Thinking of a new Camera
- Thread starter cj10jeeper
- Start date
lacroupade
Lifer
pvr said:lacroupade said:Get a woodburner.
By the time I've spent most of the day chopping and stacking wood I'm too shagged out to even sit in front of the damn thing!
Do as me - I just bought a Ryobe wood splitter ... (4 ton).
LOL! Tried that but needed a 10-tonner as I cut some quite large ash trees from my land....trouble is because I'm so tight its a manual with two large levers to operate the huydraulics, its just like a skiing machine, but good exercise! LOL
What is it with us and these arborial toys? A few months ago I purchased a 13hp chipper and am slowly turning my tree lined garden to mulch. Trouble is it's a tiring beast to work 
lacroupade
Lifer
Thats a mighty beast - is that the postmans legs sticking out of the side?? :rofl:
lacroupade said:
Close - it's the salesman. He would not negotiate a proper discount or demo it, so I tested him in it.
cj10jeeper said:pvr said:Hmm - you as well? I have found that I see the office less and less during the day. The gym is taking 1.5 hours per day as well now
Yep - I have that one too. 4 times per week to run a few miles and pick up some weights, for which they charge me £50 per month for the dubious pleasure of it.
Do what I did. I got qualified to teach gym instruction and group fitness so now I get paid to train on top of my day job!
lacroupade
Lifer
Breaker said:cj10jeeper said:pvr said:Hmm - you as well? I have found that I see the office less and less during the day. The gym is taking 1.5 hours per day as well now
Yep - I have that one too. 4 times per week to run a few miles and pick up some weights, for which they charge me £50 per month for the dubious pleasure of it.
Do what I did. I got qualified to teach gym instruction and group fitness so now I get paid to train on top of my day job!
Hmm. Is there a lot of that, you know, ladies bending over in tight leotard type stuff? Just curious....
).lacroupade
Lifer
<sprung> :headbang:
After advice about a new camera, I cuurently have an Olympus FE-330 digital camera (8 megapixel and 5xZoom) and have been offered a Panasonic DMC-FZ7 for £75. Is it a significant upgrade, if at all? I don't want anything professional as yet, but would like to improve my skills a bit.
A
Anonymous
Guest
With any digital camera (compact or SLR), the single most important piece of equipment is the lens as that is what puts the light onto the sensor to give you your picture.
You can have the best camera body in the world but if you put a crap piece of glass in front of it, it will produce crap pictures. Most bundles/kit lenses are cheap and not that great and you have to spend £350+ to get a decent zoom lens.
I'm a Canon man myself and have the 5D Mk II (£2000 for the body alone) and two professional lenses (24-70 F2.8 @ £1200 and 70-200 F2.8 USM IS @ £2200). I however started out with a Canon 350D and moved up from there.
TBH with you, you may be better off buying yourself a high quality compact camera that can do everything you want.
My wife has the Panasonic TZ7 and it's a beautiful piece of kit - does everything she wants and I can also use to play around with as well.
You can have the best camera body in the world but if you put a crap piece of glass in front of it, it will produce crap pictures. Most bundles/kit lenses are cheap and not that great and you have to spend £350+ to get a decent zoom lens.
I'm a Canon man myself and have the 5D Mk II (£2000 for the body alone) and two professional lenses (24-70 F2.8 @ £1200 and 70-200 F2.8 USM IS @ £2200). I however started out with a Canon 350D and moved up from there.
TBH with you, you may be better off buying yourself a high quality compact camera that can do everything you want.
My wife has the Panasonic TZ7 and it's a beautiful piece of kit - does everything she wants and I can also use to play around with as well.
A
Anonymous
Guest
of course, reading all the way to the end before posting a reply is recommended :headbang:
I thought the most important part of the camera was the user, as you can have a £20000 Hasselblad camera with a £5000 lens and still screw your photo's up if you're a klutz like mejakethecatuk said:
BTW, I'm thinking of selling my Olympus E400 DSLR as I'm not using it much.
Comes with the standard ED 14-42mm 1:3.5-5.6 lens, additional Sigma 55-200mm F4-5.6 zoom lens and SanDisk 2.0gb Extreme II compactflash card.
Probably want £200 for it though, as similar (used) ones are on ebay for £150+ excluding lenses. Cost about £600 all in when I bought it a few years back.
Review of the camera.
Olympus product information page
Olympus lens information page
Sigma lens specification
Wanted a smaller camera to go with my DSLR that was more portable. After a bit of deliberation I went for the Sony NEX 5 twin lens kit. Only got it yesterday so had no real chance to try it out but tried it indoors last night and it does low light quite well!
It looks cool also as well as being a bit "techie"!
It looks cool also as well as being a bit "techie"!
It's not the equipment, it is how you use it. David Bailey would take a great shot using a cheap polaroid as he has an eye for the scene. Quality might be crap, but you'd appreciate the aesthetics of it.. Someone like me could have a brilliant top of the range DSLR with fantastic lens have an eye for a picture but completely duff it due to poor technique or understanding. Not could, but would.
What a more capable camera might do is to motivate you to take more care with composition technique and settings.
Until recently, I did not know what an F-stop actually meant. I just thought F20 was a small aperture for sharpness, and F1.8 was a large one for less depth of field.. I had no idea it related to the distance at which an object would be in focus from (very simply put) I had no idea that standing close to a subject with a 50mm lens at F1.8, but having background far away would blur the background sufficiently to isolate the main subject (again simply put)
If I have stated wrong, someone will come along and put me right. But I think a little understanding will help make a better shot from a cheaper camera.
What a more capable camera might do is to motivate you to take more care with composition technique and settings.
Until recently, I did not know what an F-stop actually meant. I just thought F20 was a small aperture for sharpness, and F1.8 was a large one for less depth of field.. I had no idea it related to the distance at which an object would be in focus from (very simply put) I had no idea that standing close to a subject with a 50mm lens at F1.8, but having background far away would blur the background sufficiently to isolate the main subject (again simply put)
If I have stated wrong, someone will come along and put me right. But I think a little understanding will help make a better shot from a cheaper camera.
I think it's how good your knowledge of Photoshop is rather than the camera your using these days!! Mind you, you still have to have the eye for the right shot in the first place!
Have a look on Flikr. Type in the camera you are interested in buying in the search and see what others are doing with it.
I have been amazed at the results I've been getting over the weekend with the NEX 5. Nice camera.
Only when you go to do any post editing in photoshop can you really see the difference in quality of the original image of a DSLR over a camera like the NEX 5. Although it has a 14mp censor, it isn't as sharp as my D90. Probably more to do with the lens than the camera mind.
Mind you, you still have to have the eye for the right shot in the first place!Have a look on Flikr. Type in the camera you are interested in buying in the search and see what others are doing with it.
I have been amazed at the results I've been getting over the weekend with the NEX 5. Nice camera.
Only when you go to do any post editing in photoshop can you really see the difference in quality of the original image of a DSLR over a camera like the NEX 5. Although it has a 14mp censor, it isn't as sharp as my D90. Probably more to do with the lens than the camera mind.
