Digital camera

[jktrains]

Now, as far as cropped photos go, this one originally showed the loco as a small part of the overall scene. I cropped the photo to show just the loco and resized it. Not one of my best but it serves to show what cropping can do.

The point to emphasize in the discussion about cropping however is that you need a good pixel density to start with.  Someone mentioned 10 mp as a standard.  I am using a Kodak CX7300 that only specs out to 3.2 mp.  I also use Microsoft Digital Image Suite to process a lot of the photos I post, and I haven't had that much luck with cropping function.  The enlargements tend to be a little fuzzy and out of focus.  "Croppy", in other words. 

I am looking to upgrade, so I find threads like this quite interesting.

The photo I used in my cropping example was taken with a 3.0 megapixel Olympus D550Z.

This is a crop from the previously cropped photo.

[IMG]http://i292.photobucket.com/albums/mm18/forum-2/crop2.jpg]

It's not so much the equipment but what you do with what you have. A news photographer who could take great photos with a cheap 35mm camera taught me that.

No, the equipment has a lot to do with it also.  Recall the poor quality pics you took with the $10 dime store camera.  Having a the best equipment does not directly result in taking great photos.  You still need to understand things like shutter speed, depth of field and composition.  But understanding those things will help get better results from so-so equipment.

[jeffrey-wimberly]

How true. Knowing how to use what you have is a big plus. I've seen people with really expensive cameras take some really bad photos and blame it on the camera instead of their own lack of understanding of the instruction manual, if they bothered to read it at all.

[BlueHillsCPR]

How true. Knowing how to use what you have is a big plus. I've seen people with really expensive cameras take some really bad photos and blame it on the camera instead of their own lack of understanding of the instruction manual, if they bothered to read it at all.

You mean there was a manual with my camera?

Seriously, I can attest to the fact that having great equipment does not make one a great photographer but at the same time having low quality equipment can hamper even the most talented.  The old rule from doing video is garbage in = garbage out, I think that applies here too.

Having tried cropping pictures taken with 3.0 megapixel and then trying it again with an image from the new Nikon with 10 megapixels...well there is just no comparing the two.

[ben10ben]

"Film is as dead as Beta and 8 track."

You're certainly entitled to your opinion, but there's a whole lot of evidence to the contrary. Film continues to be better than ever, and is superior for many applications. 

Just ask Fuji, who spent untold amounts of money bringing back one of their most loved slide films just last year. 

[BCSJ]

Roger, if you are thinking of a digital SLR (DLSR), I would suggest that you buy one of the same brand as your current film SLR, with one caveat:  Canon changed their lens mounts for the EOS Digital Rebels.  I had an old Canon film SLR with some really cool lenses, and when I got a new Canon EOS Digital Rebel XT, I was hoping to be able to use the old lenses.  No such luck.  They simply reversed the gender of the lens and camera body.   The new camera is really a good one, though.  Does everything but put out the cat (haven't found the setting for that one yet ).  Also takes very good pictures.

Nope, Canon changed their lens mounts long before the digital reble came out. The EOS stuff came out long before the digital revolution. The older series (FE ???) will not work with modern (since 1990 or so) Canon slr bodies.

Cheers,

C.

[shayfan84325]

"Film is as dead as Beta and 8 track."

You're certainly entitled to your opinion, but there's a whole lot of evidence to the contrary. Film continues to be better than ever, and is superior for many applications. 

Just ask Fuji, who spent untold amounts of money bringing back one of their most loved slide films just last year. 

Thanks for sticking up for film.  It may seem old fashioned, but I do take my best pictures with my manual Nikon FM-2 - No auto anything: it requires me to actually think about what I'm doing.

I regard digital cameras as the 21st century answer to poloroid.  They have their own kind of usefullness, but I prefer film for serious work.  The other day I was looking at the photos I took at the 2002 Olympics.  My digital camera would have never measured up.

Still, I like taking digital pictures so I can instantly post pictures here.  In a pinch I even use my camera phone.  It's always better to get a picture, one way or another.

