4 ms·

I disagree completely. I don't shoot professionally, and I've got a Nikon D40 with the lens it came with (body & lens cost less than $500 new). The photos I get

I disagree completely. I don't shoot professionally, and I've got a Nikon D40 with the lens it came with (body & lens cost less than $500 new). The photos I get from it are far far better than every point and shoot or smartphone camera I've ever owned. I get needing better equipment if you're a pro photographer, or even if you're just somebody like Marco with disposable income, but the suggestion that you need to dump $1k+ into a setup to make owning an SLR worth it is absurd.

pkulak 13y ago
You're right. But I still think you would get better shots if you bought the camera with body only and used the difference to pick up a good prime lens instead.
- Moulde 13y ago
  Of course your pictures would be sharper, but a stock say canon lens kit really is good and good enough for most, especially the far majority of people thinking they need a better lens for them to take better pictures. And the difference in price between a body and a body with the standard lens kit is usually quite small. I completely disagree with that article.
  - pkulak 13y ago
    Sharper, I suppose, but I consider being stuck at 4.0 the real handicap. And those kit lenses usually give you 4.0 as a _best_ case; 5.6 if you zoom in at all.
    - dpark 13y ago
      And yet Canon's 70-200 f/4 IS is very highly regarded, as is their 100-400 f/4.5-5.6 IS.
      - pkulak 13y ago
        Those are 200mm+ telephotos. At that distance F4 makes bokeh like you'd see in a 1.8 prime. F5.6 on a 50mm doesn't let you separate the subject from the background at all, or get any light. If you are 100 meters away from something, you're likely outside with plenty of light (or shooting sports, but those guys shoot with 2.8 zooms like the EF 70-200mm f/2.8 IS).
        dpark 13y ago
        It's hardly fair to call the 70-200 a "200mm+ telephoto". No one buys it just for 200mm or they'd buy a prime. The 70mm end is not far from the long end of an 18-55 (but it is a stop faster). I'll grant you that you won't get extremely thin depth of field with a kit 18-55, but I don't fully agree that you can't get background separation. Distance to the lens is also a major factor there. Get close at 55mm/5.6. But more importantly, thin depth of field does not make a mediocre picture good. In some photos it can certainly help (in others it can be detrimental), but it's only one aspect. As for light, get a flash. Even an f/1.4 still won't let in light that doesn't exist.
wklauss 13y ago
>The photos I get from it are far far better than every point and shoot or smartphone camera I've ever owned Without knowing what are those cameras is difficult to know the reason. But a good high end compact camera, these days, tend to produce better images than kit lenses. Now, there's nothing wrong about kit lenses. I used one for a year until I was comfortable enough to jump to a better option. But these days I'm giving the same advice Marco does. Unless you have a very specific reason to shoot with an SLR or are willing to buy body and less separately, go for a compact with a good sensor size, manual controls and a good lens. But it's just an advice, not a law written on stone.
dpark 13y ago
Absolutely. This is just snobbery. Good photographers can take beautiful pictures even with shitty equipment. Poseurs (for lack of a better term) chase after high-end equipment pretending it will make good photographs (and yes, I also lust after high-end equipment and imagine that it will somehow make my photos better). Professional photographers 50+ years ago were taking amazing photos with lenses that were worse optically (to say nothing of autofocus and image stabilization) than current kit lenses. Current kit lenses are very good, though higher-end lenses are better still. I would say, however, that if you're going to buy an SLR just to use it in "green box" (aka fully automatic) mode, you're probably better off getting a high-end point-and-shoot. If you want to use your camera as a point-and-shoot, then get a camera optimized for that use case, and it will likely do better than a camera optimized for semi-manual operation.

pkulak 13y ago

You're right. But I still think you would get better shots if you bought the camera with body only and used the difference to pick up a good prime lens instead.

Moulde 13y ago
Of course your pictures would be sharper, but a stock say canon lens kit really is good and good enough for most, especially the far majority of people thinking they need a better lens for them to take better pictures. And the difference in price between a body and a body with the standard lens kit is usually quite small. I completely disagree with that article.
- pkulak 13y ago
  Sharper, I suppose, but I consider being stuck at 4.0 the real handicap. And those kit lenses usually give you 4.0 as a _best_ case; 5.6 if you zoom in at all.
  - dpark 13y ago
    And yet Canon's 70-200 f/4 IS is very highly regarded, as is their 100-400 f/4.5-5.6 IS.
    - pkulak 13y ago
      Those are 200mm+ telephotos. At that distance F4 makes bokeh like you'd see in a 1.8 prime. F5.6 on a 50mm doesn't let you separate the subject from the background at all, or get any light. If you are 100 meters away from something, you're likely outside with plenty of light (or shooting sports, but those guys shoot with 2.8 zooms like the EF 70-200mm f/2.8 IS).
      - dpark 13y ago
        It's hardly fair to call the 70-200 a "200mm+ telephoto". No one buys it just for 200mm or they'd buy a prime. The 70mm end is not far from the long end of an 18-55 (but it is a stop faster). I'll grant you that you won't get extremely thin depth of field with a kit 18-55, but I don't fully agree that you can't get background separation. Distance to the lens is also a major factor there. Get close at 55mm/5.6. But more importantly, thin depth of field does not make a mediocre picture good. In some photos it can certainly help (in others it can be detrimental), but it's only one aspect. As for light, get a flash. Even an f/1.4 still won't let in light that doesn't exist.

wklauss 13y ago

>The photos I get from it are far far better than every point and shoot or smartphone camera I've ever owned Without knowing what are those cameras is difficult to know the reason. But a good high end compact camera, these days, tend to produce better images than kit lenses. Now, there's nothing wrong about kit lenses. I used one for a year until I was comfortable enough to jump to a better option. But these days I'm giving the same advice Marco does. Unless you have a very specific reason to shoot with an SLR or are willing to buy body and less separately, go for a compact with a good sensor size, manual controls and a good lens. But it's just an advice, not a law written on stone.

dpark 13y ago

Absolutely. This is just snobbery. Good photographers can take beautiful pictures even with shitty equipment. Poseurs (for lack of a better term) chase after high-end equipment pretending it will make good photographs (and yes, I also lust after high-end equipment and imagine that it will somehow make my photos better). Professional photographers 50+ years ago were taking amazing photos with lenses that were worse optically (to say nothing of autofocus and image stabilization) than current kit lenses. Current kit lenses are very good, though higher-end lenses are better still. I would say, however, that if you're going to buy an SLR just to use it in "green box" (aka fully automatic) mode, you're probably better off getting a high-end point-and-shoot. If you want to use your camera as a point-and-shoot, then get a camera optimized for that use case, and it will likely do better than a camera optimized for semi-manual operation.