Don't know which digital camera?

[Muggsy]

here I go again, butting in, sorry but so many interesting points get raised in almost every thread, interesting to me anyway.

I have a 75-300 zoom, rather than upgrade to a 500, all of which seem a bit out of my price range right now, especially as I'm just starting out, can I add a tele attachement ? if so, which one ? and will doing so help ? or be an advantage.
eos 400d and canon lense.

I'll be off on holiday soon, you can rest then

Muggsy

[paulthomas]

Unless you're going for a DSLR, look for something with less than 6MP. More megapixels does not give you a better photo; quite the reverse in fact as dynamic range and low-light performance are very seriously degraded.

[Leono]

I have been looking into getting a better digital camera than my present compact. Dixons advertise on the net that they are selling the Fuji S8000fd for £188 plus postage. This is an 18 x optical Zoom giving a maximum focal length of approximately 500mm. It also has anti shake. No Raw. I took an sd card to a camera shop today and they allowed me to take a telephoto shot with the camera. The sharpness of the photo is terrific. The image has slight colour fringing on bright edges. It is not, of course a compact camera in appearance, nor is it an SLR (no interchangeable lens) and the view finder is not optical. It is half way between the two. I am very tempted to purchase this camera.


Happy shooting

[Leono]

ps. I think it is about 8mp

[Birchy]

HI THERE,

thanx for your suggestions but after a little research myself I've decided on the Lumix TZ3 Panasonic. There's nothing in it's league for the price and for what I'm using it for. The only thing I can think of which might be a disadvantage would be that it's not got a view finder to look throw.

Birchy

[coasty]

Originally Posted by Birchy

HI THERE,

thanx for your suggestions but after a little research myself I've decided on the Lumix TZ3 Panasonic. There's nothing in it's league for the price and for what I'm using it for. The only thing I can think of which might be a disadvantage would be that it's not got a view finder to look throw.

Birchy

I have just got myself a Lumix,,,and i am chuffed to little meatballs with it

[zan]

I'd recommend the lumix as well. My dad carries one with him all the time, and for wildlife-type shots the 10x optical zoom is a big help (don't confuse it with digital zoom though, which is just rubbish). No compact will be better than an SLR if you really want to take decent wildlife shots, but the lumix is a good compromise. oh, and it's got image stabilisation which you'll probably find useful too.

Zan

[eccles]

Originally Posted by Muggsy

here I go again, butting in, sorry but so many interesting points get raised in almost every thread, interesting to me anyway.

I have a 75-300 zoom, rather than upgrade to a 500, all of which seem a bit out of my price range right now, especially as I'm just starting out, can I add a tele attachement ? if so, which one ? and will doing so help ? or be an advantage.
eos 400d and canon lense.

I'll be off on holiday soon, you can rest then

Muggsy

If you'd said you had a 300mm prime lens then a 1.4x or 2x converter would have been a good addition. However, zoom lenses, particularly at the cheaper end, just don't have the resolution or aperture size to carry a teleconverter. You will gain very little if any detail, will lose one or two stops in brightness and possibly lose autofocus as well.

In the days of film the lowered resolution didn't matter so much as you were aiming at colour prints that came straight from a commercial photolab. You would try to do all your framing in the camera as cropping a colour picture in the darkroom yourself was difficult and expensive. But with digital you can crop on the PC, and unless your main lens has greater resolution than your sensor then digitally cropping and upsizing with Photoshop or similar would give you just as good a result as with a teleconverter.

I appreciate that big Canon zooms or primes are expensive, so if these are beyond your budget, I would recommend you save up and go for a Sigma 135-400, 175-500 or 50-500 or maybe the Tamron 200-500. Each of these will give you better reach than your 75-300 with real increases in image detail.

[Maccattack]

Prices are coming down since this thread started , Nikon D40 is going for £240 "only 6MP" but very good optics .
MMac

[stoptheclock]

in my honest opinion (and partly advice from a friend) unless you going to blow the pics up to a silly size you'll find around 5-6MP more than enough for great quality shots