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Yet another edition of the All Purpose Gear Chat thread. Previous was getting close to 12.6k clicks and 3 years. Old Threads (for those with archives) v1 ⁃ v2 ⁃ v3.25 ⁃ v4 ⁃ v5 ⁃ v6 v7L VR USM DG AF-s Other gear threads
Some links to get you started on finding photo gear
General advice
Prime lenses are fast, they suck in light and gives you silky smooth bokehs. You definitely want one. If you're reading this you probably have a crop-sensor camera. That means a lens around 30mm to 35mm focal length will be a "normal" lens for you: Give about the same angle of view as your eyes. Historically, 50mm f/1.8 has been a very popular, cheap option across brands, but it does have the disadvantage that 50mm is rather long on a crop-sensor camera. However they make good portrait lenses. Take a day using your kit lens stuck on 50mm zoom, then the next day keep it on 35mm zoom, see which you prefer. For Nikon shooters, get the AF-S 35mm f/1.8G DX lens. It's slightly costlier than their 50mm offerings, but will likely make you more happy. Canon users should look at the Sigma 30mm f/1.4, or Canon's own 35mm f/2. Pentax has a large collection of primes, e.g. the SMC-FA-35mm f/2. See also this post by ExecuDork. (Can anyone fill in for other camera brands?) Why no UV Filters? The short version:  uvfilter-kitlens.jpgThe long version: Invariably, about once a week the discussion comes up about UV filters. Someone comes in who was just told by a 'friend' or (worse) a sales clerk at Wolf/Best Buy/Wal-Mart that they should get a UV filter to protect their 'investment.' Now this is not quite outright bullshit, but in the context that anyone who is receiving this advice would get it, it most certainly is. The above image shows the effect of cheap UV filters. UV filters do have a purpose and are not completely a waste. If your lens is $1000, and you are willing to spend about $100 on UV filter, then it may be a good idea to use one if the conditions are messy. Some Canon lenses with weather sealing need a filter to complete the seal. Obviously anything that's going to harm your lens will harm your filter. So putting your filter on in a sand storm will save your lens but destroy your filter, and that's the goal at the high end. These situations though DO NOT apply to anyone who needs to have this explained to them. Your 17-55 4-5.6 IS/VR Kit Lens is worth about $50 in mint condition used. You can buy a new one for $150. It doesn't make sens to spend $100 on a filter to 'protect' it when you degrade the image quality by doing so. You can always use a hood to protect your lens if you're worried about it. Why a card reader? Your camera might connect straight to your computer and let you pull out pictures, but you may have noticed: It's slow. Any card reader you can find today will outperform (just about) any camera in raw transfer speed when it comes to reading pictures off a memory card. Save yourself the frustration of eternally slow imports and get one. The consensus seems to be that there is very little difference between readers, and just about any cheap one will do. Understanding crop factor Most digital SLR cameras sold today have "crop sensors", i.e. image sensors that are smaller than a 35mm film frame. The main reason for this is cost of production; it's much, much cheaper to produce even slightly smaller sensors, and the image quality doesn't really suffer. When you read about camera lenses you may see the term "35mm equivalent focal length", or similar, pop up. For example, you may see someone claim than a 50mm lens is 35mm-equivalent to 75mm. So wait is it a 50mm lens or a 75mm lens or what is it?? The focal length is a physical property of the construction of a lens, it never changes (unless it's a zoom lens!) The optics in the lens projects an image onto the image plane, which is where the sensor sits. How much of that projected image gets recorded then depends on how large the sensor is, a larger sensor records more of the image, and thus gets more of the edges of the image. Effectively, the angle of view of a given focal length is greater, the larger the sensor is. For this discussion, angle of view is the real key word: How large an angle in front of the camera that will get captured on the final photo. So when someone tells you that a lens is "35mm-equivalent to 75mm" what they actually mean is that the 50mm lens gives you the same angle of view on your crop sensor camera, as a 75mm lens would give on a full-frame (or 35mm film) camera. If all of this confuses you, just get your own personal feel for what kind of pictures a given focal length gives on your camera. Polarizers (thanks to GWBBQ) When light is reflected off of a nonmetallic surface, such as glass, a car's paint, water, or the air and water vapor in the atmosphere, the reflected light is polarized - the reflected waves of light are oriented in the same direction. This light can be blocked partially or entirely by using a polarizing filter. There are two types of polarizing filters that are used in photography, linear and circular. The difference is linear and circular polarization is shown in this Youtube video. The most important difference is that Linear polarizers interfere with phase detection autofocus