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Buying a Digital Camera
Q_Prime
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
i'm looking at buying a digital camera, so far i've been looking between, a canon s3, a nikon d50 and a canon rebel xt. any camera i buy will be bought on credit. the slrs two will take me about a year to pay off the s3 i can have paid in half a year. but i also need to consider lenses. the s3 does mostly what i want out of the box. the d50 is cheaper to buy then the xt (about 100 dollars) and it uses sd cards as opposed to compact flash. but the xt uses a cmos sensor rather then the ccd in the d50. i want a canon, but the d50 is at a really nice price for me and i can't decide.
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With that out of the way, why do you need to get one and put it on credit. Can you find one that will do what you need and pay cash for it.
Just asking because i've spent the last 3 years working on getting out of some massive credit card debt and it's not anything that I really want to do again.
BP
i won't ever be able to afford it with cash, but i'm buying it at futureshop since they have 12 months no payments no interest. i did that with my laptop and paid it off. i figure i can afford 100 dollars per month or so and have it paid off in less then a year. i would save up and buy it with cash but i'm irresponsible and unless it is a payment for something i wont make room for it. so i rarely have excess cash from my paychecks but i do have room for the payments.
Since I don't know what your current situation is (financially) I can't comment too much, but I'll tell ya brother, I'm paying the price now for not being fiscally responsible for the last 5 years.
I've since learned that if you don't have the cash for it, then you can't afford it. IMO, credit is destroying this country. Our grandparents were able to get by without it, but nowadays we all want instant gratification and feel that we deserve the best even when we can't afford it.
It's a tough lesson to learn, and one that I still struggle with from time to time, but living within your means now will help you out later.
BTW, what's the purpose for the camera? School, work, or new toy?
for fun, video games don't keep me entertained as much as they used to. i was using my moms point and shoot for a while but im happy to say my skill with cameras has gone beyond what a point and shoot can do. so if i want to continue with this hobby im going to need a slightly better one. i can live without it. i already know that, but i'm enjoying photography and i'd like to pursue it.
I've got a D50 and I've been pretty impressed. Unless you're looking into becoming a serious photographer, I imagine it'll do everything you need it to. That said, if you're tight on cash I'm not sure a DSLR will be a good thing - lenses is where the real money sink is, and you'll soon feel the need to expand your collection.
But if you're restrained and willing to put the effort in, you'll probably find any DSLR will give you wonderful returns even with just the kit lens.
I don't know what your credit situation is, but if you buy an SLR and can realistically afford to pay it off in 2 years, I say go for it. Your credit record will look like fucking gleaming pile of $$$'s to banks if you want to get loans or any other sorts of credits in the future.
Just remember, an SLR is much more than just a body and a lens... You'll suddenly find yourself wanting flash modules, longer lenses, wider lenses, tripods, all that shit. SLRs are fun as hell, but they can easily wind up costing 3x the initial price even for a non-pro.
yea, i'm considering all the zoom lenses i want and the amount of money required is making me cry. but i can pay it off in 1 so that's even better.
i think im just going to go with the canon, it's got the better sensor and both my friends have rebels so i can borrow lenses when we go take pictures
Canons are the fucking bomb. I've got an older 300D and it's image quality is out-goddamn-standing. I'd rather have a 6 megapixel CMOS camera than a 10 megapixel CCD... CMOS images are much more natural looking (in my eyes, anyways).
It's actually kind of strange... a CCD of the same size as a CMOS sensor will produce sharper images, however CCDs are far more expensive to produce than CMOS sensors. For that reason, you can build a huge-ass (almost 35mm in some "pro-sumer" cameras, even bigger in pro-models) CMOS sensor for much less than a comparably sized CCD.
Since the physical properties of light will never change no matter what you do, having a bigger sensor means you'll end up with better picture quality, since the light doesn't have to be focussed down to an extremely small area, which is what happens with consumer-level digital cams.
You'll notice that every (and I mean EVERY) small, thin camera has, well, shit for picture quality compared to a bigger camera at the same resolution. This is due to the fact that the image sensor is so small. Even though it has (for example) 6.4 megapixels, it's not going to catch every single small detail in the scene. A 35mm CCD chip would be prohibitively expensive. A 35 mm CMOS chip is not so much so...
Also, due to the way they work, a CMOS sensor generates a more even light pattern which results in a slight "blur." This "blur" is very slight and sub-pixel in "size." In the case of the Canon 300D and 10D, the "blur" creates a silky smooth picture that still retains extremely sharp details, without unnatural looking pixellation found in small-CCD cameras.
It really comes down to this: Which looks better: a tiny image blown up to huge proportions, or a big image blown up to huge proportions?
cmos used to be low end before, apparently they worked out the kinks and now it's being used in slrs. well canon seems to be the only one using cmos sensors in slrs.