[BCSJ]

I want a digital camera. I know nothing about digital cameras!

With that said...........what are your recommendations for a camera that I can use to take model photos and layout photos. I would also like to be able to take photos inside and outside at various railroad museums too.

 

I was looking at these today and it's very confusing!

Sony Cyber-Shot DSC-W170

Panasonic TZ5S

Olympus Stylus 1010

Anybody able to offer some ideas? I have a 35MM SLR with several lenses. Would I be better off getting one of the DSLR cameras?

Thanks,

Roger

Roger,

I went to www.dpreview.com and looked at the cameras you were asking about.

Sony DSC-170 - This migh do a decent job for you with the exception that at ISO 400 and over I'd expect it's noise (grainines) to stink. This means you'll be stuck with flash for handheld shots in most train rooms. If you can put the camera on a tripod or steady it against the layout it should be ok. It's manual focus appears to operate in 5 steps (rather than continuous) so I'd not expect wonders from it in that department. I'd check on the white balance modes too looking for a mode where you can set the color temperature in degrees kelvin. The dpreview page for it shows apperature range from f3.3 to f5.2. It's hard to tell if this is wide open to fully stopped down or wide open at various zoom settings. In any case it's not got a very fast lens (at f3.3) and for the depth of field our model pictures cry out for you'll want to stop down to f8 which with the reduced focal lengths in a compact digital should give dof similar to f22 or f32 in a 35mm slr. The price seems attractive. dpreview didn't see fit to review the camera so these number are from the mfg spec sheet.

Panasonic TZ55 - dpreview doesn't seem to list this model.

Olympus Stylus 1010 - this camera has a 37-240mm (35mm slr equivalent) zoom. For me I'd want something that went a bit wider. It may or may not be a problem for you. I'd expect a zoom of this range to have some optical artifacts to it (barrel distorion wide, pin cushion long). Again, I'd expect ISO 400 and up to present on this camera for marketing purposes rather than being useful. A small sensor with 10mpixels just doesn't have enough surface area per pixel to have good high ISO image quality. The spec sheet for this camera didn't seem to list manual focus and exposure. Both of these are highly desirable for taking model pictures. It also doesn't list the aperature range. And there is no white balance in kelvin (VERY useful when shoot trains under artificial light). All this leads me to believe they are marketing this camera at people that want to point and shoot. But pure point and shoot cameras, while adequate for many purpose tend to not work well for model railroad photography.

So, you need to ask yourself some questions:

1) What kinds of pictures do I want to be taking? If the answers is SNAPSHOTs of my dog, house, car, kids birthday parties, and (oh yeah) my model trains then the Sony would probably be "ok". If you want better than snap shot quality you'll want to move up to a better camera.

2) Will you NEED to be taking non-flash shots of in moderately well indoor areas? I shot the following op session photo in my basement train room with a canon dslr set to ISO 1600 using a 28-70 (equivalent) zoom set to around 35mm at f8 with about 1/50th second exposure. I have a lot of 3000 lumen 4100k fluorescents in my ceiling. And the dslr STILL has to work hard (and I have to be careful not to jiggle the camera when shooting hand held) to take pictures in circumstances like this (the graininess is more due to extra compression for the web than the camera - the raw shots are not very grainy at all). A $250 compact digital is NOT going to do this no matter what their marketing literature may say. I also set the white balance of the camera to 4100K to match the temperature of the ceiling lights (a good reason to want that Kelvin color balance).

 

3. Some others here have spoken about getting a camera with good macro capabilities. Yes, this is important if you want to get close up and personal with the grill work on the side of a N-scale SD40. BUT you pay a huge price in lost depth of field for getting that close to you subject. A compact camera that won't stop down to f8 isn't going to hack it for depth of field.

