Drop, charge, and lose the cordsThe Real Deal 156: dSLR specs
Stephen Shankland drops by to talk about the specs you should look for when buying a dSLR camera.
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Real Deal 156
dSLR spec discussion
Specs that matter if you want to take serious pictures.
To talk about
Pixels
Sensor size
Light sensitivity
Lens focal length (recommendations for snapshots, portraits, macro, tourism, general-purpose)
Sensor dust-removal system
Aperture
Vibration reduction
Flash spec (not a big deal for built-in flash)
Frames per second
Focusing method
Live view
LCD specs
Memory card formats
Intangibles
Camera handling speed / control layout
What about rangefinder pro cameras (Leica, others?)
Brands to look at
The big guys: Canon, Nikon
How to the nonpro brands stack up: Sony, Oly, Pentax, etc.
Video
How good, what do you give up?
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Dr Karl asks (in addition to a bunch of stuff we’ve already covered):
I'd like to get a dSLR, but I'm a dSLR n00b. Canon or Nikon? Is now a good time to invest in one?
As far as where I print my pictures... Ritz went bankrupt!! This makes me sad because they really offered superior quality and service.
So where do I go now?! Suggestions? Walmart? Snapfish? (I don't much like either of those.) Where do I go to get good quality pictures?
What's Flickr's deal with prints?
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QUESTIONS
AmandaAC1 — I’d like to know which point and shoot cameras have the quickest shutter. I’m not up for spending dSLR money but I hate always missing the moments. Thanks.
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ANDROID APPS
Hi Tom and Rafe,
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You mentioned on BOL to send you a few Android apps since you neglected to mention them last week. Well there are several I can’t see myself functioning without now, but by far the most useful is Locale. I would say every G1 owner knows and uses this app, but I mainly wanted to mention it to rub it in the face of all the iPhone owners. This is background processing at its finest. You set up conditions and your settings change when those conditions are met. For example, every time I get to work Locale automatically identifies this with GPS and sets my phone to vibrate. There are endless combinations of conditions based off location, power, time, etc., which can adjust almost every possible setting. It also incorporates SMS and Twitter (for example: every time you go to a restaurant it automatically tweets how much you love their dinner rolls). I have TONS of conditions set up on my phone but I will refrain from rambling and direct you to their Web site to see all the possibilities. Thanks guys. Love the show!
Corey in Chattanooga, Tenn.
More great suggestions on the blog — Need Palm suggestions, too!
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Stephen recommends Twidroid for monitoring Twitter.
MyTracks - GPS stat keeper.
COMMENTS
by PullSlice April 1, 2009 7:24 AM PDT Which iPhone chess app are you talking about, Tom? From their descriptions at the App Store, it doesn’t seem like either Chess Lite or Chess Pro can do the “play a game with Contacts” iPhone-to-iPhone thing you were talking about, which is the most important part of the app for me. “Chess With Friends” maybe? Which specific one do you use?
A: Chess with friends
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Hey Tom and Rafe,
I absolutely love listening to The Real Deal podcast and have finally found an alternative to iTunes or Zune. Songbird, while it took me a bit to figure out how to get it to work, is my new podcast consumption application. If by chance you mention it please let the other listeners know that you need to navigate to the podcast's page and enter that URL in as the podcast URL. It seems to only work for sites that contain the MP3 links. I am still a bit new to it so I could be mistaken. This is important to me since I was looking for an alternative media device and podcasts are a big deal to me. I intend to get a Sony Walkman and now I won't have to manually download every episode I want to listen to. Also, Songbird organizes the playlist for you in an already familiar way.
Love the show!
Jon O.
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Tom Merritt appears on CNET TV and loves to dive into technology and help consumers fight fear, uncertainty, and doubt with technology.
Rafe Needleman is editor of Webware.com, CNET's blog about Web applications. He lives to discover great new online apps – and to rip apart bad ones.
backwards lens compatibility, and lens compatibility. There are very many people that think that the best lenses [namely, Olympus and Cosina] can be used with any camera. Which is not true.
