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Made my choice


ibis

Power User
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Paul

Former Member
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Not spending that sort of money mate, besides the image quality at that level is much and the same, plastic is plastic and that equates to rubbish in my hands thanks.
 

peta62

Guru
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Not spending that sort of money mate, besides the image quality at that level is much and the same, plastic is plastic and that equates to rubbish in my hands thanks.

Paul, you think that image quality of Nikon 3100D and Canon 7D is the same ? In that case I would have to disagree very strongly. Not only I have two friends who are very good photographers and say they would switch to Canon not having all the lenses, but I also do have personal experience with upgrading the camera, how did the image quality change. I think these cameras do not differ only in chip size, but also in its type which transfers to quality.
 

Paul

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Peta not Nikon 3100D and the Canon 7D, I meant my original Canon choice and the Nikon i will be purchasing.
 

peta62

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Oh I see, that is a bit different. But still I would also consider future if I were you. If you are sure you will always stay with this one and are not interested in higher quality lenses, than I understand. The problem may start, as in case of my friends, when they upgraded the camera ( because they already had money in lenses they decided not to switch to Canon ) and started to look for better lenses. Yes, Nikon has very good lenses too, but they are so more expensive as the selection is not that wide as Canon's.
And yes, I do have Canon, I am happy with it, but I do not have anything else in common with Canon to lure people for my profit ;-)
 

Hoogle

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I think it is the perfect choice Spend any more and it is a risk as you dont know if your going to get into photography enough to justify the large $'s but it is a more than adequate camera to get you going. Color really does not matter these days as once you take the time to set up a color profile for your camera you can pretty much mimic any camera natural state look. And then there is the post production which I highly recommend getting adobe lightroom for best program in my opinion for post production of Raw images and has a wide selection of presets available for download for free. Or you can adjust the sliders as much as you like until you find the balance that works for you.

I am not sure if it is available where you are or if the offer is still on but Nikon Teamed up with adobe where any nikon dslr camera bought gave you a discount code for lightroom over here it was just £59 where it is normally £169 I think.

As for lenses really there is not that much in it at this level and if you are really tight on a budget you can look at 3rd party lenses such as tamron, sigma etc they are usually cheaper than canon or Nikkor equivalent but not necessarily lacking in quality.

That said once you get a better understanding of How your DSLR works and can use it confidently then you will know what features you are lacking when it comes to an upgrade and you will be better prepared on what brand to choose.

Many people that go either Canon or Nikon do tend to stay with that brand for numerous reasons 1 being the extra kit they have purchased in the past and also because if you go from a budget dslr Nikon or canon range to a high end version you can still understand the menu and navigate around it easily and still be able to get good shooting modes straight fromn the box as you understand the layout.

I believe you have made a good choice for your first camera
 

Paul

Former Member
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Thanks for that H, i did purchase the Canon but like i said i did end up taking it back as i could not get used to how it felt in my hand, i know it sounds silly but it just felt cheap and very plastic to touch.
The Nikon feels stronger and firm in the hand, i like the bigger screen also.
Just wish i had asked to try both in the hand first time around.
 

peta62

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Now I do not continue in Canon - Nikon discussion, I just want to add my opinion to several points.

1. Colour matters in my opinion for two reasons. First if the camera does not change it regularly, there is no formula/function to fix it. Second even when it does, all settings are in steps, which, although they are much refined compared to analog cameras, are still pretty rough. Due to various reasons I usually do not shoot fully manual, but use fixed shutter time, so I do have experience with these jumps. Additionally it is nice to say it will be fixed in post processing, it is fine when you have low number of pictures, but when I shoot hundreds of pictures on some action and people are looking for pictures, each additional step multiplies, plus I usually shoot during the weekend and go to the office on Monday, so not much time, than each additional post processing is a nightmare, it is enough what has to be done without it.

2. I assume Paul has Photoshop, which includes Camera Raw. I saw presentation by Deke McClelland saying that Camera Raw and Lightroom have exactly the same functions and handles, just a different interface, but the do exactly the same. I have never seen Lightroom, so I cannot judge, please correct me if I confused things, but if this is really the case I do not see any reason spend money for Lightroom.

3. I would be a bit cautious with third party lenses. ( Again, knowing Canon, but it is almost the same with Nikon from what I hear from Nikon friends, just either financial difference is larger or quality difference smaller, but in principle the same. ) It is very important to read reviews, sometimes the third party products lack in mechanical execution resulting in shorter durability, sometimes their optical quality varies among pieces, sometimes they do not cooperate with the camera in all functions as the natives do.

4. As the reason to stay I would put owning lenses to the first place, I see it the most.
 

peta62

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Thanks for that H, i did purchase the Canon but like i said i did end up taking it back as i could not get used to how it felt in my hand, i know it sounds silly but it just felt cheap and very plastic to touch.
The Nikon feels stronger and firm in the hand, i like the bigger screen also.
Just wish i had asked to try both in the hand first time around.

I can hear you. My first "real" camera was German Praktina, very heavy metal body ( I had Carl Zeiss Jena lens with it, oh how I miss it ). When they handed me Canon Rebel in the shop, I thought they were joking, I could not imagine to get used to it. Now I have much heavier camera and I still prefer it. Feel in hand is very important, since it affects shutter time you are able to shoot from hand. You will see how happy you will be with Nikon, you may find some other disturbing issue there and get your original Canon back :evil:
Just kiddin seriously, I wish you to enjoy your camera whichever you end up with. :cheesygrin:
 

Paul

Former Member
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Thanks mate, i will be uploading some clicks when i get the hang of it.
 

Hoogle

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MMM i will disagree with lightroom and camera raw being the same. Yes they have similar develop modules but that is on manual post production.