You might try using a program like Helicon Focus to blend together multiple images each taken at a slightly different focus point, but to make that work well you'll need the ability to carefully control the manual focus. Many compact cameras have a manual focus. Very few have a 'good' manual focus. It's awfully hard to tell exactly where the focus point is on a 3" lcd display. Controlability tends to be difficult on these cameras. The alternative is to leave the camera in auto focus and depend on the algorithms in it to choose the right focus spot. But often this doesn't work well if depth of variaous objects in a picture is 'scattered'

4) Manual aperature control is nice too. Being able to set for aperature and exposure gives the maximum control over the qualities of a picture. Much of the time the camera can do a credible job itself. Sometimes all that's needed is exposure compensation so when the camera sees a snow field and concludes that the white is really grey this lets you turn the snow back to white again.

5) A compact camera with a flip-out lcd display (like the powershot A series from Canon) can let you see where the camera is aimed if you set if down in the midst of a model railroad scene where you can't see the rear of the camera. Try that with a big honking dslr (and the dslr being bigger will need are larger clear place to set on the layout than a compact).

5) What brand of dslr and lenses do you have? If they are Nikon or Canon (EOS mount) lenses then a dslr might be agood idea for you.dslrs (especially canons and the newest ones from Nikon do an unbelievably good job in low light by cranking up the ISO sensitivity. They can make shots possible you'd have to forgo with a lesser camera. A good, low-noise ISO 1600 or ISO 3200 setting is a life-saver. But they're big and EXPENSIVE.  For us model train photogs try to get one with 'live view'. dslrs ofen have much higher continuous shooting speeds than compacts (but this is of more use to a sports photography than a model railroad nut).

Someone else mentioned Ken Rockwell's web site and I'd second that motion.

Sorry for getting pedantic with details if you already knew all this.  In my opinion the reasons for going digital are: instant feed back of results, no need to change film or filters for different lighting situations (just change the white balance - no more T rated slide film), at least in good dslrs the high ISO perfomance leaves that old ASA 1600 film in the dust (natural light can be much better than flash). I've not shot ANY film since I got my Canon 40D last September. I chose Canon because I already had a Canon film camera and the lenses fit the 40D as did my speedlite (the speedlite also worked on my powershot G2)

Good luck,

Charlie Comstock 

[loathar]

Another thing that I find useful if shooting outside on a bright day is a camera with an actual view finder in addition to the LCD screen. It's very difficult to see what your shooting on an LCD in bright light.

[jeffrey-wimberly]

Another thing that I find useful if shooting outside on a bright day is a camera with an actual view finder in addition to the LCD screen. It's very difficult to see what your shooting on an LCD in bright light.

That's for sure! I've had many times where I've had to use the viewfinder on both of my cameras. The LCD screen was washed out completely.

[Scarpia]

Thanks for sticking up for film.  It may seem old fashioned, but I do take my best pictures with my manual Nikon FM-2 - No auto anything: it requires me to actually think about what I'm doing.

I regard digital cameras as the 21st century answer to poloroid.  They have their own kind of usefullness, but I prefer film for serious work.  The other day I was looking at the photos I took at the 2002 Olympics.  My digital camera would have never measured up.

Still, I like taking digital pictures so I can instantly post pictures here.  In a pinch I even use my camera phone.  It's always better to get a picture, one way or another.

Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but if you think that digital can't compete with film due to the quality of the image, well, I would surmise you haven't used a decent digital camera yet.

I borrowed the office's Nikon D-70 and the Lumix FZ30, and it was the latter that made me say - I'm done with film. The quality was that good, and that amazing.

I could go on about the strengths of digital vs film, especially with composition and archiving, but the market has already told the tale. 3 years ago we had 4 camera shops in my local area, we now have one. If Fuji is dumping cash into slide film, well, odds are they hired the same executive who used to be at Sony, and decided not to take Apple up on it's offer to collaborate on a portable music device....

Seriously, I'd recommend trying another camera if you honestly think film is better. The cost alone in development can amortize the price of a digital camera pretty fast, especially if you take a lot of pictures. 

Cheers! 

[ben10ben]

"if you think that digital can't compete with film due to the quality of the image, well, I would surmise you haven't used a decent digital camera yet."

