MAMA's Techno-Geek Thread

[GBMINI]

Call for camera folk ... after yesterdays chats - your comments on todays "donation" of $$$$ to Hunts:
Nikon D200 10.2-Megapixel Digital SLR Body with 18-200 Zoom Lens (Call for Availability!): Mel Pierce Camera & Digital

(not about possible lower prices - I feel it's very worthwhile to pay for all the guidance that the store offers - but about the choice)

[MGB Boy]

Shoulda gone for a film camera...

-Ricardo

[NoNo]

Really, do you need 10 megapixels? On standard prints you won't even notice the difference between that and a 4 or 6mp. Aside from that what does it offer than another dSLR doesn't have? Wait, do you have a dSLR yet? If you don't, then what the hell, go for the 10. But if you're upgrading, I personally don't see the point.

[GadgetGav]

Quote: Originally Posted by GBMINI (original)

Call for camera folk ... after yesterdays chats - your comments on todays "donation" of $$$$ to Hunts:
Nikon D200 10.2-Megapixel Digital SLR Body with 18-200 Zoom Lens (Call for Availability!): Mel Pierce Camera & Digital

(not about possible lower prices - I feel it's very worthwhile to pay for all the guidance that the store offers - but about the choice)

What's the question? Yesterday? You mean real, in person talking, not on this thread..??? Why are you donating to Hunts but linking to Mel Pierce..?? I'm confused!

Looks like it has some good specs, though I'm not sure what 'DX format' is for the sensor size. Seems to be half way house between the APS sized sensors of the consumer digiSLRs and the full frame of the pro cameras.

But anyway - another new camera..!? Are you putting one in each MINI..??!!

[GBMINI]

Annette,
Thanks ... no I don't have a dSLR (well, I guess I do now). What really tempted me with this one was the included lens (18-200 with equivalent of image stabilisation). I agree there's little difference between 8mp & 10mp, and I wasn't looking for 10 - but I was looking for good zoom.

Gavin,
Yes, in-person conversation with Adam, Brian, Josh, etc at F1 Boston yesterday. I think you're correct about "DX" format.
And I know I keep buying cameras ...
The two-before-this was a Fuji, bought for low light performance. But it had no video capability.
So the one-before is the Canon S3 which does quite good video, also great zoom, but has trouble when the light drops - evidence all the slow shutter speeds at F1 Boston yesterday.
I dug out my real camcorder recently and used that yesterday - good video so maybe it's time for "one product one task".
I'm hoping this new Nikon will offer the zoom capability of the Canon S3 but with better performance in lower light. Do you think I'm wrong with that hope?

[NoNo]

Don't forget that with Nikons, there's a 1.5x zoom factor on the lens, so your lens is really 27-300. I have an 18mm Sigma lens, and I love it, but watch out for the barrel distortion. That lens should cover most of what you'll need, though I still find myself wishing for a little more "oomph" even with my 75-300 from time to time. You will love being able to turn the camera on and instantly take a picture, and how quickly you can keep shooting compared to a P&S. Practice, practice, practice!

[GadgetGav]

Low light is all about the f number. I doubt the S3 lists it's f number, but this lens should be better - it's certainly got a bigger front element.
The problem is if you want zoom and low light (ie low f number) it gets really expensive really quickly. If you can live with it, you'll get better low light performance from a prime (fixed focal length) lens, but a zoom is much more versatile. The D200 might have better max ISO than the S3 (although I seem to remember the S3 being pretty good), and may have less noise at max ISO, so it should be better... whether it's as good as you'd like it to be though is another question..! If you go to Hunts to buy it, see if there's a gloomy area of the store that they'll let you try it out.

