Why Moby Dick?
Because looking for a 'good' camera is
a lot like searching for that white whale. The good news is unlike
Ahab you don't have to go down and beckon, if you have read the last
two posts you'll find your white whale and maybe even beckon and all
save one, (Probably a Nikon guy), will follow.
So to review, DSLRs don't have to equal
the Black Ops budget for The Republic of Irwadistan, they don't have
to be more complicated than the stuff NASA uses to launch the space
shuttle and you can with the tools I posted find one in less time
than it takes to apply for Social Security.
So let's talk about that strange and
curious thing quality.
Remember way back when I started this I
stated, “Electronics either work or they don't.” That is true and
will still be true when you do your search and will be true for the
next lifetime unless they develop nanomachines to replace all humans
with and the smart bugs won't have any use for cameras.
There just is no real difference
between any of the top brands until you get to the professional level
and we want to avoid that like the plague cause they cost more than
an arm and a leg, they get used and abused more than a coin operated
washing machine and they are just a little bit smaller than a '48
Merc.
So all things being equal you can pick
any of the top brands and get a camera which will be reliable right
out of the box, even if you aren't the first one to open the box.
You do want to chose an entry level
camera.
But that doesn't make any sense, all
along you have been talking about a 'good' camera and if the idea is
to buy a used camera to save a few bucks then why not buy the top of
the line?
Because that is where the usage curve
starts to work against you. Every DSLR lives and dies on its shutter.
The number of times a shutter gets activated is a better indicator of
wear and tear than the age of the camera.
All of the top manufacturers engineer
their cameras to take a lot of beating about and dragging around and
most set the life of the camera at 100,000 shutter activations. Whew
that is a lot of shutter pulls and it is more than any but the most
dedicated amateur will ever do, but it is not more than a pro will
do. That is why it is important to select an entry level camera. They
will have a lot more life left in them than the work horse heavy-duty
professional photographer's boat anchor.
Nikon and Canon both say one hundred
thousand activations, Pentax says fifty thousand, but since that
number is seldom reached it is just a likely spot where things might
start going wrong. Sony claims one hundred thousand so you can see
all of the Big Guys have a long way to go before they hit anything
near then end of their service life.
My first Pentax came with 44,000+
activations and I have added another three plus since I got it plus
plus I managed to take a dive while wearing it and it is still going
so don't let a big number in the shutter count window scare you off.
Let's say that most DSLRs will do one
hundred thousand shutter clicks before they head off to the Big Dark
Room in the sky. So quality among the top three or four really is
just a matter of personal choice.
What's next I heard you ask? Lens
availability.
I picked Pentax because of two
features; first I wanted AA battery power. Nothing stinks like
grabbing your camera and finding the battery dead or almost dead when
you get a chance at the perfect shot. And second Pentax has been
around since the dawn of SLR cameras and there are literally
thousands of compatible lenses made for Pentax cameras so I can use
all of them when I find them.
Around here Canon seems to be to go-to
brand. One look on Craigslist and you will find a dozen Canon lenses
for sale, all of them too expensive but they are there all the same.
Nikon comes in third and they are even
more expensive so think about what the lenses will cost when you are
deciding what brand of camera you want to hang around your neck.
Oh yeah, Sony comes in last and you'll
have to find lenses online or travel to Eugene, Salem, Portland or
Seattle.
Now let me say that I have nothing
against any brand. I think that Sony and Nikon suffer from name
glitter without much substance to back it up. Canon's luster is a
little bit of the same but not so dependent on the big budget add
dollars. You make your decision on what you believe. Me, I'd rather
save a buck or two and avoid the star-power of Nikon, but that's me.
But when making a decision about
quality keep in mind this fact, bodies fail, get damaged or lost but
lenses go on forever. You can get by with a dinged, dirty, scratched
and skinned body, but when it comes to a lens, buy the best you can
lay your hands on. That lens will travel with your next camera and
the next and when you die the kid will fight over the lenses and
throw the camera bodies out with the rest of the dust catchers.
Lenses fit on many bodies and
manufacturers design their bodies so they are backward compatible
with their older lenses. A good lens will sell for almost as much as
you paid for it ten years from now while your camera, even if you
bought it new and kept it in a mayonnaise jar over night on the porch
of Funk and Wagnalls will be worth ten percent of what you paid if
you are lucky. Spend more money on the lens and you'll be happy for
years to come.
What about those bodies? And why buy
just a body and not a whole camera? Most of those cameras come with
an 18-55mm lens. Now this is a good ordinary lens which will take
pictures and make your posts to InstaFame look really nice. But it
isn't very useful when you start thinking about why you bought the
camera. Better to let someone else worry about how to get rid of it
and put your money in a lens you'll use.
So buy the body and the lens
separately. Maybe you can't spring for the whole thing right now,
probably a Nikon buyer, so you get the body and buy the lens later.
No it won't be as much fun but it will make you hoard your pennies
and save for that lens.
KEH will put you in a Nikon D3100 or a
D5000 for $228 or 238 respectively. Then you can get a Nikon 55-200mm
F4.5/5.6 for $79 and it is engineered for that body so your total
expense is $307 or 317 for a Nikon camera and lens! And the lens will
be something which you will actually use instead of trying to stick
someone else with on Ebay.
One last word about quality, and this
is completely anecdotal and not at all scientific, three weeks ago I
was coming home form Coquille and had my Pentax in my hand when I
missed a step and fell on my front deck. The camera wound up between
me and the deck so it took all 229 pounds of Trawler on the body and
lens. I was devastated.
No, not hurt but scared that my Pentax
had been smashed to bits. This was not helped since a part of the
lens hood went flying by my face as I landed. At the least I expected
my lens mount to have been warped by the impact. Nothing doing, the
lens hood part snapped back into place and I have run a coupla
hundred frames through the Pentax since and there appears to be
nothing amiss. That kiddos is quality. Try that with a point 'n'
shoot!
So you now know how to get a 'good'
camera and why to get a good 'camera' and what to buy with the good
'camera' so why aren't you out there buying a 'good' camera?
Parting shot, if you are truly worried
about shutter count there is a free app you can download, Photo ME.
This will tell you the count every time
you take a run of frames and you can worry about how close you are to
hitting that hundred thousand count!
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