Get into Photography with an SLRJun 14 '01 Write an essay on this topic.The Bottom Line Choose an SLR that you can grow with and that will let you take great pictures for what you need A Single Lens Reflex camera (an SLR for short), can be one of the best cameras for consumers and hobbyists, even professional. They range for consumer cameras for under $150, to heavy-duty professional systems for upwards of two thousand dollars. Finding the right SLR can be very perplexing and confusing. You need to decide on a manual or automatic body, the right lens, and probably a flash to go with it. In this essay I will try to help you when choosing an SLR camera. The first thing you need to do is decide what you are going to do with the camera. With the camera, are you going to just take pictures at the family outing, take scenic pictures, or do you want to start to take photography seriously and learn to develop your own pictures? If you just want to take simple pictures and want the camera to be easy to use, then you should most defiantly choose a mid-range automatic camera (such as the Nikon N65, the Canon EOS Rebel 2000, or the Pentax ZX-50). If you plan to progress farther in photography, your decision starts to lead you down different paths. The first path you could take would be the manual path. This is good if you want to learn photography from the ground up and hope to become an aspiring photographer. A manual camera teaches you the basics and forces you to concentrate more on the subject and what you’re doing. There are many good cameras out there, and contrary to popular belief, they aren’t just relics of the past. The ultimate manual beginners camera is the Nikon FM2, still being manufactured. It can be 100% manual, and can work like that with no batteries (you focus manually, set the shutter speed manually, and can set the aperture manually). This camera is expensive, though, and might be a little too much for a student. There are other cameras that are manual out there, though. Three of my favorites are the Pentax ME Super (or MX, ME, or K1000), the Olympus OM-2000, and the Minolta X-700 (or 370). The next path you could take would be automatic path, which would pretty much be any automatic camera from a name brand (Canon, Nikon, Minolta, or Pentax). Almost all of the automatic cameras can be put in manual mode, but be sure before you buy one that it can. Also you should go down to a camera store and try the camera. Feel it, pick it up, and if they’ll let you, shoot a couple shots inside the store. Also get a camera with a money-back guarantee because there’s nothing worse than buying a camera without the feature you wanted most! So, now that you’ve chosen the camera body and pretty much married yourself with that company, you’re going to need a lens. All companies make excellent lens, so that shouldn’t be much of a problem (as well as third party lens makers such as Tamron, Sigma, and Vivitar). The problem that you’ll run into is the focal length. That is the length that the lens will zoom to. One thing you’ll need to know is the 50 millimeters is considered the “normal” length, and is known as 1x (although the real normal is somewhere in between 40 and 50). So, 2x would be 100mm, and 1/2x would be 25mm. Knowing this, you’ll want to choose a lens: zoom, or fixed. Since the zoom lenses are getting so great, I recommend one of those. I’d recommend either 28mm-80mm, or if you can afford, longer. If you have a manual camera, a fixed length 50mm lens will do just fine and would be easier to use and easier to concentrate with (and the quality will be a tad bit larger). Now you are equipped with all of the basic knowledge to buy a Single Lens Reflex. There are other factors influencing, but they go far and beyond the range of this article (things like flashes, filters, viewfinders, etc.). A great book to check out about this type of stuff is the Peterson’s “Big Book of Photography” that comes out every year. They also have a magazine called Photographic (I’ve written an article on it, http://www.epinions.com/mags-review-239D-25F69289-398C2013-prod5/tk_~CB003.1.62). I hope this helps you when buying an SLR and I hope you enjoy photography and take some great pictures!  |
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