Choosing your first DSLR camera

It wasn’t long ago that I set up my fancy Google Pro­file. If you haven’t set up your own, it’s a pri­vacy advocate’s night­mare. This is a sys­tem whereby you will­ingly inject Google with your per­sonal infor­ma­tion to “improve search results” when peo­ple search for you. I didn’t give them the Full Monty, but you can find own every­where I’ve lived, which may or may not be use­ful for … whatever.

The point is, last night, for the first time, I received an email through my Google pro­file from a friend. A friend who didn’t know my email address, and found me through Google. Pro­file. Man, this sys­tem is rock solid. He wanted to know if I had any thoughts on pick­ing up his first digital-SLR cam­era. Well, I’ll let him tell you.

I want to get a DSLR cam­era for Christ­mas, but I do not know much about them. I was hop­ing that you could shed some light on what would be a good first DSLR cam­era for a first time user. I am inter­ested in Nikon or Canon, but that is only because of name brand recog­ni­tion. I am look­ing to keep the cost around $500.00 for body and lens. Any thoughts?

Do I have some thoughts? Sure I do. This one’s for you, Dave.

I’m a Nikon shooter myself, but haven’t always been so. My first DSLR was a Canon Dig­i­tal Rebel XT. It was a ter­rific cam­era. Light­weight. Soft to the touch. Gen­tle on the wrists. It was a bud­ding photographer’s dream. I’d been shoot­ing Canon for years prior in the high-end point and shoot range, so the move to the XT was a piece of cake.

When I made the move myself, the ProPhoto guys were so gen­tle with me. And still, they left me with brochures about com­pet­ing cam­eras, cam­era lines, lens avail­abil­ity, fea­tures out the yin-yang, too much stuff. Now that I’ve been shoot­ing in more of a pro­fes­sional capac­ity for a few years, I’ve boiled my needs down to a sim­ple 4-point sys­tem that can be summed up in two gor­geous words: User Expe­ri­ence.

Here are the two things that don’t mat­ter at all when search­ing for your first DSLR camera.

1. Brand reli­gion. Nikon. Sony. Canon. Pana­sonic. Unless you’re on the mar­ket for a Has­sel­blad, the brand mat­ters very lit­tle. See, all these cam­era guys do is spend their time try­ing to fig­ure out how to get the upper hand on one another. That’s it. Low light? They’re all great. Noise reduc­tion? Ter­rific. Lens speed? Damn near zippy. Every cam­era is leaps and bounds bet­ter than the near­est com­peti­tor for all of about 32 days on the mar­ket. It’s just some­thing we get used to.




2. Megapix­els. Let this go, too. Unless you’re spend­ing gobs of money on a cam­era with a giant sen­sor in it, all you’re get­ting in an entry-level DSLR with high megapixel count is a com­pany jam­ming more pix­els on the same sized sen­sor and trad­ing off qual­ity of image for the right to impress their dates. You are their dates. You should be unimpressed. A good 6–8 megapixel cam­era will give you more than enough pic­ture for your buck once you learn the ropes, and you’ll have trou­ble find­ing one of those these days. Don’t be fooled.

But there are things that set cam­eras apart. This gets us back to my handy 4-point sys­tem. See, the sin­gle most impor­tant thing that you are buy­ing in a DSLR cam­era is your abil­ity to inter­act with it quickly. You have to be able to plug in to the thing, to make it bow down to you, to do your bid­ding when you think about what you want to do with it, not when you bend over in the shade so you can read some obscure dial or nob and pull out the instruc­tions. By then, he’s already kissed the bride, left for the hon­ey­moon, and secured their sec­ond mort­gage on the fam­ily home.

What you’re buy­ing is speed, and speed is in the User Expe­ri­ence. Some man­u­fac­tur­ers get it, oth­ers don’t. So here’s the test, in four points. If you can look at the back of the cam­era and find these four fea­tures quickly, you’re in good shape.

1. Cam­era Mode. On most DSLRs the cam­era mode is on a dial that offers some wee heiro­glyph­ics along with cryp­tic alpha-numeric com­bi­na­tions. If you hit the right pat­tern, you’ll open a Star­gate to Isis. Oth­er­wise, you’re ask­ing the cam­era to get itself all ready for shoot­ing in cer­tain pre­set con­di­tions. Por­trait, Land­scape, Night, Action/Sports… those are pretty reli­able, but most shoot­ers I know spend the vast amount of their shoot­ing time on “Aper­ture Pri­or­ity,” which allows them to set the aper­ture set­ting man­u­ally, but let the cam­era get all the other set­tings just right given that aper­ture. Aper­ture deter­mines how much light you’re let­ting through the lens — the lower the aper­ture, the more light; the higher the aper­ture, the less light. If you can fig­ure out how to set your cam­era to Aper­ture Pri­or­ity (usu­ally marked by an “A” or “A1”, you’re in good shape.




