Colorless

Thursday, April 17, 2008

Digital Single Lens Reflex...

Lately, I've been extremely tempted to get new lenses for my FM2n, a film camera. But knowing that my interest and passion in photography will not die anytime soon, I have been looking at lenses that will work on both film SLRs and digital SLRs. And as with any avid photographer who owns a single lens reflex, regardless of film or digital, a self-generating virus known as the BBB virus has struck me. BBB is generic, but I've only known this to occur within the photographic community. It's an acronym, well, more like an initialism, expanded to "Buy Buy Buy", in which case, meaning to buy more and more and more possibly little-used lens and accessories.

However, looking at my areas of interests and most common photographs, I doubt that I would need to get myself super-telephoto lenses like 300mm and beyond. They'd be nice to have, no doubt, but there wouldn't be a need to. Besides, at such long telephotos, the aperture will definitely stop down thus requiring a longer shutter speed, which in turn calls for the need of a tripod, which would be pretty cumbersome if you just wanna take "paparazzi" shots of strangers or friends. Unless you (I) are (am) damn rich and can afford fast (aka large aperture) lenses, it'll be quite hard to shoot at long zooms.

Hence, with my Lumix FZ20 at constant f2.8 throughout the zoom range, I think I've got my telephotos covered. So with film, I'll only take black and white, and maybe slides in future, for more snapshots and abstract works.

Even more recently (past 24hours) have been the urge to invest in a moderate level digital SLR. And since my FM2n is a Nikon, the obvious choice in terms of savings and ubiquity would be a Nikon digital SLR. Disappointingly, in terms of megapixels, I am only going to look at the D40x, D60, or the D80. These cameras are more recent and are more feature packed than the D40, D50 and D70s, I think. But because they're recent, they're expensive. Usually, eBay offers really good offers, first hand or second hand - and they still do! But even at their best offers, the price of a new camera easily reaches $1000+, inclusive of lens. Not to mention the addition of TTL flash systems, extra accessories for specialised fields of photography, extra batteries for extended outdoor photography periods, this is gonna be one heck of a hobby.

Anyway, my dSLR will mostly serve in indoor photography, and maybe dusk and dawn photos because of the MUCH MUCH MUCH better high ISO performance over ANY ultra-compact, compact and prosumer cameras, even with Fuji's Super CCD (which has the BEST noise control in non-dSLR cameras). So yes, counterintuitively, I have chosen a dSLR for indoor snapshots rather than a comparatively poor well-performing noise control Fuji compact camera.

The problem now is if I will buy a cheaper body first and upgrade the body in future. After all, I will buy optically acceptable lenses since I'm not a pixel-peeker, and these lenses will be keepers for future body upgrades (I'm sounding like Transformers... body upgrades *pshh*)...

D60? D40x? D80?

*sigh*

Love me if you dare... 15:48
0 thoughts on this post

----------------------------------------