and through-the-lens metering. Unless you're manually focusing and manually setting exposure, you want a circular polarizer. Polarizing filters can be adjusted to pass, partially pass, or block polarized light. This allows you to take pictures of reflective surfaces like cars or bodies of water and cut most or all of the reflection so you can see the car's real paint color and see through the windows, see what's under the surface of the water. The other common effect is to darken the sky. Light from the sky is maximally polarized 90° from the sun. One thing to remember about a polarizing filter is that it's one of few effects that can not be replicated in post-processing. A good polarizer is an important piece of your kit if you're ever going to take pictures of anything reflective. The best bang for your buck when it comes to circular polarizers is the Marumi Super DHG CPL. Get it to fit your biggest lens (probably 67mm unless you have a Canon or Nikkor 70-200 f/2.8, in which case it's 77mm) and a set of step-down rings to fit it on the rest of your lenses. Neutral Density Filters (thanks to GWBBQ) ND Filters reduce the amount of light that passes through them. A good ND filter does this evenly for all wavelengths, meaning it just makes your image darker without imparting any sort of color cast. Why is this important? Say you're shooting in broad daylight. The good old sunny 16 rule says that at ISO 100, you'll get a proper exposure at 1/100 and f/16. Let's say you wanted to shoot a portrait wide open at f/2.0. That's 6 stops faster, so you'd have to increase shutter speed to around 1/4000. What if your camera doesn't go that high? Or, let's say you want to shoot a long exposure of water flowing to get that smooth, silky look everyone knows, let's say 1/2 second. that's also 6 stops more light and unless you're shooting large format, your lens probably doesn't stop down that far. The solution is the Neutral Density Filter. The light reducing property of an ND Filter goes by powers of two, with each power being another stop of light reduction. 2x is one stop, 4x is two stops, 8x is three stops, and so on. Generally, you can't go wrong with B+W filters, but the quality is reflected in the price. I don't know if there are any cheaper ones that are good but still worth the price. Same goes for ND Filters as polarizers, get one to fit your biggest lens and step down rings to adapt to others. Depth of Field and "bokeh" The long version: Dren wrote a nice post in the Nikon thread The shorter version: Large apertures (low f-number) gives shorter depth of field. Longer focal lengths give shorter depth of field. Closer focus gives shorter depth of field. The quality of bokeh depends on the shape of the aperture blades in the lens, as well as the general optical construction. But seriously, read that post above. Recommendations We are more than happy to help you pick your new gear, but if you are here for a recommendation on what Lens, SLR (not your first dSLR, go to the newbie thread for that), Camera Bag, Tripod, Point & Shoot, Printer, Desk Chair or Tuna Net to buy, be sure to give us an idea of your purpose for wanting such things, current equipment that it would be replacing if any, and your rough budget. "Hey guys what camera and lens should I buy" is not going to do anyone any good. Please give us as much of the following information as possible:
"I'm looking to move to full frame from a 40D. I have $2000 to spend and shoot mainly street photography." Reading If you haven't yet, check out Understanding Exposure from the local library, Amazon.com or just go sit in a Borders and read it. It will help you... understand exposure. nielsm fucked around with this message at 21:03 on Jun 25, 2013 |
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Jun 20, 2012 02:05
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Corrections and suggestions for more FAQ stuff welcome. (Maybe something about ND and POL filters?) Also some recommendations for beginner's prime lenses for other brands.
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Jun 20, 2012 02:08
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MrBlandAverage posted:Super Super Pedantry: a "telephoto" is a lens which includes a telephoto optical group, i.e. a negative optical group behind a positive optical group. This reduces the back focal length of the lens. But I believe its optical centre will be 300mm from the projected image plane when it's focused at infinity. Something like that.
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Jun 25, 2012 01:36
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GWBBQ posted:advice Thanks, added it to the OP. Still waiting for someone on Sony, Pentax, etc. to recommend some primes 
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Jul 1, 2012 22:12
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PBio posted:Hey guys, i've been stupid and have planned a 3 week holiday to the states, flying out on Saturday and I only have one battery and no car charger. You won't have access to regular mains plugs either? Modern chargers tend to take any voltage and AC frequency so you just need a suitable cable/plug converter. (My Nikon charger says 100-240V ~ 50-60 Hz, i.e. "any commonly used AC system.")
