[Nazgul]

I'm looking into buying a Digital Camera for Shooting reference materials.

Budget is under 1300$ us
My short list is Nikon D70, Canon rebel and Canon 20D.

Any suggestions and recommendations welcomed:)

How many mega pixels?
Any additional lenses recomendation?

eg i hear wide angle lenses are good for panoramas. You need less shots but i'm not sure about quality.

[Fuzz]

I just recently bought the canon rebel and it's great. I'm in love with this. The resolution gets a bit grainy when you shoot at 1600 in darker areas, but thats the same with any camera. I'd recommend getting the rebel and spending the rest of your budget on getting a really nice lens. They really make a big difference in the quality of your image. And get two 1gig cards, once you get started, you'll be amazed how fast you go through shots.

The only problem i have with this camera is that you can't plug it in and use it as a harddrive, you have to upload all the images in photoshop unless you by a little mounting drive thing. That and older lens get error messages with this camera so you're forced to by a new expensive version of a lens you might already have.

[rrische]

I second the Canon Rebel. This camera is AWESOME. I borrowed
one to shoot some stuff for "Day After Tomorrow", and it was terrific.
The best part was hooking it to my laptop and using the remote capture
software to actually take the pictures. I only had to look through the lens once, to set placement and focus. The rest of the time I ran the camera
from my laptop. I could preview the shot, adjust exposure, color balance,
white point, view histograms etc. through the software.

Spoiled me for life!

[Fuzz]

Ooooo, i'll be looking into that feature...


Also, my friend just recently set his up to capture Time-lapse. It came out really cool.

[Muni]

rebels are nice.......just get a good lense, the one that comes with it is not that great! If you mave the funds check out the fuji S3 , coming out any day now.

[Audrius]

Wow. Great. I'm looking for a similar digital SLR camera as well. I was thinking about CANON 300D (Digital Rebel in the states). I've read all user messages at amazon.com and have been even more confused which product to buy :) Damn, still don't know what to choose. Canon vs. Nikon.
Digital Rebel vs. D70,... 20D vs. D100. Does it worth to spend more money for resolution or trade mark?
The info above on those standard lenses is very helpful. Maybe you'd reccomend to buy just a body?

[mioleüs]

try to see http://www.dpreview.com
the last time i went on this website, you can do a side by side compare with every camera you want.
very useful...


cheerz

mioleüs

[Muni]

trust me.....read up on the fuji s3....it promises a better dynamic range by wusing two separate pixels for highlight and shadow. It's also a 11 mega pixel camera....check it out!

[Audrius]

Thanks. I've decided Canon 300D (Digital Rebel) instead of Nikon D70. The same quality for a much lower price.

[mdwsr]

muni - can you post a link to the fuji S3?

I own a Canon EOS 20D, and I can tell you that you don't need 8 MP for reference images. I have an old Powershot S10 that does a fine job at 2.1 MP. If you want a dSLR the Rebel would be a great choice, and the Tokina 17mm lense has been getting great reviews. With dSLR you have a crop factor, which basically means the sensor is smaller than traditional 35mm film, and to get the equivalent lense specs you have to muliply by the crop factor. On my 20D the factor is 1.6, so a 17mm lense is equivalent to 1.6 X 17 = 27mm. Personally if all I wanted was reference images I would go with point & shoot, much cheaper, smaller, and some of the newer ones have fantastic image quality are are way less hassle.

Here's a link to a good Canon camera site and forum (all you will ever need to know):

Photography on the Net

Here's another photographer site, this one does Canon and Nikon plus lots of pro level photo stuff (a bit stuffy in here but lots of knowledge):

Fred Miranda