Choosing a digital camera
Choosing a digital camera is a personal decision and I won't get into it too deeply except to mention a few things. The quality of the digital file is of paramount importance if you plan to produce large prints. By large I mean anything up to about 24" x 36". Although I wouldn't have said so three years ago, CMOS sensors used by Canon and Nikon now produce by far the cleanest files in my experience. When shot at ASA (same as ISO) 800 there is almost no noise at all. Even at ASA 1600 there is very little noise and then only in the shadows which can easily be handled with post-processing. Up to now I have not seen this quality from CCD sensors.
I do a lot of hiking and walking in my work. For this reason weight is important. I have lugged long 18" telephoto lenses and 35mm film cameras all over the Rocky Mountains and Foothills and I can tell you the lighter digital SLR cameras of today are a blessing. Not only are they better, some of the best digital SLRs of today use sensors that are smaller than a full frame sensor, which is the size of a 35mm slide. For nature photographers this is a big advantage. More about this below.
The cameras I use most of the time
After selling all of my 35mm film cameras and lenses I had to make a decision, in fact two decisions. It came down to 'where to best spend my money'. I really wanted to buy the full frame Canon EOS 1Ds II and add a couple Canon lenses. But the EOS 1Ds II would have cost me about $10,500 where I live, and the lenses would have cost almost as much. I then considered the Canon 20D. Without going into the details, it had a very clean, 8 megapixel CMOS sensor that had sufficient detail to print up to poster size and beyond with proper upsampling. And it produces a RAW file which coule be post-processed with Adobe Camera Raw (ACR) to produce an incredibly sharp master file. I just about bought it but then decided to look at the Canon EOS Digital Rebel XT (350D in Europe). It had basically the same CMOS sensor as the 20D and all of the features I need. And the 350D was smaller and lighter, which appealed to me.
So I decided on the Canon Rebel 350D to begin with and chose to spend the extra money I would have spent on the 20D (about $700) on a couple extra batteries, larger Compact Flash cards, and various filters, flashes and lenses. The 350D is still my backup camera.
Update March 2011: Canon and Nikon, as well as Sony and others, have made huge improvements in their technology and cameras since I bought my Rebel 350D. I was going to buy the Canon 7D which is a professional camera and superior in many ways to the Rebel line. But I didn't like the weight and really didn't need many of the features for the work I was doing. (It's important to buy what you need, not what you want.) However, the sharp and fast 18mp sensor of the 7D made me very envious. Then came the Canon 60D and just as I was going to pick one up I saw their latest announcement for the 600D.
All three cameras have the same sensor and processor (the 7D has two processors while the other two have one) and thus the same image quality. However, the 600D was about the same size and weight as my old 350D. So I have chosen the 600D basically because I can carry it in my shoulder briefcase along with my notebook and everything else I need for a night walkabout. I think this is much safer than a big, colourful camera bag that seems to be begging for a street mugging. I walk around the streets of major cities during the night. Even though I'm registered with the city police and RCMP, they will not respond in time to help me if I have a problem. In fact, for some cities I hire either one or two body guards so that I can concentrate on getting the shot I want.
Lenses
The lenses I finally chose were the Canon EF 70-300mm f/4-5.6 IS USM zoom, the Tamron AF 28-75mm f/2.8 SP XR ZL Di LD Aspherical (IF) and the Sigma 50mm f2.8 EX Macro 1:1. The Canon is a very sharp semi-pro (although I know several pros who use one), full size lens that doesn't weigh nearly as much as the professional and much more expensive Canon 'L' lens. Improved Image Stabilizer Technology provides up to three stops of "shake" correction. And it's black. In my opinion walking around with an expensive, white, $4,000 lense is just asking to be mugged, especially at night.
The Tamron is my walk around lens and a real workhorse for low light photography. I really love this lens. An aperture of f2.8 throughout, coupled with very useable ISO 1600 and even 3200, makes it possible to shoot hand-held in many low light situations. I usually leave my Manfrotto tripod in the vehicle and carry a monopod which helps considerably when I rest my camera on it. It also doubles as a walking stick. The Sigma is used for photographing paintings, which is always done with a mobile studio setup. It's usually left in the studio when doing night photography.
Further thoughts
With the advantages that digital brings to photography, I'm always perplexed when I hear a photographer worry over the digital effect that smaller sensors have on lenses. Smaller sensors, by their nature, change the effective focal length of a lens. All three lenses I use are full frame so have a 1.6 multiplier for the APS-C size sensor in the 600D. There are benefits to this.
For instance the EOS 1Ds II has a full size 35.8 x 23.8 mm sensor, which is the size of a 35mm slide, while the 600D has a smaller 22.2 x 14.8mm sensor. Consequently the smaller sensor uses the middle of the lens instead of the whole lens. The focal mutliplier is 1.6 so this translates into a longer zoom. Consequently, the Canon EF 70-300mm f/4-5.6 IS USM zoom becomes a 112-480mm zoom. Add a matched 2x multiplier and it becomes a 224-960mm ultra zoom. This is excellent for even the longest shots I might want to make.
The Tamron becomes a 45mm x 120mm which is a near perfect walkabout lens. This is certainly not a wide angle lens but for the work I do I can usually position myself so as to get the field of view I want. It's seldom that I really need a wider lens, even for nature photography. One advantage to backing up from a flower, or a portrait of a person, is that it flattens the image a bit. So, for instance, a person's nose doesn't seem to be over-size. This just seems to look more natural.
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