[Aqualung]

Quote: Originally Posted by GadgetGav (original)

Low light is all about the f number. I doubt the S3 lists it's f number, but this lens should be better - it's certainly got a bigger front element.
The problem is if you want zoom and low light (ie low f number) it gets really expensive really quickly. If you can live with it, you'll get better low light performance from a prime (fixed focal length) lens, but a zoom is much more versatile. The D200 might have better max ISO than the S3 (although I seem to remember the S3 being pretty good), and may have less noise at max ISO, so it should be better... whether it's as good as you'd like it to be though is another question..! If you go to Hunts to buy it, see if there's a gloomy area of the store that they'll let you try it out.

Ian, the D200 is a very nice DLSR, it's at the low end of the pro level. If you don't think you need quite that body, check out the D80 that I picked up, and spent the $$ I saved vs. the D200 on the glass. The D200 has a higher fps (5 vs. 3) and weather sealing. It also has a different (some think better) matrix exposure meter, but the D80 seems to be just fine for me. The D80 SRP is $999, the D200 is $1699 (obviously both are selling below list, body only).

The crop factor is correct, it's 1.5 and the DX lenses are designed for this, vs. the older lenses (which still work) but will vignette at the corners. You can't use the DX lenses on older film cameras.

For low light, I went to 1.8 lenses (85 mm and 50mm), couldn't justify the $ on the f1.4 versions of those lenses. I instead went for a pro long lens, the 70-200 2.8 VR (vibration reduction) which is about $1,500, but it will be an awesome lens for my daughter's lacrosse/field hockey/soccer shots. I also got the 18-70 lens, which is the kit lens that comes with the D200. There is now an 18-200 VR and 70-200 VR which are being well received.

If you want to see how the 85/50 are doing shooting in the world's worst available light conditions (high school gym), I have some shots of my daughter's high school basketball games, go here; all of them were shot at 1/320, f1.8 ISO 800, no flash (which is frowned upon at the HS level). With this type of setup you could have gotten less blurry pics at F1 ;-)

The digital cameras do a better job at higher ISO, I can even get decent pics at 1600. Some good resources in general are Ken Rockwell who has both a Canon and Nikon setup and seemingly endless supply of cash (be warned, some recent pics are of his newborn, and I mean, newborn) and Thom Hagen where you can get a good comparison between the various Nikon models, lenses, etc.

Heck, the recently announced Nikon D40 may be all you need!

[GadgetGav]

Quote: Originally Posted by Aqualung (original)

Heck, the recently announced Nikon D40 may be all you need!

You're talking to the man who has a GP... he's not going to settle for the D40..!

The D80 and a better lens makes a lot of sense though. You're never going to have a lens that's 'too good' for a given situation, but you'll often find you don't have one good enough. I'm surprised the manufacturers don't just give the camera bodies away, because they know you'll get addicted to the glass..!!

[Aqualung]

Quote: Originally Posted by GadgetGav (original)

You're talking to the man who has a GP... he's not going to settle for the D40..!

The D80 and a better lens makes a lot of sense though. You're never going to have a lens that's 'too good' for a given situation, but you'll often find you don't have one good enough. I'm surprised the manufacturers don't just give the camera bodies away, because they know you'll get addicted to the glass..!!

Shhhh, don't give them any ideas

[blalor]

Quote: Originally Posted by NoNo (original)

Don't forget that with Nikons, there's a 1.5x zoom factor on the lens, so your lens is really 27-300.

I don't mean to jump on you here, NoNo, but it's not a "zoom factor", it's a "crop factor" (this is one of my biggest pet peeves when people talk about photography). The lens isn't any more powerful with a crop factor body, you're just getting an equivalent field of view to a lens with 1.5 times more magnification. Curl your fingers and look through the hole; what you see through the hole isn't any bigger, but you're losing part of the picture because what your eye sees is more than what your hand lets through. It's actually the other way around with crop factor bodies; the sensor's smaller than the circle of light the lens projects, so what's "outside" the sensor is thrown away. This is particularly frustrating because a wide-angle lens is no longer really that wide angle.

Congrats on the new toy, Ian! I can't wait to see what kind of pictures you get, now.