"I'd recommend trying another camera if you honestly think film is better"

Unfortunately, when most people think of film, they automatically think 35mm. I would agree that the better digital cameras(Canon 1Ds MKII and III, Canon 5D, Nikon D3, etc) are at least on par with well-exposed 35mm transparencies.

Medium format, when done right, however, still far exceeds any small-format digital camera I have yet to see. Plus, quality medium format cameras are cheap these days-I paid $70 for my Rolleiflex, and I'd put the transparencies it turns out up against any small format digital camera on the market. 

The only digital camera I've seen which even comes close to 4x5 film is the Hasselblad H3D-39, which is $45,000 without the lens. If we talk about 8x10 film, nothing comes close.

Yes, I've at least had a chance to play with most of the high-end digitals on the market, including the Canon 1Ds MkIII, and the Hasselblad H3D. 

[Phoebe Vet]

Ben:

I am a past president of the Metrolina Photographic Society and know many of the professional photographers here in town.  I was one of the first pros in Charlotte (not THE first, but one of the first) to start using digital in addition to film.  I shot side by side with both on assignments for about 6 months before realizing that there was absolutely no advantage to film.  I have not shot a roll of film in 6 years.  I have several thousand dollars worth of medium format film cameras and no one in the industry wants them.

Digital has the obvious advantages of instant results and instant evaluation like Polaroid did, but it has many others.  Printers are all digital.  If you are making brochures and shoot film the printer will charge you to have your chromes scanned so they can use them.  The dynamic range achievable with digital is much greater than film.  I no longer have to scan and then dust spot negatives to get them into Photoshop for retouching.  Retouching is a snap.  Zits and scars are easily removed, groups of people can be optimized by moving facial expressions from frame to frame to get the best of everyone, and I even put a family group together in a portrait when they couldn't all be in town on the same day.

When digital was new, and some pros were telling potential clients that film was better, I used to show the clients 3 large very similar portraits and challenge them to tell me which one was shot with film.  No one could, and all those pros have now changed over, and when they initially changed, many of them came to me to show them how to use Photoshop because I had been doing it for years.

Film will not go away.  It will just be a niche market, like black and white.  Incidentally, when you shoot digital you can make ANY photo black and white, or sepia, or watercolor, or pencil sketch, etc in about 30 seconds.

[Railphotog]

I'll second the idea to get a camera with a viewfinder as well as a rear LCD screen.  I have a small pocket camera with only the LCD screen, it's almost impossible to use in outdoors in any kind of light, mostly what I see is me looking at the LCD!

My middle camera is much better, its a Canon Powershot S5.  It has an LCD viewfinder as well as a large rear LCD screen.  This rear LCD swivels around to face the camera when not in use, protecting it.  It comes in handy at times when placing the camera in odd ways, such as way in on the layout, overhead, or down low.  Shooting on a tripod with the lens set to f/8 achieves a pretty good depth of field:

The camera has 8 megapixels, a good number for almost any uses.  The main benefit with the camera is its 12X zoom lens - equivalent of a 36-432mm lens on a film camera.  And it is image stabilized too, allowing hand held shots at lower shutter speeds.  It also has all the auto and manual capabilities of larger cameras, it will accept my Canon flash (and has a built in one), has close up modes, etc., and it does pretty good videos too!   You can see why this is often my camera of choice when out and about, although I do have a Canon DSLR -an XSi with many lenses and accessories.  A whole lot of stuff to lug around!

 

[miniwyo]

I have a Canon 20D and I really love it except for the fact that the sensor is not the same size as a 35mm.(As do all of the Cameras in that line, 20Da 30D 40D) To remedy that, I have upgraded to the Canon 5D. That will be here next week. Depending on what you want to get, I would recommend a Canon or Nikon. I work in the oil field doing construction, and I have to have a camera, and to avoid damaging my dSLR I picked up a Canon Powershot A590IS, That is a pretty good little point and shoot. You can also buy an adapter and other attachments to change the lens into telephoto, wide angle, or macro. What you need to look for in a camera is this. How easy is it for YOU to use? What kind of photo format does it take? (Most P&S take Jpeg only. But what kind of quality settings does it have?). I have heard rumours about other brands. I have heard that Olympus has a bad habit of corrupting memory cards, and Kodak is 2 years behind all the other manufacturers with their technology. I do know that Kodak's interface is a PITA (at least to me it is.) But the real question you need to ask yourself is, "Based on the information at hand, What one do YOU like the best?"

