Need some camera help...

[JnthnMtthws]

I'm looking for a easy to use yet great quality camera. I have a budget of around £175 and have been looking at the FinePix S4000: 14MP, 30x Zoom (that's as far as my camera knowledge goes, the rest is all words and numbers that mean nothing to my brain)

For my budget what is the best I can get?
I want something that's capable of doing things like light art where you change the shutter speed or something and it captures the lines of light, main reason for getting a camera is for my travelling that I'm doing this year also.

Thanks in advance for any help and opinions!

 

[Steve]

I looked at the specs and it looks like a good camera for the money.
All cameras have manual, shutter priority, and aperture priority.
The 30X optical zoom is very nice.

It looks like a good starter camera.

 

[Hoogle]

As someone who dpes a lot of light painting I am not so sure this will do for you in my honest opinion but this could be because I cant seem to find the full specification.

The shutter speeds on that camera state they are from 8 seconds to 1\2000 But I can not see if ou can control that or if that is what is potential under auto modes.

Even if you can control that then 8 seconds may not be long enough to get any real light painting in. Possibly scribble your name and that is depending if you have someone taking the picture or if you are doing it yourself.

Ideally I would look for a camera that has 20+ seconds shutter speed or better still a mode called Bulb mode you can connect a shutter release cable to your camera and as soon as you lock it in place the shutter stays open until you close it again so potentiall a couple of hours. This may not be available in none DSLR cameras I am not sure about it.

The camera for a camera seems very reasonablly priced and good quality I have my reservations though for these hogh specced cameras at low price. They do a great job during the day in nice light etc but when you reach the top end of the zoom in this case probably anything between the 500 and 720 mm focal length your images may get very noisey.

Also this may happen in low lights but without reading a proper review I cant say that for sure.

Also are you happy with only having a live view display and not a viewfinder.

Live view displays have a slight delay in from what your lens is seeing and what it generates in the lcd screen for you and tends to have a lot softer focusing. But that is from my personal experience and I am a viewfinder man lol.

Here are some Pics I took last night in low lighting levels I will try and put the shutter speeds with them.























Ok admittedly you will not need as long shutter speeds as this as you will probably not be using f22 or exposure compensation to under expose and you will have the option of increasing your iso but the last 2 images shows the difference between 10 seconds in shutter speed.

And admittedly I went out last night to do things against what you would normally have done for this ind of photography but I was in an experimental mode so was just seeing what I could push my camera to.

I hope this helps.

 

[Hoogle]

Oh I should add these are heavily compressed jpeg files so quality is very low.

 

[Hoogle]

Some more examples in different modes

havent got the meta data on these

15 second shutter speed iso 200 f5 aperature no exposure compensation



Iso 100 35 second shutter speed f5 aperature no exposure compensation Used a speedlight of camera to freeze the person otherwise he would have blurred and if you see there is a light trail in the foreground that is me walking with the fire once the initial shot with flash was fired to create the effect behind him



20 second shutter speed.



So in my opinion is decide what you really want to do as far as creativity is concerned and if you can find a camera in your budget that lets you have BULB mode in shutter speeds that will suit you better than 8 second exposures.

Get the best you can afford but IMHO if you want to do creative light photography then you shouls be looking at getting a basic entry level DSLR camera.

If you are going to rarely be doing this kind of stuff then go for the 1 you have listed below it is a good starter camera, But for pushing boundries and creative photography you may find it will not do what you want to do unless you can take full manual control over the shutter speed and be able to open it up for longer than the 8 seconds.

You may get away with 1 that does 20 or 30 seconds.

 

[Steve]

The longest exposure on this camera is 8 seconds, no bulb setting.
Here's the manual http://www.fujifilm.com/support/dig...ndex/s/finepix_s3200s4000series_manual_01.pdf

You may have a tough time doing better in this price range considering all the features of this camera but if very long exposures are what's most important to you Hoogle has a good point, 8 seconds may not may not cut it for you.

 

[JnthnMtthws]

Sorry not got back to you till now, you both helped a lot - I love the examples they work really well! Do you know what is the best I can get with my budget? (around £180, I know that much won't go far in the wonderful world of technology)

Thanks again fellas,
J.

 

[Hoogle]

http://www.google.co.uk/products/ca...a=X&ei=wqhjT5PRHpKp8APn0pyfCA&ved=0CHoQ8wIwAQ

excellent starter camera you can pick them up for about £200 second hand but even at the £300 mark it is excellent value and has plenty of options to upgrade to better lenses etc when you get more into it and have money

 

[Hoogle]

Or maybe go for something older like this
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Nikon-D40...Cameras_DigitalCameras_JN&hash=item27c4d2fbbd

and buy a good lense perfect for what you need a good SLR camera has bulb mode and 30 second shutter release

admittedly if you want to get into photography the D3000 or D5000 are better models D5000 is what the above pictures were taken with it is a nice secondary camera for me and you can pick them up for less than £500 but that is more for people looking to take there photography. the 1st link I sent was for the junior version f the D5000 and I have seen some excellent pictures it is basically the same components inside just not as many fancy features and you can put good lenses on as you can afford them. But for light painting etc the kit lense is perfect

 

[JnthnMtthws]

Thanks a lot - you've been a massive help, I'm probably gonna wait for a couple of months and enlarge my budget slightly so I can get something really worth while, being a student with a part time retail job 'camera money' doesn't come round too often so I want to get something that'll last me a while,

Thanks again for all your help, I really appreciate it