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Jul 3, 2012 22:24
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signalnoise posted:I've got a 75-300mm lens I use for taking pictures of animals from my porch. What should I look for if I want my camera to magnify more? Right now getting a picture of a finch on a telephone wire gives me a good picture in one ninth of the actual area of the photo. Do I just want more mm's on the lens? Please give the answer to me as if I know less than nothing about anything. If your sensor has sufficient resolution (megapixels) you can also simply crop the picture so the subject takes up more of the frame. You lose resolution but if you have enough resolution to take from that doesn't matter as much. (How much resolution is "enough" depends on what you want to do with the pictures. If you want to put pictures on Facebook you can get by with just about anything, if you want poster-size prints you want large resolution.)
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Jul 17, 2012 00:17
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DJExile posted:The cheapest way to extend the reach of any lens is a teleconverter. Most increase your focal length by a factor of 1.4x, at the cost of a darker aperture, slower focus, and a slight degrade in image quality, but they're far less expensive than longer reach lenses themselves. Some are 2x but these usually are useless outside of very bright light. Most likely a TC is a bad idea for a zoom like that. I'm guessing it's a variable aperture zoom and that the aperture at 300mm is f/5.6, meaning that an 1.4x TC would make it aperture f/8 at 420mm. It's not a terrible lot of gain, and autofocus probably won't work well at f/8.
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Jul 17, 2012 00:35
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astrollinthepork posted:I looked around for the newbie thread mentioned in the OP but came up short. Getting an actual 2000 mm will be insanely heavy and really expensive, unless you get one of the extremely cheap mirror optics in which case you'll have a very hard time focusing and get quite bad image quality. I would suggest getting a camera with a higher resolution so you will at least be have a chance to capture more detail with a shorter lens. Nikon D3200 has quite a bit more resolution than the D3100, so go for that instead, if you're getting Nikon's low end. For optics, at your budget you're realistically capped at around 300 mm on a cheap zoom. You can perhaps get something like Tamron 70-300 f/4-5.6. The kind of optics you are asking for would be Nikon's own 400 mm f/2.8 and a 2x teleconverter on it. I suggest you just look up the price for Nikkor AF-S VR 400 f/2.8G IF-ED yourself. nielsm fucked around with this message at 12:57 on Jul 22, 2012 |
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Jul 22, 2012 12:54
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That 70s Shirt posted:Yeah, the salt spray dissolved in the warm water no problem, but after removing the filters they were covered in water streaks. And then cleaning the water streaks led to lens fluid streaks, which led to more streaks which led to... and so on. I wonder if a surfactant wouldn't help with drying problems like that, like it does with drying developed negatives.
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Aug 13, 2012 22:14
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TheReverend posted:The camera on my android phone is complicated enough for me. Phone camera apps are hell to control and a DSLR is much easier to use. (And the basic parameters of an exposure are quite easy to understand, and those are all you need to know to use it in a non-auto mode. In full auto you obviously don't get as much control of the final result, but the image quality will still be superior to a phone camera.)
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Sep 30, 2012 09:04
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Urgh angry about flashes here. I bought a Nissin Di466 for Nikon and a Hähnel wireless trigger on sale today, thinking I would finally get not just proper manual controlled flash, but also off-camera. Well, turns out that the drat flash only fires when it gets full i-TTL control signals. It's literally impossible to have it trigger with a basic two-contact hotshoe. Meaning that it can't be triggered by the radio trigger. At least it can still work in an optically triggered slave-mode, so if I trigger one flash with the radio-thingy then the Nissin can trigger from that in turn. But... why. Why can't you just make a flash that works on any stupid camera. 
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Sep 30, 2012 19:38
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8th-samurai posted:http://www.nissindigital.com/files/en_di466_users_nmanual.pdf I know. Manual mode still only fires when it gets TTL signalling. It fires on my D40's hotshoe. It won't on my F90, Rollei 35 or radio trigger, regardless of mode set. The Slave 2 mode is the only way to get that flash to trigger without i-TTL signalling in the hotshoe.
