Camera Selection - part III

This week, we’ll talk briefly about the basic controls of a camera so we can move into features of camera.

Overall, a camera has one major function. To capture light in a means so that it is recordable on some type of media to recreate the image on paper or digitally. The short version – to take pictures. Now you may be saying “duh” at the moment, but when looking at all the possible choices of cameras, sometimes people get caught up with all the bells and whistles that are available. Regardless of the type of camera you select (point & shoot, advanced, or SLR), the camera needs to have the ability to take good pictures. Granted, how you define “good” is based on your perspective and personal taste.

There are three basic “controls” for capturing light on almost every camera: F-Stop (Aperture), Shutter Speed (Shutter), and ISO setting (Film). Bottom line - when looking for a camera, you want the biggest range possible for these three controls (for SLRs, you can ignore the F-Stop until you get ready to purchase a lens). So, if you don’t want to read further, there’s the answer.

If you do want to read more on these controls, there is a good article written on how to use your camera in the manual mode. This article describes the controls, and how they relate to your ability to control light, focus, and noise. http://www.thetechlounge.com/article/287

To summarize the article in terms of our discussion, when selecting a non-SLR camera, one should try to find several models that have F-Stops with a low range of F1.4 – 1.8 and an upper range of F22 – F32. Shutter Speed should range on the low end from B(bulb) – 30s to 1/2000 – 1/8000 on the upper end. The ISO should range from 50-200 on the low end to 800-1600 on the upper end. Again, the greater the range of these, the more flexible the camera will be in different lighting conditions.

For SLRs, we’ll discuss lenses at a later date. If you can’t wait until then, go with the lowest F-Stop with the best glass rating (lowest distortion) that you can afford. Just remember to keep in mind the “magnification factor” of the camera you are looking at. For example, a full frame camera, such as the Canon 5D has a magnification of 1. So a 18-200 mm lens on this camera will appear as a 18-200mm lens. A Nikon D70s has a magnification factor of 1.5. In the case of the 18-200 mm lens, this lens would give you the same perspective as a 27 – 200mm lens on the Nikon D70s. Please note that this does not increase the magnification of the lens, only the perspective. When we discuss lenses in more detail, we include a link that discusses this in more detail.