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hi friends. i shoot on a positively ancient setup that has done super well but its beyond long in the tooth and I'd like to plan out some upgrades to save for this winter. i shoot on a d40 and some basic bitch prime lenses and i love my old gay setup but given just how much poo poo has happened in the photo world since this camera dropped in 2005, basically anything is an upgrade. which is why this is tough. i mostly shoot cityscapes and street stuff but not really people, but I told my friends that i'd start doing portraits this spring as a way to light a fire under my rear end to get going. i love shooting everything full manual on my camera because i have forever with landscapes to hit buttons but i wanna do snappier shoot from the hip street photograph with something with actual autofocus and not the general idea of. i'm not realy heavy on team nikon besides the kit lens and a prime or two but it would be nice to use lens rebuying money to splash on a nicer body but i'm acutely aware of how bad nikon has done in recent years. i'm not opposed to mirrorless but i don't know dick about them and they seem expensive for what i'm doing. i dont give a single poo poo about video but that seems to be the primary selling point on many of them and i'm not really sure what the important things are in a 2022 market. i was planning to shoot outdoor portraits in the spring so i was gonna try to see if i could find a d750 and then pick up a flash or two and some reflectors but i didn't know if there was A Better Way in 2022 gear and tech.
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Dec 27, 2022 20:50
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its mostly that ive been going to a bunch of drag shows and my iphone 13pro does Pretty Good in even the shittiest lighting and i'm jealous that my d40 just Does Not Work in dark indoor settings in the way I wanted it to. like i'm not trying to go full rear end club photographer but the places i will likely be shooting the most will be in poorly lit clubs or at night and my poor baby just does Not Like It.
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Dec 27, 2022 20:56
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if you weren’t talking about low light shooting I would have said you could get great value for money by getting something maybe 5 years old, but low light is something that’s taken non-phone cameras time to catch up to phones in that regard and the scenarios you’re talking about are some of the most challenging hardware wise, you need a longer lens and you need it fast and that usually means $$ and a body that can perform at higher iso and sony are the best at that. i’m sure someone else will have better advice because I haven’t actually given any 
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Dec 27, 2022 22:12
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Can't go wrong with Sony. I bit the bullet finally on moving from Canon DSLR (70D crop sensor) to Sony mirrorless (a7Riii full-frame) and have never looked back. The Riii is now two models older, but still 40+MP, full frame, awesome low light. Since it's older you could pick up a refurb for like $1500 and be so many miles ahead of your d40. Don't be afraid to go off brand on lenses. Several of the third party companies sell terrific lenses for thousands less than the big names. Talent is in your hands, not so much the gear. That's why I was happy with the 40MP of the older model. It was twice what I had been shooting at, with larger pixels and great features all.around that fit what I was going for. Cityscapes, landscapes, occasional portrait stuff. There's a lot of real estate in 8k images. And sonys raw files handle low light like a dream.
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Dec 27, 2022 22:29
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yeah for low light the sonys are great. since they're mirrorless you might be able to get an adapter for your nikon lenses i have a regular ol' a7iii though. imo you don't need the R, nobody needs 40 MP
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Dec 27, 2022 22:47
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I went d40->d90->d700 over the years and I am pleased as hell with the d700 I got used in 2019. low light is fine, 1600 looks great and higher is nbd but it’s not my primary concern. it’ll tickle you pink if you prefer manual and buttons and toggles for controls. Nikon primes can be p cheap and the af is still top notch
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Dec 27, 2022 22:56
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scottch posted:I went d40->d90->d700 over the years and I am pleased as hell with the d700 I got used in 2019. low light is fine, 1600 looks great and higher is nbd but it’s not my primary concern. it’ll tickle you pink if you prefer manual and buttons and toggles for controls. Nikon primes can be p cheap and the af is still top notch yeah i think i wanna do d700/50 for now and keep an eye on mirrorless in a few years once the current sonys go down a bit in price. i still like my chonky bois. i like the weight and heft, tbqh as a low brass player im usee to holding heavy poo poo for a long time. and i do love my physical buttons. new tech is cool but i kind of loved that my camera sucks rear end and i shoot in full manual all the time. the twiddling of knobs gives me great pleasure. so what should i be packing in an outdoor portrait kit?