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Oct 1, 2012 10:22
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Nostalgia4Infinity posted:My boss has asked me to buy a new camera for our department to document events and site visits. The pictures will be used for things like brochures and annual reports. Our company has a photography department but they aren't always available when we go on site visits to grantees. I have a budget of $750. Canon S100 is said to be quite good
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Oct 16, 2012 18:16
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Is there such a thing as a contrast-reducing filter, for capturing high-contrast scenes? If not, would it be possible to make?
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Dec 2, 2012 11:45
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Sigma has a new 35/1.4 lens arriving and it's getting rave reviews. Look out for that one.
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Dec 17, 2012 17:10
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I updated the first post a bit, checked links to other threads and so. The Olympus thread has apparently gone to archives.
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Dec 20, 2012 20:58
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An ND filter should not help the camera "meter better". It just changes how much light reaches the sensor/film. So if you mount a 1 stop ND filter, the camera will meter 1 stop less than without the filter, because the image is 1 stop darker. The exposed image will still be the same, except for the effects of the slower shutter (possibly more motion blur) or the larger aperture (less depth of field.) Just set the exposure compensation in the camera. Or, set the camera to manual mode and find a proper exposure before the sports match, if it's indoors with controlled lighting. The lighting should be the same all across the playing field in that case, so the exposure would be the same through the game and regardless of where you point. Camera auto-exposure systems tend to target an 18% gray exposure, i.e. expose so the average light intensity in the image matches an 18% gray card. When you point the camera at a snowy field, that results in the camera wanting the bright white snow to be 18% gray, causing it to severely under-expose (because it doesn't know the snow is supposed to be bright white.) If you instead tell the camera to over-expose the snow will end up as the bright white it should be. Or use an incident light meter, if you have that option. What an ND filter might be useful for is if you are outside in bright light and only have fast films (such as the Kodak Gold 400), and you want to use slower shutter speeds or larger apertures. nielsm fucked around with this message at 11:54 on Jan 2, 2013 |
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Jan 2, 2013 11:52
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GobiasIndustries posted:I know (hope not) that I'm going to be mocked for this, but what kinds of fun stuff can I do with a polarizing filter? I added this: http://www.amazon.com/Marumi-Super-...+polarizer+77mm to a photography wish list on Amazon a while ago and kind of forgot about it, and my parents purchased it for me this year. I've got step-up rings to adapt it to the lenses I have, I just..don't quite remember what I put it on the wish list for. I love taking nature photography if that helps at all. Pol filters affect blue skies, for one thing. They can also be used to control reflections from e.g. water and glass (but not metal.) Many LCD panels also emit strongly polarized light, so with the right angle on the polarizer you can turn a lit display completely black on the photo.
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Jan 5, 2013 21:18
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Anmitzcuaca posted:Is there such a thing as an SD card with NFC built in? I'm looking at buying the new Lenovo Thinkpad Helix, which doesn't have an SD card reader, but does have NFC and I want a way to be able to copy stuff off my SD card without carrying around a USB reader or USB cable. NFC isn't a useful data transfer method in itself. Wikipedia says it has a theoretical bandwidth of 424 kbit/s, which would yield at best around 40-50 kb/s, or more than 2 minutes to transfer a single 6 MB picture. Usually NFC is used as a set-up protocol for other, higher bandwidth networks like Bluetooth or Wifi. However I have seen (and used) some SD cards that had a built-in USB interface. It wasn't that fast, but it was certainly handy.
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Feb 10, 2013 01:49
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As for lens suggestions: Unless you poo poo money go for that Tamron 70-300. Also look into getting a macro lens around 90 mm. As for terminology: "Tele" is used about any lens with longer focal lens than "normal", although it technically refers to lenses with shorter physical distance from their optical center to the image plane, than their focal length. "Normal" lenses give an angle of view close to the human vision. On your camera, a normal lens is one around 30-35 mm. "Wide" refers to lenses shorter than normal. "Zoom" is just lenses that can adjust their focal length. The opposite is a fixed focal length lens, also called a "prime". Primes tend to have higher image quality than zooms. "Macro" lenses are lenses able to and built for focusing very close.