If you take a series of pictures, in lightroom you can color correct just 1 and apply that editing to all pictures in the folder or just a few.

Yes you can get acr presets but in all fairness they are nothing compared to lightroom.

You can profile your camera and make templates so all your pics can be 1 click fix if you like an edit or a style of editing you can always have your pictures having the same theme etc especially if you like to have a style.

lightroom has its own bridge style layout with all your pics in a movie strip where you can compare 4 pics or 4 edits of the same pic.

Lightroom has a far more advanced development and export module where you can process images and export them in a wide variety of formats.

Including

direct uploads to places like facebook flickr etc

It will let you make a selection of pictures and with a few clicks make a web ready gallery that you can just embed into your web portfolio page etc. with the removal of javascript and flash galleries creator in adobe Fireworks CS6 it has transferred to lightroom

You can have layout templates for anything and send them to companies that will print out books for you with your images

has more refined editing tools more specific to photo editing

All of topaz, Nik software like color effex silver effex etc all works directly within lightroom.

Yes ACR share some features but from a pure photographer side then lightroom is far superior hence all major commercial photographers will choose lightroom over photoshop if it was purely for photo editing.

I can take a pic on my iphone and apply a Nikon D4 color profile to it and all though it does not have the resolution of the D4 the colour looks identical and you can do it with any make.

The only software that compares to lightroom is capture one which is similar but I hate it guessing because I know my way around adobe. But even now lightroom 4 is stealing customers away from capture one.

I have never tried Aperature so I cant comment on that but being for mac only (all though I have heard they have or are going to make a pc version)

So yes lightroom core has the same engine as ACR 7 but gives a much more user friendly approach for mass editing you will find you can edit 100 pictures in less than 30 mins applying different edits to each 1.

Is lightroom a substitute for photoshop no not at all there are many things photoshop offers that lightroom doesnt. But the same applies for lightroom.

If you are a somewhat semi or Fully Pro photographer and make a living from it then Photoshop restricts your post production speed lightroom will sail through it especially if you are a studio photographer as all your pics will be identical in lighting so can edit 1000's of pics with just 1 click and walk away.

Giving you that extra time to do major editing I mean replacing backgrounds and special effects etc in the pictures you want to do it to.
 

peta62

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As I wrote before, I have never seen Lightroom, so I cannot say, but I have very hard time to believe in huge speed up against Bridge-CR-Photoshop. I fully understand it can seem nice to apply one profile on all pictures with slight modifications, but it seems unrealistic to me. I would compare it to situation here when somebody posts his Photoshop product, be it a logo or something else. I usually cannot see any technical problems with it, where the others start to write points and when I read it and look at it, there is almost always something right in those comments. That is because I do not have much experience with it. On the other hand, although I am just a hobby photographer, but very long years, I have a lot of experience with photographs and so I see a lot of details on them. That is why I do not believe in this mass editing. Of course everybody has his own preferences and techniques.

The question for Paul is, whether it really makes sense to him to spend that money on Lightroom, considering he can do majority of work with tools he has now, or to invest it to something else like lens, filter, remote control, fast memory card, external flash etc.
 
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Hoogle

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I know exactly what your saying trust me I had the same view as you and did for 6 months of having lightroom but as you understand the program and get into the lightroom way of thinking you to will have the same view as me. I would say Download the 30 day trial but really unless your willing to watch loads of tutorials in that 30 days and learn the key elements then you will not really see the benefits. The major 1 for me is I have 2 clients that take product shots same background same lighting same camera settings they send me several hundred pictures for catalogues etc I know what edit I do to 1 pic is the same for every pic in the series I apply the set template to all images less than 10 mins work for me to actually do and lightroom will do the rest whilst I can be doing something else sometimes it takes seconds sometimes it will take 20 mins depending on the amount of pics.

Now If I had to do the same edits in ps I would have to open them up in bridge open each 1 individually even to apply a preset save each file etc etc. That 10 mins in lightroom now turns into 3+ hours in ps. You can not batch process raw files or if you can then I have had no success finding out how to do it.

I agree a picture should be edited to how you feel suits that individual scenario so no way would I go and batch apply edits to them However if it is all same settings same lighting etc then I will and then tweak each image.

I am just saying if you have the need to batch process images and time is not on your side lightroom will make it a fraction of the time than PS.

It is also a lot easier for amateurs to get into post production editing than photoshop.
 

peta62

Guru
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Hello Hoogle,
now I see where we differ and you will see it as soon as you read my next sentence. I shoot only outdoors, nature, animals, events, mainly horse events, so each picture is individual. When I shoot something to show, than even more individual. That is also the reason why I started to learn Photoshop, although it was very difficult in the beginning and I admit I do have neither time nor energy to start with another product, especially because I am convinced Photoshop can do everything I can ask, just I have to learn it.
On the other hand I do not expect from Paul any mass shooting in studio, so I still tend to think he can spend money ( and study time ) on something more useful. Of course his call.
Best regards,
Peter
P.S. Just to show you what I shoot check http://peta62.rajce.idnes.cz/?sort=&page=0 I am not sure whether you can switch it into English, but you will find your way around.
 
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You should have got one of them there super special Kodak cameras designed by the one and only George Eastman! They are massively cool at taking B&W images!
 

ibclare

Queen Bee
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I came in on the very tail end of this very interesting exchange. You like Eastman? I still have my dad's Kodak bellows camera from World War II. Now there's a camera, lol. I took up photography in my own way at age 12. In the camera I found 9 year old film. It developed perfectly and among other family pics was one of me in a rocker on our porch at age 3 (you've seen it Paul in Avatar Wars).

Congratulations on your purchase Paul. New toys are so much fun. I hope you gets lots of use from it.
 

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