Ruined! - Page 2

Jeff Ulmer · 06-13-2004, 02:17 PM

Quote:

An SLR to me has to 1) give you the ability to see exactly what you are capturing, electronically or optically. So, no parallax error

The biggest issue I have faced with any kind of photography is really seeing what I am capturing, especially the exposure. No SLR will do this through the viewfinder. You can see the composition, but there is stil a lot of room for mistakes in exposure and depth of field. Since I don't have my digital SLR yet, is what you see through the viewfinder really what you get for composition, or is their cropping due to the (incorrectly named) focal point compensation?

For exposure, the last high end prosumer digital Canon (non SLR, but still in the $1600CAN range) I tried would not give you anywhere near accurate preview on the LCD screen. What looked perfect on the LCD was always WAY underexposed in reality. If I composed a shot that was completlety blown out on the LCD, the shot was properly exposed. Having the ability to see this up front would save a lot of grief later on. Another prosumer model I used always needed compensation in the field of view, since the framing was off to the left.

I guess we a re still a few generations away from a SLR camera that has enough computing power to give you an accurately rendered preview, but it would be nice to have one day, especially for those once in a lifetime opportunities.

JohnRice · 06-13-2004, 06:47 PM

Jeff, my experience with my Fuji S2 is that the viewfinder is completely accurate, even more accurate than the average 35mm film SLR viewfinder, which always crop a bit from the full image.

The displays never seem to be a very good indication of exposure or color correction. I generally only use it for confirmation of composition and then I use the histogram to verify a usable exposure. If you want a camera that removes skill and a general understanding of how the camera behaves, you're in for a long wait.

Ryan Tsang · 06-13-2004, 08:20 PM

Jeff:

I understand your "frustration" with not being able to preview exposure. However, I believe you feel this way simply because of limited experience. (I'm not a pro by any measure) Learning to read a scene takes a lot of time/experience and experimentation. And that refers to an average scene in daylight! Now imagine mixed lighting, low lighting, city-lights, studio flash, high key/low key, it is impossible to have a machine tell you exactly what a scene will look like. I suppose I could go further and say I want to preview the effects of saturation, softening, sharpening, zooming, infra-red, cross-processing, sepia-toning......and on and on. Depth of field can be estimated with depth-of-field preview on many cameras. Keep in mind that stopping down will make the image darker and you need time for your eyes to adjust.

You will be in for a huge letdown if you think an LCD monitor on the back of a digicam will give you an accurate representation of a scene. Your monitor with which you are viewing this may not be able to do that either, especially if not calibrated. The histogram is a very powerful tool and that's something I too need to discover in greater detail. What you see on the LCD screen may be nothing like what you see on your monitor at home, and what you see on your monitor may be nothing like in print. The best thing to do is learn how each step in the process affects the image (shooting, manipulating, printing) and use it to your advantage. It is a lifelong learning process.

Which leads me to the power of digital photography. The instant feedback shortens the learning curve tremendously.
Go out and practice metering. here....I'll introduce to you an exercise:

Buy a gray, white, and black card from a photo retailer. Let your digital camera do auto TTL metering and fill the frame and shoot each card by itself. You will get three identical shots. Now meter off the gray card, record the exposure and shoot the cards again with that GC exposure only. Now....gray is gray, white is white and black is black. It illustrates the need to think. You can't do this will print film because your printer will make adjustments.

Brett DiMichele · 06-21-2004, 06:35 PM

Just to clear up some things here..

SLR = Single Lens Reflex without the Reflex part of the
definition it doesn't really make sense to refer to a
camera as an SLR. The Olympus E10 and E20 fit the SLR
definition because they have a splitting prism rather than
a mirror and pentaprism viewfinder but anything with an EVF
that meters through the lens is just defined as "TTL" Through
The Lens.