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Feb 27, 2013 17:58
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Captain Catapult posted:-Pictures taken of something decently close, but where the background looks way closer than it really is. (No idea what this effect is called) It's called perspective compression, distance compression or something like that, and is the effect of being far from the subject. The ratio between the distance from observer (camera) to two objects determines how large/distant they seem to be relative to reach other, so to get that effect you must be physically far away. Typically, large focal lengths help get that effect because they force you further away.
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Mar 4, 2013 13:16
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Platystemon posted:Sooner or later, I think one of them will move to undercut with entry‐level full‐frame and the others will be forced to follow, but it might happen later rather than sooner. I wonder if they might do that by shipping sensors with known defects, and simply code the firmware to mask them? (I.e. program the firmware with the defects of the specific sensor.) Or do they perhaps even already do that?
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May 6, 2013 23:50
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There is some dissonance in your choices there. The 7D is a large, high-quality camera body, and then you want to put one of the worst lenses available today on it. You should probably change one of them to match the other.
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May 26, 2013 12:21
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Waarg posted:Thoughts on this as a potential low-cost (in photography £) high bang-for-buck multipurpose lens lineup? You probably don't want this for general purpose low light and street. It's far too long to be comfortable for that. (It will have equivalent angle of view to a 80mm on full frame.) Get the Sigma 30/1.4 for that instead. It will be very much a normal lens on a Canon APS-C, and it's also 2/3 stops faster than the 50/1.8. If you still feel the need for a shorter portrait lens (the 100mm will probably feel long for many situations) then add a 50mm too, but you should start out with a 30mm or 35mm.
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May 26, 2013 17:14
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Legdiian posted:Is there a thread dedicated to capturing audio? I have a D7100 and I'd like to add an external microphone to it. I will be filming loud things (streetbikes at full throttle very close to me). Maybe check the Musician's Lounge (under NMD), at least they know about audio recording gear there.
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May 30, 2013 15:17
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If you want to shoot live shows with poor lighting, consider how far you will be from the scene. Unless you'll be sitting on the first row, chance is you'll want something longer for it. I'd think a fast 85mm prime would be well suited for that.
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Jun 6, 2013 10:56
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Or if you're okay with looking like a true dork, get a second camera body so you have one for each lens.
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Jun 10, 2013 10:55
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Speaking of extension tubes, I'm too lazy to do any research myself, but I'm wondering: How much extension would I need to turn the Nikon 55/2.8, which by itself does 1:2, into 1:1? Any neat, easy way to calculate that?
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Jul 4, 2013 10:48
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So a while ago I bought this lovely Holga lens for Nikon mount. It's supposed to be 60mm with fixed f/8 aperture. However when I compare it to my regular 50/1.8 set to f/8, the Holga is about 3.5 stops darker. Did they actually make an f/28 lens and leave out the "2" on the print? Or could there be something else in the constructions that so heavily darkens the image? (Maybe I should try using it for some long exposures.) But I'm shooting it in broad daylight at ISO 1600 in 1/250s, it's ridiculous. I need to try it on some film too.
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Jul 14, 2013 16:35
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BabyRyoga posted:It is a Casio Exilim EX-Z690 16.1 megapixel camera I bought one of those (in fact that exact model, except for the branded exterior) for cheap recently, those 70 EUR seems about right. It's a pretty bad camera, especially controls wise. Your best use for it will likely be a fancy-looking paper weight. Only sell it if you can find a crazy collector.
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Jul 24, 2013 09:48
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If you want TTL wireless it's not going to be cheap.
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Jul 27, 2013 07:51
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As far as I know, Scratch that, Canon does have optical TTL control. But no, don't expect off-brand flashes to support that, especially not cheap ones. They will typically have two optically triggered modes, a simple where they fire as soon as they see another flash fire, and a TTL-compensated one where they attempt to guess when a pre-flash is going on and only fire for the real exposure. Both of those would still be pure manual control on the flash itself. nielsm fucked around with this message at 08:19 on Jul 27, 2013 |
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Jul 27, 2013 08:13
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Wario In Real Life posted:School me on what to get nerds. I've heard good things about Tamron but I feel weird buying a 6 year old lens and was hoping for some other opinions. If it hasn't received major updates in 6 years and is still on the market, isn't that just an indication that it's good enough to not warrant replacement? HolyDukeNukem posted:If you don't mind prime, Samyang makes a relatively cheap 14mm. Wouldn't it not really be the being prime that's the problem, but rather the manual focus? (I think also manual aperture, but not sure.)