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Dec 28, 2022 00:43
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the a7 absolutely dwarfs my micro four thirds stuff, lol. i'm pretty sure it's bigger (if not around the same size) and probably heavier than a d40 too
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Dec 28, 2022 00:47
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I have this 135mm lens and it’s hefty as, and all the reviews list the weight as a con but I’m like just don’t be weak? cmon
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Dec 28, 2022 06:11
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i have a vintage super-takumar 135/2.5 that's an incredible portrait lens. it has such a lovely feel to its focus ring. it is also made entirely of glass and brass and is bigger around than a tall boy and heavier than a full one.
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Dec 28, 2022 07:31
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135 is about the upper end for length portrait wise that is easily practical but drat it does good work we all like different things of course, and wether it’s some kind of selection bias or maybe it’s due to the photography I liked when I was younger but I so deeply prefer the compression and effect of long lenses, and now that I am more in tune with noticing photos shot with short lenses, I just struggle to enjoy them at times people have told me to experiment with shorter lenses or experiment with at least something different but I’ve tried and I didn’t like and I’ve concluded that I know what I like and long lenses is it. does that make me inflexible? gently caress yes, and I like it that way
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Dec 28, 2022 07:42
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Dec 28, 2022 07:49
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the focal length doesn't really have much to do with the heft of the lens i think. a lot of the cheapo manual mft lenses i have are surprisingly pretty goddamn substantial feeling, like i'm pretty sure you could kill someone with my 25mm zhongyi voightlander clone lol
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Dec 28, 2022 07:52
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yeah maybe but it’ll still end up looking like a photo from a phone camera
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Dec 28, 2022 07:55
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I think my issues is that the ubiquity of phone cameras has kind of ruining short lenses because they end up looking similar even if one may or may not be “high quality”, whereas long lenses still take images that look like high quality photography even if they aren’t and yes that’s a ridiculous stance to take but I can’t help it if that’s the way my aesthetic tastes have been modified
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Dec 28, 2022 07:57
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to me there's a bunch of other indicators when trying to determine whether or not something is from a phone. while you're right in that they're typically pretty wide focal lengths there's a lot of things you can look at: sharpness, color and lighting uniformity, graininess, dynamic range, and fine detail are all going to be worse. they're also postprocessed to poo poo, so there's likely to be little to no fringing, no optical distortion, decent white balance, not much wrong in terms of exposure and a healthy amount of noise reduction just reducing it down to "wide angle looks like a phone" is, well. not good. lol
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Dec 28, 2022 08:05
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Beeftweeter posted:the focal length doesn't really have much to do with the heft of the lens i think. yes and no. lotta things going on. a physically longer lens will be heavier than a shorter one all other things being equal, obviously; your 90/2.8 will weigh more than your 50/1.4 despite probably having similar optical designs and overall diameters, just because it's longer but a longer lens generally can have a simpler optical design while maintaining acceptable image quality, which means less glass, which means less weight; your 90/2.8 will be simpler than your 20/2.8 but a longer lens also needs physically larger elements for a given maximum aperture, which means more glass, which means more weight; your 135/2.8 must be bigger around than your 90/2.8 and zoom lenses have more poo poo going on inside than primes so idk how that fits into the equation Beeftweeter posted:just reducing it down to "wide angle looks like a phone" is, well. not good. lol yeah that's a vast oversimplification to me the biggest "this looks like a phone" giveaways are, in order, 1) the bizarre oil-painting look of heavy noise reduction/sharpening when the image is viewed 1:1 2) minimal bokeh as a result of using a tiny sensor, or faked portrait mode bokeh 3) lovely dynamic range and/or obvious computational-photo HDR artifacts wide angle lenses do have a much greater depth of field than long ones, so that's kinda like (2), but yeah it's still way more complicated than just that alone.