 

Oh, I also sporadically shoot film. I found a place to order film for some Antique Cameras that I recently Aquired for my collection (one at almost $25 a roll.....) I like film, and can do great things with it. It is just a little to time consuming especially with my busy schedule to get into a darkroom to do anything....... 

 

Good Luck!

[loathar]

Phoebe Vet-Yep. I bought a 6 pack of 35mm film a week before receiving my digital camera as a gift. I doubt seriously if they'll ever get used.

The only real drawback I've found is the refresh rate for the next shot. But I'm sure that will be reduced or eliminated when I upgrade to a better digital.

[Scarpia]

"if you think that digital can't compete with film due to the quality of the image, well, I would surmise you haven't used a decent digital camera yet."

"I'd recommend trying another camera if you honestly think film is better"

Unfortunately, when most people think of film, they automatically think 35mm. I would agree that the better digital cameras(Canon 1Ds MKII and III, Canon 5D, Nikon D3, etc) are at least on par with well-exposed 35mm transparencies.

Medium format, when done right, however, still far exceeds any small-format digital camera I have yet to see. Plus, quality medium format cameras are cheap these days-I paid $70 for my Rolleiflex, and I'd put the transparencies it turns out up against any small format digital camera on the market. 

The only digital camera I've seen which even comes close to 4x5 film is the Hasselblad H3D-39, which is $45,000 without the lens. If we talk about 8x10 film, nothing comes close.

Yes, I've at least had a chance to play with most of the high-end digitals on the market, including the Canon 1Ds MkIII, and the Hasselblad H3D. 

Agreed, I was assuming you were discussing 35 or APS, as large formats are not commonly discussed.

As a professional has already replied, all I can add as a techy is that as soon as digital reaches 20 megapixal or higher, the advantage of the large format camera will evaporate. IMHO.

as an aside, isn't it an interesting dichotemy, how one one hand we demand better images (such as this discussion) and on the other, everyone is satisfied with poor ones (YouTube)?

 

 

[DingySP]

Any thoughts on the Nikon Coolpix P80?

[Phoebe Vet]

I bet very few people in here have any interest at all in view cameras, (4x5, 5x7, 8x10, etc.) and if they do, there are 100 megapixel backs available for them, too.

[Scarpia]

Any thoughts on the Nikon Coolpix P80?

I'm not familiar with that model, but my experience has found the coolpix are not a great product. The high end Nikons are, but in the point and shoot catagory, you can get better for the price.  Sony, Olympus, for examples, may give a better image.

[jbinkley60]

Any thoughts on the Nikon Coolpix P80?

I'm not familiar with that model, but my experience has found the coolpix are not a great product. The high end Nikons are, but in the point and shoot catagory, you can get better for the price.  Sony, Olympus, for examples, may give a better image.

I'll have to disagree on the Coolpix comment (not all Coolpixs are created equal).  I almost bought a P80 to replace my 5700 but after much agonizing I bought a D60.  The P80 is a major improvement over both the S, L and P series and also my 5700.  Aside from the improved optics it also has much better performance in low light. 

 

[joslin527]

I use a Cannon SD1100IS great image stability, micro lens, lots of manual and automatic settings, including ISO.  My wife uses it to take close ups of flowers, pictures are crisp and colors are amazing.... I have also used a friends Cannon 10D super DSLR...

[PA&ERR]

All of the photos I've posted here have been shot with my Kodak DX6490 - including my Avatar photo. It is a good little camera and the 10X zoom comes in handy at times.

These were taken, hand held in available light.

-Spike