It is possible to have an SLR body that could use an LCD
for a live preview but it goes completely against what an
SLR is for. If you buy a D-SLR you are buying it because
you want the absolute best quality photographs and by using
a real leaf shutter and keeping the CMOS or CCD off all the
time except when capturing the image this keeps the noise
down by eliminating excess heat created by the constant
use of the sensor.

As for metering that comes with experiance. I find that the
built in metering on my SD10 is "close" within about a half
a stop. If I wanted spot on metering I would use an external
meter before I ever took a photo. But the beauty of digital
is the ability to auto bracket and fire of a bust of images
with varying exposures. Surely one is bound to be right

Or shoot RAW and you have at least 1 stop exposure latitude
with most cameras. In RAW on my SD10 I have more than 2
stops of exposure lat.

Brett DiMichele · 06-21-2004, 06:35 PM

Just to clear up some things here..

SLR = Single Lens Reflex without the Reflex part of the
definition it doesn't really make sense to refer to a
camera as an SLR. The Olympus E10 and E20 fit the SLR
definition because they have a splitting prism rather than
a mirror and pentaprism viewfinder but anything with an EVF
that meters through the lens is just defined as "TTL" Through
The Lens.

It is possible to have an SLR body that could use an LCD
for a live preview but it goes completely against what an
SLR is for. If you buy a D-SLR you are buying it because
you want the absolute best quality photographs and by using
a real leaf shutter and keeping the CMOS or CCD off all the
time except when capturing the image this keeps the noise
down by eliminating excess heat created by the constant
use of the sensor.

As for metering that comes with experiance. I find that the
built in metering on my SD10 is "close" within about a half
a stop. If I wanted spot on metering I would use an external
meter before I ever took a photo. But the beauty of digital
is the ability to auto bracket and fire of a bust of images
with varying exposures. Surely one is bound to be right

Or shoot RAW and you have at least 1 stop exposure latitude
with most cameras. In RAW on my SD10 I have more than 2
stops of exposure lat.

JohnRice · 06-21-2004, 06:58 PM

Quote:

If you buy a D-SLR you are buying it because
you want the absolute best quality photographs and by using
a real leaf shutter...

Since we're being so unbelievably technical, 35mm SLRs don't have leaf shutters. Several MF SLRs (Such as Hasselblad and Bronica) do but 35mm ones have cloth or metal blade shutters, which are not the same as a leaf shutter.

JohnRice · 06-21-2004, 06:58 PM

Quote:

If you buy a D-SLR you are buying it because
you want the absolute best quality photographs and by using
a real leaf shutter...

Since we're being so unbelievably technical, 35mm SLRs don't have leaf shutters. Several MF SLRs (Such as Hasselblad and Bronica) do but 35mm ones have cloth or metal blade shutters, which are not the same as a leaf shutter.

Brett DiMichele · 06-21-2004, 07:18 PM

Yes sorry for my error.. Blade Shutter not leaf..

We aren't being technical we are being accurate and thank
you for pointing out my error on the shutter mechanism.

Brett DiMichele · 06-21-2004, 07:18 PM

Yes sorry for my error.. Blade Shutter not leaf..

We aren't being technical we are being accurate and thank
you for pointing out my error on the shutter mechanism.

Adam Bluhm · 06-26-2004, 09:40 AM

I agree with Brett. There is a lot of talk about using a preview with a dSLR. The thing that makes an SLR an SLR is the ability to see nearly exactly what the lense sees. You are seeing what the lense and sensor will see.

My point-and-shoot cam cannot do jack with the viewfinder. I can center on an image using the viewfinder and the picture comes out way off center.

I'm sure there are cams that do a better job at this, but I'm sure they won't do nearly the job an SLR would. That's exactly why you cannot have an SLR cam with an lcd preview. It then wouldn't be an SLR.

Oh yeah.. back on topic, the Canon 300D is probably the best economical choice for a dSLR. I like the Nikon D70 and all the features, but we're talking ~$500 more for the kit with lense.