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Dec 28, 2022 08:21
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my three favorite lenses are my 35/2, 50/1.4, and 85/1.8. all 70s vintage manual everything takumars. all of them have some spherical aberration and glow when wide open, and become pin-sharp when stopped down to f/4. all are heavy and beautifully machined and the focusing action is as smooth as sealskin. love em. yeah yeah it's a pretty basic selection of focal lengths but what else do you need? i can use any of them as a walking around lens no problem
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Dec 28, 2022 08:24
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Beeftweeter posted:
i can’t help what speedy heuristic things my brain does. i’m sure if I could be bothered trying to find the differences I could maybe but my point is rather that short lenses share an aesthetic that is generated by phones, whereas you hardly ever get shots with the long lens aesthetic without someone going out of their way to do it it’s not that short lenses can’t take photos, they certainly can, but unless the composition is excellent, it just feels like 99% of every other photo I see across facebook and social media and etc perhaps this isn’t a very mature way of looking at it but part of the reason I use a longer lens is to stand out, and I suspect most people can’t put a finger on why exactly a longer lensed pic looks different but I am sure they can recognise it does look different from most pics they see on insta and whatever also.. it’s far easier to use a long lens to get a good shot lol. it’s basically cheating Sagebrush posted:what else do you need? i can use any of them as a walking around lens no problem i’ve never taken a good photo with a short lens. so my needs are a lens that gets my poor photographer decision making out of the way
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Dec 28, 2022 08:39
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Sagebrush posted:yes and no. lotta things going on. yeah, in general you're not wrong collecting a ton of mft lenses kind of turned that on its head for me though, for comparison's sake i have a handful of panasonic primes and they vary pretty widely in size and weight. they're all plastic, so regardless they're lighter, but for example my 18mm/1.6 is extremely compact (about an inch long), while the 25mm/1.7 is longer than the manual 25mm/0.95 (both probably around 3.5-4 inches), and both are longer than a 50mm/1.8 (about 3 inches). i could go on and on but without physically being able to show you it's kinda fruitless lol. suffice it to say with mirrorless there's a lot of variability there echinopsis posted:perhaps this isn’t a very mature way of looking at it but part of the reason I use a longer lens is to stand out, and I suspect most people can’t put a finger on why exactly a longer lensed pic looks different but I am sure they can recognise it does look different from most pics they see on insta and whatever to each their own, but i've found it helpful creatively to get outside of my comfort zone Beeftweeter fucked around with this message at 16:48 on Dec 31, 2022 |
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Dec 28, 2022 08:58
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in that case I recommend shooting with a nice 135mm
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Dec 28, 2022 09:27
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I think you're just conflating bad wide angle photography with phone photography because most phone photographs are bad wide angle shots when you can really get some amazing stuff that doesn't look obviously wide if you put some effort in. It can be an extremely useful tool in your toolbox if you take the time to understand the effect and how to utilise it.    These are all different lenses but taken are equivalent to 28 - 35mm full frame
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Dec 28, 2022 09:56
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yeah absolutely, and there are surely many great photos taken that I myself enjoy that have been taken with shorter lenses, although generally, as you say, it looks better if it's not obvious that it is wide angled, as in, no distorted close up faces etc but I am also largely talking about my own personal tastes wrt to the photos I take. it's clearly due to my lack of skill, but whenever I've done shoots with people and done lens changes, I've always prefered the long lens shots, and quite often the shorter lens shots have not just been not good but actively abysmal. and this is on gear that others can do good work with, so the logical conclusion is that I am the godawful weakest link your photos though? nice work echinopsis fucked around with this message at 11:03 on Dec 28, 2022 |
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Dec 28, 2022 10:16
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Casual Encountess posted:yeah i think i wanna do d700/50 for now and keep an eye on mirrorless in a few years once the current sonys go down a bit in price. i still like my chonky bois. i like the weight and heft, tbqh as a low brass player im usee to holding heavy poo poo for a long time. and i do love my physical buttons. new tech is cool but i kind of loved that my camera sucks rear end and i shoot in full manual all the time. the twiddling of knobs gives me great pleasure. 100% why I also got a d700 from that same era. the low pixel count means the photo sites are comparatively huge, noise looks nicer etc. I use a Nikkor 85/1.8 for the AF. it’s a great lens at a very reasonable price. it’s short enough that you don’t need a silly amount of room but still a very nice portrait length. i also prefer a portrait lens on the shorter side so im closer and more engaged with my subject I also have a Nikkor 105/2.5 AIS that’s full manual (meters though! and exif!) that I fuckin love for landscapes. also very cheap and you can own one of the best and most iconic Nikkors! I use a Nikkor 20/2.8 for landscapes and ofc the 50/1.8. only lens I think I might want is a 35mm but otherwise 20, 50, 85 is a loving great kit scottch fucked around with this message at 16:06 on Dec 28, 2022 |