2. ISO. This is what sets the speed equiv­a­lent to film. ISO 100–400 for out­door shoot­ing — nice and fast, low noise, great for bright lights. ISO 600–800 for darker, indoor envi­ron­ments. Today’s DSLRs have insane low-light sen­si­tiv­ity; even the lower end Canon X1i hits 12,800 in it’s high­est mode. Tak­ing pic­tures in the dark with that one.




3. Aper­ture. Now that you’re in Aper­ture Pri­or­ity, you have to set the aper­ture. On my Nikon D3, aper­ture is con­trolled by a lat­eral scroll-wheel under my index fin­ger, right by the shut­ter release. It’s com­pletely intu­itive, and it has to be. Learn to set aper­ture appro­pri­ately and you’ll mas­ter Depth of Field — how to get the back­grounds fuzzy and your sub­jects crisp. You’ll be using it a lot.




4. Expo­sure Com­pen­sa­tion. Look for the lit­tle plus/minus sym­bol and the but­ton that goes with it. That’s an impor­tant but­ton. Can you press it when you hold the cam­era up to your mug? Expo­sure com­pen­sa­tion is the “nudge” that you give the shut­ter to make your photo brighter or darker, given all the other set­tings you’ve fixed. It’s the last bit of nuance in shoot­ing the per­fect fam­ily photo, and one that will make you the pho­to­graphic hero of the crazy side of the fam­ily that you only send cards to.

Sim­ple, right? If you’re really look­ing for your very first DSLR, it might not sound sim­ple, but take it from me: if you can walk into a cam­era store and find those four options on the cam­era, you’re well on your way to tak­ing absolutely ter­rific pic­tures. But don’t just find them. Change them up. Dial aper­ture way up, then way down. See how quickly you can move from set­ting your ISO to set­ting your aper­ture. Can you really set expo­sure com­pen­sa­tion with the cam­era up to your face?

The most impor­tant bit here is that the con­trol scheme makes sense to you. Nikon makes sense to me. The menu sys­tem is clean and very lin­ear. The but­tons are spaced appro­pri­ately for my hands and, in the case of button-dial com­bi­na­tions, they’re well thought out and in
tuitive after just a few tries. For me, Canon made less sense, and even after years of shoot­ing with Canon, the menus seemed to be get­ting even less trans­par­ent. I switched. It just wasn’t how my brain was wired.

Dude. What about the photos?

They all take great pho­tos. That’s the beauty of this dis­cus­sion. Once you get the hang of it, you’ll be tak­ing great pic­tures and expertly nav­i­gat­ing your cam­era like a Japan­ese school­girl on her DoCoMo. Here are a few mod­els to check out.

Canon EOS Rebel T1i

Here’s a gan­der at the back of the new Canon EOS Rebel T1i. It’s a bit out of the $500 range at $799 MSRP, but the over­age may just be worth it when you con­sider needs and usability.

Images cour­tesy of CanonUSA

If you can get the but­tons work­ing, this baby brings you full HD (1080i) video record­ing onboard. If you haven’t seen some of the footage com­ing from video shot on DSLR cam­eras, check out “Reverie” by Vin­cent Laforet to get a feel for what you can do. New baby video has never looked so good, plus you get the bonus of shag­ging only one cam­era on dia­per changes.

Nikon D5000

Image cour­tesy of Nikon USA.

The Nikon D5000 shoots video, gives you 12.3 megapix­els, and has some of the most intu­itive con­trols I’ve used in the line. This cam­era is wicked fast where it counts — when you press the shut­ter. Nikon’s new line of dig­i­tal lenses — a con­cept most pho­tog­ra­phers have frowned on for many moons — are start­ing to get noticed as well, mean­ing you’ll have lots of options when it comes to kit­ting out your new D5000 with new glass as you get to know your own shoot­ing style.

Both of these cam­eras are in the $600-$700 range and frankly, that’s where I’d be start­ing my search. The D40 is the $499 Nikon starter, and the EOS Rebel XS is the $569 starter for Canon. Both are good cam­eras, but with the fea­tures they’re jam­ming into the line up with only a few extra pen­nies, you’re get­ting pro-level equip­ment at a frac­tion of the price that will last you years.

There you go, Dave. My thoughts on get­ting your first DSLR. Wher­ever you go with this, make sure the but­tons and the menus work for you. Test them. Go to the store and take lots of pic­tures on them. Make sure you can be one with your new cam­era. Because the real secret to great pho­tog­ra­phy is this: no one cares what kind of cam­era you used, if you can take pic­tures that make grandma cry.