I don't have any pics online currently, but I'm looking at a couple I took last year while karting with the Indy folks and even at ƒ/3.5 (wide open at 18mm on my lens) and 1/80 with ISO800 the karts were still not frozen. I could have gone to the max ISO1600 but those get pretty noisy on my camera. Zooming in reduces the light getting to the sensor, so you'll have to use a higher shutter, higher ISO, or bigger aperture. The lighting in a high school gym looks to be *much* brighter than what most karting places have, so it's still going to be tough to get good shots. And with the lens wide open, your focus will be very selective. It's all about the trade-offs!

[NoNo]

No, I thought it was a zoom factor, and the crop factor was something like 95%, i.e. what you see through the viewfinder is 95% of what the actual image will be. Could be wrong, but I thought I remembered reading it that way in my research, (but that was 2 years ago).

[jwardell]

Can we start with the nikon vs canon wars yet?
Like the fact that canon's' cmos sensors have always outperformed nikon's CCDs in low light and high-ISO?
Anyway, Ian, you have a great camera, and congrats on jumping to SLR. The included kit lenses are never that great, but the nice thing is you can change that later without buying a new camera every year like you have been stuck doing. A lens with a lower f rating lets in more light--that's the other number that most people ignore. On a zoom f 1.8 is rare and expensive, and the most expensive might be 1.4 (yours is 3.5 at 18 and 5.6 at 200). Of course that also means they get physically bigger, so everything is a trade-off.
No matter what you choose, it should be a big improvement over the point-and-shoots that you have had in the past.

[blalor]

Quote: Originally Posted by NoNo (original)

No, I thought it was a zoom factor, and the crop factor was something like 95%, i.e. what you see through the viewfinder is 95% of what the actual image will be. Could be wrong, but I thought I remembered reading it that way in my research, (but that was 2 years ago).

I haven't heard a techno-confusing term for the viewfinder percentage, but I'm sure you could coin one! Crop factor does refer to the smaller-than-full-size sensor. The über-sexy 5D is a full-frame sensor and doesn't have a crop factor. It's also $2,500 for the body, I think.

I'm all for being able to see *exactly* what the sensor sees through the viewfinder, but having the viewfinder show slightly less gives me a bit of a fudge factor when composing the image.

One of the factors when I chose my Canon was that Nikon encrypts the white balance information in their raw (NEF) files. I don't know if this holds for all their cameras (that article references only two cameras) but I didn't like that attitude from Nikon. I don't know if that's an issue, now, since there are several alternative photography workflow tools like Lightroom and Aperture (which actually builds on a RAW decoding framework included with OS X) and I've never heard of Nikons being an issue here.

[GBMINI]

Chris,
Thanks for those links - first thing I found on Thom Hagen is a write-up of the included lens - seems to think it's pretty good:
18-200mm AF-S DX VR Lens Review by Thom Hogan

And thanks all; seems I've overspent (there's a surprise) but it's a good package. I was looking at Nikon (D70/80) and Canon (Rebel XTi) originally and didn't intend to go up to the D200 or anything like that ... but the 18-200 lens performance swung me. Apparently that lens is sooo back ordered (on eBay the few that exist are priced above MSRP!)

Looking at all the stuff Adam carried Sunday confirmed to me that I prefer a "one size fits most" lens to carrying 4 or 5 different ones - but as you say Gavin, at least now I can get a lens instead of a camera to address some percieved limitation.


I've not really touched the D200 yet (waited for the battery to charge); I took a quick couple of shots late last night at home, with lights turned down - without flash it took I think a 3s picture of the wallpaper, but I was astounded that hand-holding it, there was still almost zero blur! I don't know how VR works, but it seems incredible; I'd expect hand holding the much heavier D200 to be worse than hand holding the previous ones I've owned.


Clarification please on "f" numbers ... how do they relate to shutter speed?
Josh, you say this 18-200 lens is 3.5 at wide and 5.6 at zoomed - what does that mean for shutter speeds?
(sorry I bet I could Google it, but I have a wealth of expertise right here )