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Dec 28, 2022 16:03
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  i want the fuji 80mm f/2.8 macro but it's $840 used 
HAIL eSATA-n fucked around with this message at 16:19 on Dec 28, 2022 |
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Dec 28, 2022 16:14
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HAIL eSATA-n posted:
reminds me of return of the jedi lol. very good
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Dec 28, 2022 17:26
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scottch posted:100% why I also got a d700 from that same era. the low pixel count means the photo sites are comparatively huge, noise looks nicer etc. yeah i fuckin love the 50/1.8. i was debating on bothering with an 85 or a 35 before i upgrade to the 7xx but i guess ill see what swims by me first. i was gonna get the yongnuo for a flash but ive never really used one before because shittyscapes lol. all my hot club photographers told me to use rear curtain for that club feel but i guess ill find out what that means soon
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Dec 28, 2022 17:39
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Beeftweeter posted:reminds me of return of the jedi lol. very good iirc the forest scenes were shot in olympic national forest, so 
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Dec 28, 2022 17:55
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Casual Encountess posted:yeah i fuckin love the 50/1.8. i was debating on bothering with an 85 or a 35 before i upgrade to the 7xx but i guess ill see what swims by me first. front curtain = the flash fires when the shutter opens, so you get a frozen moment followed by a motion blur. e.g. a person walking will have their initial position frozen and trails going forwards out of their face. rear curtain = the flash fires when the shutter closes, so you get a motion blur followed by a frozen moment. a person walking will have their final position frozen and trails coming backwards from where they were. this looks better in most cases  rear  front 
Sagebrush fucked around with this message at 19:15 on Dec 28, 2022 |
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Dec 28, 2022 19:12
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also thank yall for being a cool+responsive thread. i poke my head into the photo forum every now and again and its not my thing. so i really appreciate yall!
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Dec 29, 2022 00:27
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Sagebrush posted:front this is just my brainwaves
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Dec 29, 2022 00:35
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Casual Encountess posted:its mostly that ive been going to a bunch of drag shows and my iphone 13pro does Pretty Good in even the shittiest lighting and i'm jealous that my d40 just Does Not Work in dark indoor settings in the way I wanted it to. like i'm not trying to go full rear end club photographer but the places i will likely be shooting the most will be in poorly lit clubs or at night and my poor baby just does Not Like It. it's been reasonably well discussed, but i think you'll be amazed by how much better APS-C and full frame sensors are at "high" iso performance these days. 2006-era ISO 800 is easily equivalent to ISO 3200 performance on a 2015 era camera, and that's only if you actually care about the degree of detail loss caused by sensor noise. given my current fixation on macro poo poo, i find myself mildly irritated by 2015 sensor tech, but if I reflect on what the pictures i was taking with my (i shoot pentax) *ist DL versus what I get with my K-3, I stop whining and appreciate what I've got. honestly, any dslr or mirrorless camera from the last 5 years is going to be a massive in-place upgrade with your existing lenses. if you can also swing a lens that does the field of view you want at a faster aperture than you have, then making that a part of the upgrade will help. i did this backwards - the field of view i used the most was the mid-tele range, so i went with that upgrade before i moved through the body options. on reflection, the upgraded dynamic range and noise performance of the 2015-era K-3 helped more than the added light gathering and easier hand-holding of the 77 f1.8 lens. that said, the shots i got out of it were way better than what i was getting out of the kit zoom, and i probably would have jumped on the 21/2.4 as a step up from the 24/2.8 experience i had on film had *it* been available 10-15 years ago. for the electronics, though, if i went to the trouble of moving to last year's k-3 iii, i'd probably swear up and down i'd never need anything else to do really demanding work. if i were to travel back in time and try to point myself at the current imaging performance of an entry-level dslr to winter 2006-myself shooting on late 2005-era tech, I probably would have sworn up and down i'd never need to replace my lovely 50-200 kit-grade tele lens. i