Laurel Housden Photography Blog

5 Comments

1. SStafford said . . .

   Whenever someone wonders if they’re buying “too much camera,” I think it’s useful to point out that even if you’re using a 1Ds Mk III, you can always flip it on manual and use the Sunny-16 Rule. The real problem with technology comes in when you’re using equipment that relies on the computers and eliminates the photographer from 90% of the decisionmaking.

   Point and shoot digicams offer the novice a pretty decent photo experience right-out-of-the-box. You get a nice, usable image in most cases … but you’ve got nowhere to go. You’re stuck. DSLRs offer the same decent out-of-box performance, but allow you to go anywhere you want, photographically.

   And better DSLRs don’t really mean *more* technology, just *better* technology. The AF system on the D300, for example, performs exactly the same function as the one on a lesser Nikon model … it just does everything more competently and certainly. Same with the sensor; all the D300 sensor does is precisely what a D80’s sensor does - it composes rays of light into little colored dots … it just does so with fabulously better performance even at very high levels of sensitivity, allowing you to go places with the D300 you could never reach with an older model.

   You can express almost any feature of the D300 in these kinds of terms; is the burst mode, for example, any more complex to use than the burst mode on an old D1? Nope. It just outperforms it utterly. You can go on and on in this context.

   And think about it this way. My business is computers. The laptop I’m typing this on is several orders of magnitude more complex than the computers I worked on when I started in college in 1978. It’s arguably a billion times more complicated, both in hardware and software terms. And yet … it’s actually *easier* to use than those old dinosaurs, and does more things that are useful in terms of us regular people.

   Enjoy your new cam.

   SKS

   Posted February 1, 2008 at 3:22 am | Permalink
2. lahousden said . . .

   Thank you so much for your tips and ideas. Your feedback is just what I needed to hear. I plan on not trying to conquer it in a day but to slowly grow into it!

   Posted February 1, 2008 at 8:35 am | Permalink
3. Stacie C Morris said . . .

   I was walking around in Vegas with a killer lens with my husband telling people what a great “photographer” I am. Then a guy turned around and said his wife has the same camera - the starter XT.

   While a good photographer can take an awesome picture with any camera, image is everything. You made the right decision.

   Posted February 1, 2008 at 9:10 am | Permalink
4. lahousden said . . .

   Thanks Stacie!

   Posted February 1, 2008 at 10:08 am | Permalink
5. Peter said . . .

   Get ready, a funny thing happens when you have a “real” camera in your hands - a lot of people will ask you to take a picture of them with their point and shoot camera. At least that’s what happens to me.

   You will not regret what you have done. There is definitely a difference both with the capabilities of the camera itself but the new world that it lets you enter.

   Enter that new world, learn and enjoy the images that appear and are created through your new looking glass.

   Peter

   Posted February 1, 2008 at 10:53 am | Permalink