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haggerma

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Mark
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Hi all,

I am just about to venture into the DSLR world and have been doing some reading on here. OMG how much stuff is there to learn?

My background has been your bog standard aim & Click cameras but when playing with the setting I got frustrated when it would not do something I wanted.

My Previous camera usage was mainly Car shows (static) I am getting married next year and I am off to the Caribbean, the Florida keys and fort Lauderdale for 2 weeks and want to take some great pictures when I am there.

My mate recent went on holiday to the Caribbean and he was disappointed with the quality of the pictures from his small digital Camera, the water looked gray when he said it was crystal blue!

As it’s not till next year I am planning on buying a 2nd hand camera and taking the time to learn all the settings and become less of an armature.

Any Additional advice you be greatly appreciated.
 
Hi haggerma - welcome - you'll love it on here. Everyone (mostly!) is really helpful and will give you good advice
 
Welcome...oh and sorry about your Wallet!

Seriously though just read as much as you can absorb on here and any links that may come up in the threads. As you learn you will better informed about the gear you will need to capture the shots you want to take.

Matt
 
Hi and welcome to the forum haggerma!

I'm in a similar position to you although I have my camera ordered. I'm spending the waiting time by trying to learn as much as I can but it's all pretty overwhelming at the moment :thinking:

Some of the shots I see posted on here are amazing, I can only hope to be able to produce something like that one day :)

Everyone here is helpful, don't be afraid to ask if you need help with anything no matter how silly it may seem at first, everyone here was a beginner once ;)
 
Ok, i have been down to jessops today and decided i prefere the feel of the cannon over the nikon.

Had a little play with the EOS1000D and i like the feel of the and the positions of all the buttons.

Also had a play with EOS450D and also like the feel.

Other than the differance of megapix and LCD screen size? what are the other differances (excluding cost)
 
Here's a comparison of the 450D and the 1000D (and the now discontinued 400D), hopefully that'll help you see the differences and similarities! I've got the 450D, it was my first DSLR and I couldn't be happier with it. Watch out though, this is an expensive hobby and you might find yourself getting a bit carried away with all the things you'll soon "need" :D. And welcome!

Chris
 
Thanks for the link chris.

I have looked at that site plus the cannon website and the main differancesi can see are:

Effective pixels
AF system Points
Meeting Modes
View Finder information
LCD screen size
Continus Shooting
Image size
DR Extention Mode (Highlight Tone Priority)


Can some please explain the benifts of those in red
 
The number of autofocus (AF) points - these are the points at which the camera will look at and try to focus on. To be honest, I'm not entirely sure what more of them mean (I'm assuming more accurate focussing). The 1000D has 2 less than the 450D, but to put it into perspective the latest 1D (professional level cameras) have I think 45 focus points? Of which a lot of pros use only 1 (the centre one)! I'm assuming more means better, but how much difference it makes in the real world will have to be answered by someone else!

Image size relates to the number of pixels. The 450D produces a physically larger file, as it has more megapixels. In reality, the difference between 10 and 12 MP is pretty much nothing. You're never going to need 10, or 12 megapixels (unless you're doing heavy cropping), it's just a statistic really!

Not a clue about highlight tone priority though I'm afraid!

Chris
 
i have just purchased my first slr.

canon eos1000d. standard lens, 4gb card and bag for £390. going to learn more about the camera then buy a new lens.
 
Congratulations on your purchase, haggerma (y).

Unfortunatley, it's a Canon :( and I'm a Nikon fan-boy, so I can't ever reply to your posts again :)D there's a wonderful rivalry between Canon and Nikon users on this forum, as you'll soon discover ;)), but before I go, I'd just like to say this:

I too switched from a digital point & squirt, compact camera, not all that long ago and you know what - once you learn how an SLR camera actually works and what the various manual settings do (and you soon will), it really is a lot easier to get good results every time than it is when you rely constantly on automatic settings and "modes" :|. It's almost impossible to adjust vital settings, once you're locked into a preset mode on most cameras and so all you can do is try another mode :shrug: (usually with disasterous results). Once you've learned a few basics about how the exposure is controlled and can select an appropriate white balance setting, you're well on your way to being able to to get consistently good results every time :).

If you want to get a quick appreciation of how the shutter speed and aperture settings work together to create different looking (but equally well exposed) images, you could do worse than check out this website. It helped me a lot in the beginning ...

The Sim Cam

Enjoy your new hobby and ... try to buy as much tasty kit as you can now, before your wife-to-be becomes your joint account holder :D.
 
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