It isnīt as well that any lens made for a brand [bought at garage sales] can be used with current dSLRīs. Nor Nikon, nor Canon, nor Olympus can use older lenses. Only Sony can use Konica-Minolta lenses [the latest ones] and Pentax can use old lenses [Pentax has, indeed, the best by far backward lens compatibility due to the lens mount].
I have to disagree about the IS system: the very best [as far as I know in real world tests] is the Olympus system.
Then, about pro cameras.
The real pro camera market is getting very interesting. Hasselblad, Phase One, Mamiya, and now Pentax and Leica are heading to bump the pro camera market. They have the biggest sensors around, and will produce spectacular results. Canon, Nikon and Sony are quite some steps behind, still, and not really up to the mark in that sense.
All in all, my recomendation for a camera around 1000 US $ would be an Olympus E30 or a Pentax K20d, merely based on specs. The rest of the bunch are not up there, yet, at that price point.
Using proper technique of balancing ambient and flash, bouncing or taking it off camera with modifiers you can achieve photographs that "natural light" photographers would swear was shot without flash.
It takes time to understand how to use flash properly and maybe instead of just slamming the use of flash people interested in photography should actually learn how to use a flash gun properly.
After all photography is all about light, regardless if it comes 93 millions miles away or from a couple of AA battery powered speedlight/lites. Light is light. Improve the quality of light and learn to flash.
Also, completing ignoring flash means your ignoring one of the great advantages of DSLRs over compact point and shoots. Every DSLR (as far as I know) has a a hot shoe for attaching an external flash while most compact point and shoots don't, so you stuck with the crummy little flash that's built in usually. DSLR users shouldn't be bashing flash but learning and embracing flash as one of their big advantages.
Finally, natural light only photography, especially of people, is often very unflattering if the photographer doesn't really know his lighting. The subjects might not have "white flash face" but instead has dark shadows on the face and their eyes have no life in them because their too dark.
I completely agree with joeyjoeyjoey, photography is all about light and while natural light photography has it's time and place so does flash photography.
Bleech, one of the things not to forget is you can get an OM adapter ring for the Olympus cameras to use OM lenses on their new dSLRs, and as an OM10 owner, I appreciate this accessory a lot, and as a side note, all of Canon's EOS cameras, even going back to film, can use the same lenses, at least according to a professional photographer friend of mine.
What I meant with backwards compatibility is the ability NOT to use an adapter and still be able to mount junkyard lenses on your camera. On that regard, only Samsung and Pentax allow you to do so for lenses that go as far as 1970, and to some extent, Sony-KM mount.
There have only been two Pentax mounts so far: the K mount, and the Pentax mount [M42] up to now.
That is due to the fact that the K mount is an electromechanical mount, not simply electronic mount.
Via an adapter, still, all the cameras can use any lens [with some exceptions]. Thing is HOW that is implemented what matters.
On the other hand, about the EOS EF mount, there are quite some versions of it. And not all the EOS lenses [startig around 1985] can be used with no problem or full functionality of the lens on the current EOS Digital bodies.
It does happen more or less the same with the Nikon mount.
And mostly, the worst case is the Olympus one, where the Zuiko lenses lost all the functionality [as aperture control, for instance] because the Zuiko Digital lenses are electronic mount only lenses.
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by KamilWawrzyszko
April 11, 2009 4:37 AM PDT
- Regarding DSLR specs and camera:
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(8 Comments)I have a pentax K10D and I'm very happy with it. The only drawback of Pentax in comparison with Cannon or Nikon is noise. However, in all other areas Pentax is superior (in similar price range).
Regarding things like aperture, sensor etc., please visit my blog www.PentaxBody.com where you will find a few articles explaining my view on it. I will appreciate your comments.
Cheers
Kamil