also would have been amazed at both how good and how lovely my iphone 13 pro max was. this hunk of poo poo can take amazing pictures i wouldn't have dreamt were possible even five years ago, and it also manages to disappoint me at very nearly every single moment i want it to do something specific. i think really this rambling poo poo boils down to: whatever modernization you put behind that 50/1.8 will be an unbelievable improvement relative to where you've been shooting for the low-light environments you're talking about. and with regard to that aspect, the newest you can buy, the better off you should be, check reviews of dynamic range and high iso performance for the camera you think you are interested in moving to, but know that anything released in the last five years will blow away your expectations based on 2005. as amazing as phones have become, proper camera image sensors have made as much progress. you might need to put a bit more after-shutter effort in in some cases, but the end result will 100% be worth compared to the iphone 13 it if you want it to be. echi: i'm gonna echo megabound's advice of 'try taking a good picture with a wide-angle real-camera lens.' yes, boring lovely 28-40mm equiv pictures are going to pretty much look the same between a random terrible cell phone shot and a random terrible 'real' camera shot, but either device can do better than the way you're talking about them. we all see way more snapshot photography by people who don't put the care and attention into the pursuit, and ... actually all of the suddent I'm filled with a disappointment that i think most people probably don't actually appreciate good photography for what it is. well, anyway, buy a 30-35mm equivalent lens and go take some interesting pictures with it and I think you'll be entertained. or don't, because of course if you want to tell the world what you see through a 135mm framing, who the gently caress are any of us to tell you you're wrong... all i can tell you is i find wide angle framing fun, and if i weren't away from my library, i'd post some of what i found to fit that bill this is all too much god drat writing for a camera thread so here's a shot i don't think i posted here that's in my goonshare album: 
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Dec 29, 2022 07:47
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Viginti Septem posted:From tonight somehow i missed the last two posts on the last page and holy moly I like these these are fascinating. i had some shots come out of a dslr corrupted like the cat one once and never did figure it out, nor did it ever happen again... kind of an interesting substitute for "old camera had weird film advance problems" or "sticking aperture exposure errors" or whatever else.
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Dec 29, 2022 18:43
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Dec 30, 2022 02:39
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  (e: check out all the people on the observation deck lol)   
Beeftweeter fucked around with this message at 03:52 on Dec 30, 2022 |
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Dec 30, 2022 03:08
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nice
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Dec 30, 2022 03:49
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hey all. i want to bring a camera to japan on this trip, because while an iphone is pretty good. your ceiling for photos is pretty good. wife has an olympus om-d e-m 10. only lens is 14-42 3.5-5.6. what lens should i pick up for it? the 40-150 2.8 seems like it should be it but i'll defer to yall. we're going up north to hokkaido so lots of snow shots but we're also going in feb so night will come on early. i prefer not to bump up iso until absolutely necessary.
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Dec 30, 2022 03:54
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Dec 30, 2022 04:00
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KidDynamite posted:hey all. i want to bring a camera to japan on this trip, because while an iphone is pretty good. your ceiling for photos is pretty good. i have a ton of micro four thirds lenses lol. are you comfortable at all with a manual lens? if so, you can pick up some primes for dirt cheap
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Dec 30, 2022 04:02
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also as a general rule for micro four thirds: panasonic stuff is cheaper than olympus, but it's just as good, or in some cases better i like the m.zuiko line but it's really expensive for what you get. otoh it's really nice stuff and imo olympus had excellent designers working for them, meaning there's a couple novel form factors that i haven't really seen other manufacturers match. but ultimately i think panasonic is the better buy, especially if you care about warranty service i shoot a lot of stuff with cheap primes from amazon though, and while they're completely manual, for the most part i like them a lot and don't regret purchasing any of them. seriously. it's a decent option to consider also, since micro four thirds is mirrorless, you can buy an adapter for your canon EF lenses. i've done this before and the results are very good, plus you instantly increase your capabilities. because the sensor is on the smaller side, though, the focal length doesn't map 1:1, meaning whatever you're using will have a longer focal length than you'd expect. that's fine imo, but still something to think about
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Dec 30, 2022 04:24
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