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Aug 24, 2013 02:50
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Bubbacub posted:What's the closest full frame equivalent to the Sigma 8-16mm? Nikon has a 14-24 mm f/2.8, it won't have quite as wide an angle of view as 8 mm does on an 1.5x crop but it's the closest you get without finding a copy of the mythical Nikon 13 mm prime. Canon doesn't have any zoom that goes that wide. They have a 16-35 mm f/2.8 zoom, and then a 14 mm f/2.8 prime. SoundMonkey posted:A lot of brands have a 10-20 or 12-24. Generally for a lot of dollars. Nikon's 10-24 is DX, and Canon's 10-22 is EF-S.
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Sep 22, 2013 22:32
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If the radiation doesn't fog your film it isn't a problem 
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Sep 24, 2013 23:24
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Chroisman posted:Edit: How would a combo of D7000 and either Nikon 10-24mm f/3.5-4.5G ED DX AF-S Nikkor OR Nikon 12-24mm f/4G ED-IF DX AF-S Nikkor be? If you're going for a Nikon DSLR, make sure you at least keep that 50 mm f/1.4 lens from the old FE. Even if the camera is dead the lens is likely still good. The D7x00 series will be able to do auto-exposure with it, although the lens is still manual focus, and you shouldn't underestimate the usefulness of longer focal lengths for landscape.
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Nov 9, 2013 11:09
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Yeah you definitely need a camera that can take a better lens. I would suggest going for a cheap, second-hand DSLR and then splurge a bit extra on a good macro lens. You don't need a high-end body, since the shots are static so you can compensate for worse ISO performance by using low ISO and extending shutter times since the camera will be mounted on a tripod (right?) I'd suggest something like perhaps a Nikon D3000 or D3100 and e.g. the Nikkor DX 40 mm f/2.8. That one can be had for quite cheap from new too, and will work perfectly on any Nikon DSLR, but you can also look for older F-mount macro lenses which may be better quality but may not be able to auto-focus or offer metering on the low-end bodies. Again, lack of AF and metering wouldn't be a massive problem since you can focus and adjust exposure manually when shooting static scenes like this.
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Nov 10, 2013 20:07
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Supersonic posted:I have a Canon Rebel XT and am looking to buy a decent portrait lens for a project I'm working on. Basically I'm looking for a lens that can take nice photos of people posing from distances of about 5-15 ft in a variety of locations both indoor and outdoor. My budget is $200-500, what lenses in this pricerange would be a good bet? The 50/1.8 is a pretty good length for portraits on crop sensor.
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Nov 23, 2013 18:08
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voodoorootbeer posted:Small LED-based light with diffused surface set up under the drink like a light-up bar coaster + decent camera phone? Any cheap point and shoot with flash in a dim bar is going to look like poo poo. This sounds like the most reasonable idea to me. At $200 you aren't going to get a camera that will solve your problem, you're better off spending it on a non-obtrusive lighting solution that will make a less-good camera able to take good pictures. As an added bonus, if you get just the drink lit up, it will be so much brighter than the background that it might look like it's just floating in darkness. Example of a "drink" lit from below:  This is a really quick setup using a cheap cold-cathode light table and my low-end smartphone. (I also don't have any cocktail, wine or other stem glasses, so instead placed one on top of another.) This was with the room lights on, the effect is even greater when I turn them off, just didn't occur to me to try that when taking to that picture in the first place.
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Nov 28, 2013 20:08
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gvibes posted:I guess my question is, how can I tell that I'm not being crazy and confirm that there is something actually wrong with the lens? Are there any tests I can run? A simple test? Put camera on tripod, find some ruled paper or similar thing with a simple pattern, place the patterned thing at an angle to the camera (so the lines would become diagonal in the photo), focus somewhere in the middle of the pattern, take pictures at all the apertures. Afterwards inspect all the pictures 1:1, if there's anywhere along the depth axis the pictures are sufficiently sharp it would point to autofocus being miscalibrated. If it isn't sharp anywhere at any aperture, then the lens may be bad. If it's an AF calibration issue, the newer higher-end bodies have an option for AF micro adjust you can try to use.
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Jan 7, 2014 00:40
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