help?

[jiiaffa]

Hey peeps with some knowledge about cameras! I know I have skilled friends when it comes to taking pics and stuff. Yes, I am looking at you bflyw :D
I want a good, but not way too expensive camera, that can take good photos. Yes, I know that the camera alone doesn't take good photos, but I'm willing to learn. This one site is selling Canon, EOS 550D 18-

Comments

[wingfrog]

the camera isn not bad. but the lense you have in that kit is just a portrait lense.
So if you wanna take pix on cons with it, you have to sit in the front row and it looks like they sit far away.
I have a 18-200 lense and that´s not even enough for row 4.
so maybe you find a kit with a tele lense and a portrait lense or a combined one.
;)

[jiiaffa]

thanks! :)
i decided to order the camera anyway but also bought a 70-300mm (added only about 100e more to the price) lense so we'll see how i do with them.

[wingfrog]

good choice.
And you know... I wanna see pictures ;)

[jiiaffa]

oh that can take time XD i mean i have to learn how to use it first :D

[hugemind]

I have that camera body but I got the 18-135 kit lens instead of the 18-55 one, because I knew that I would want to use more zoom and not have to change lenses all the time. (I also bought a 70-300mm later on for more serious zoom needs.) But the picture quality is good, it's pretty easy to start using and it's 18 megapixels which on an SLR allows you to crop the images without the image quality suffering much, because the detector has less noise than a non-SLR. The down side is the weight, because with a longer lens the glass starts getting heavy. I have some photos taken with my camera and the 18-135 kit lens here if you're interested.

[jiiaffa]

thank you so much!
i bought that 18-55 kit but also ordered a 70-300 lense so hopefully i learn to take pretty decent pics, because those together cost more than my laptop :D

[bflyw]

It's no easy answer to the question "is it worth the money?"
It really depends on what you want to use the camera for. (I know, I know! Take pictures!)

If you want to sit 4th row at JIB and take photos and doesn't want to spend more than 650Euros, then NO, it's not worth the money. Because as wingfrog said, the lense (18-55 mm) doesn't zoom close enough to take pictures from 4th row. (I don't agree that a 18-55mm is a portrait lense though, but that's another discussion. That has to do with the f-stops)

So basically, if your goal is to be able to zoom in and take better pictures, you need a lense that can zoom that far. If you think normal compact digital cameras, a lense in it's 'not zoomed state' is usually 36mm, which means that a 56 mm is 1,5X zoom (36x1,5 = 56). So if there were a lense called 36-56mm, that would be the same as a 1,5Xdigital zoom on a compact camera. Which means that with the 18-55mm kit lense, you can photograph things that are closer to you than a normal compact camera, but you can just zoom in what equals 1,

[bflyw]

Okay. I see that you have ordered already.
When I bought my camera, I did exactely what I did when I bought the camera - I bought the kit + a 70-300mm. LOL The 70-300mm is usually not that expensive, so it's a good lense to buy extra. Unfortunately, I have gotten addicted and continues to buy lenses, and have jumped to more expensive lenses. LOL

[jiiaffa]

You are an angel! <3 Thank you so much!
Finally someone also explained what those mm thingies are changed in digital zoom!
And really, I blame you for this whole camera thing XD Your camera looked so awesome and you get all those pretty pics that I just had to buy a good camera too! The whole thing cost around 800e but I hope it will pay me back someday.
Now all I need is patience to learn how to use that machine :D
And I already have Canon PowerShot SX120 IS and I've been quite happy with it (except that it ate 10 pairs of alkaline batteries at jibcon) but you know, I want to try something even better, lol.

[bflyw]

So, you really are like me! First powershot, then DSLR :-) I don't have to tell you I LOVE my camera!

As far as I know, Canon 500D doesn't have IS in the camerahouse, so you should be careful when you buy lenses, that you buy a lense with image stabilator. (it was one of the reasons that I bought the sony instead of the Canon camera, because the sony has image stabilator in the camerahouse, so I don't need it on each and every lense). The salesman miight have tricked me though - but I am really happy with my Sony, so I don't care. LOL
I still use my Powershot to shoot video, because there is no video on the sony camera.