The Cellar - View Single Post

Bullitt · 01-12-2009, 11:45 AM

Also for SLR cameras, the quality of the lens that you use is much more important, and worthy of your $$, than the camera body itself. Spending a couple hundred on good quality glass will be much more beneficial to you and your photos than spending that extra dough on a fancier camera body. "Fast" lenses will allow you to keep your ISO down which will in turn reduce the amount of noise/grain in the image. My main lens is a Nikon 24-120mm f3.5-5.6 VR. That 3.5-5.6 tells you the available maximum aperture at the two focal length extremes. f3.5 being available at 24mm, and f5.6 at 120mm. Lenses get much more expensive as you reach for a larger available aperture like 2.8 or 2.0. The larger aperture (smaller #) allows more light in and lets you to be less reliant on ISO in order to have the fast enough shutter speeds to stop motion or overcome camera-shake in low-light situations. "VR" in Nikon lenses stands for "Vibration Reduction" and is an in-lens feature that stabilizes the glass in the lens to compensate for camera-shake. It works, but definitely isn't a miracle worker. Using breath holding techniques and keeping my elbows down at my sides while leaning against something helps much more than VR ever could. The best breathing technique I've found is the "sniper" one (that's just what it's called don't know the accuracy of the name) where you take two, slow deep breaths in, and near the end of releasing your second breath you press the shutter button.

That said, the noise on my D-50 is not even an issue until I get above ISO800, and I actually welcome noise in some of my black and white photos. There are also "prime" lenses that have a fixed focal length and aperture. These are typically of higher quality, but the drawback of course is you have to zoom with your feet, or change lenses to get the focal length you desire which can be tricky in dusty or sandy places like the beach. One favorite lens of many is the Nikon 55mm f2.8. It's fast, not too expensive compared to other 2.8 lenses, and is a nice, fixed (prime) middle-range focal length that forces you to maneuver yourself for your shots more so than a zoom lens does.

01-12-2009, 11:45 AM	#11
Bullitt This is a fully functional babe lair Join Date: Mar 2004 Location: Akron, OH Posts: 2,324	Also for SLR cameras, the quality of the lens that you use is much more important, and worthy of your $$, than the camera body itself. Spending a couple hundred on good quality glass will be much more beneficial to you and your photos than spending that extra dough on a fancier camera body. "Fast" lenses will allow you to keep your ISO down which will in turn reduce the amount of noise/grain in the image. My main lens is a Nikon 24-120mm f3.5-5.6 VR. That 3.5-5.6 tells you the available maximum aperture at the two focal length extremes. f3.5 being available at 24mm, and f5.6 at 120mm. Lenses get much more expensive as you reach for a larger available aperture like 2.8 or 2.0. The larger aperture (smaller #) allows more light in and lets you to be less reliant on ISO in order to have the fast enough shutter speeds to stop motion or overcome camera-shake in low-light situations. "VR" in Nikon lenses stands for "Vibration Reduction" and is an in-lens feature that stabilizes the glass in the lens to compensate for camera-shake. It works, but definitely isn't a miracle worker. Using breath holding techniques and keeping my elbows down at my sides while leaning against something helps much more than VR ever could. The best breathing technique I've found is the "sniper" one (that's just what it's called don't know the accuracy of the name) where you take two, slow deep breaths in, and near the end of releasing your second breath you press the shutter button. That said, the noise on my D-50 is not even an issue until I get above ISO800, and I actually welcome noise in some of my black and white photos. There are also "prime" lenses that have a fixed focal length and aperture. These are typically of higher quality, but the drawback of course is you have to zoom with your feet, or change lenses to get the focal length you desire which can be tricky in dusty or sandy places like the beach. One favorite lens of many is the Nikon 55mm f2.8. It's fast, not too expensive compared to other 2.8 lenses, and is a nice, fixed (prime) middle-range focal length that forces you to maneuver yourself for your shots more so than a zoom lens does. __________________ Kiss my white Irish ass.