume control on the left.

As long as the manual aperture control is quick and easy who cares where it is?

btw, you'll be looking down at the majority of professional photographers who use at least one of zoom lenses or lenses without aperture rings but don't let me be the one to knock you off your ivory tower.

Michael.
 


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