I am 72 years old. Prostate cancer survivor for 2 years June 09. Was very involved with Photography in the 70's. Nikon FTN. Loved the darkroom. So...
I have a budget of $800. Pro's and con's of cameras in that price range. I have already purchased a printer Canon Pro 9000 MarkII. I realize the learning curve is going to be massive but what would life be without challenges.
Several very good Nikon digital cameras and lenses that come under your budget.
I came back to photography after a 20 year absence, coming from a Nikon F and restarted in digital with a Nikon D50. I learned a lot and it was a good camera for its time. The D3100 has very good image quality and will assist in learning the ins and outs from film. The D5000 is another. Just peruse KEH site for what's available at at what prices. All their used equipment now has a 6 month warranty. too.
The Nikon D5100 is an upgrade from the D5000 and probably can be had in kit form for less than your budget, too.
Adorama and B&H also have very good prices on new and used equipment. I've bought from all three and have no complaints at all.
Before you can decide on camera gear a good question is how prepared are you to work with digital images on a computer? You know your way around a darkroom, but how well are you set up with your computer and monitor? That is a fine printer but if you want to do anything more that press the print button, you'll need decent software and a good enough monitor that you can manage color.
Since you know your way around a camera you also likely have a great deal of experience shooting with manual focus lenses. In terms of value for money, shooting with Nikon's outstanding collection of MF glass, is fantastic. Five of the MF lenses in my kit were bought for less than a hundred dollars. I picked up a 50 f/1.8 AI-s for $46, an 80-200 f/4.5 AI for $76. You could pick up a Nikon D200 for $450 and utilize what is called the non-CPU register to input data on up to 9 manual focus lenses. Once having done so, the digital camera will control light metering in aperture priority or manual mode. This is how I shoot with the newer D700. And I'm not alone... You might enjoy seeing what folks shooting with digital cameras are doing with those gorgeous old lenses...
This is one of the most active threads on the Nikon forum. Good luck and have fun! Digital photography using manual focus lenses is combining the best of the past with the best of the present.
At the top right of this page, you'll see a drop-down box with "Forum & Miscellaneous" showing in it. Simply go through the list in that box and you'll find all the forums within FredMiranda.com, including the Nikon forum.
Curtis's (CGrindahl) post makes a lot of sense, if you have the memory of that time and are still comfortable working with manual-focus lenses. That's probably how you'll get the most bang for the buck.
Another idea you might consider in order to improve your budget is to sell your printer and have your work printed for you. If you print a lot, having your own printer is cheaper... but if you don't print a lot, having your own printer is more expensive. And it's an additional learning curve and an additional part of your workflow as well.
Agreed that you're going to need some post-processing software as well. I'm comfortable with Lightroom as a one-size-fits-most solution, and you can get it on sale sometimes for $150 which is a good investment. Your computer is your darkroom, and you still need to develop your images... but the tools have changed.
Igglepud wrote:
If you know how to shoot film, you know how to shoot digital.
I beg to differ. Photography in general is the same as it was then (lighting, composition, et al.); but film and digital are total opposites in a few respects, so shooting style does and should change. The biggest example is in exposure bias:
When shooting film, we shot with an underexposure bias. If in doubt, underexpose and then simply lengthen the time during which the paper was under the lamp to make the print lighter. Recovering from overexposure was much harder, and sometimes impossible to do at all.
However, when shooting digital, the opposite is true: we shoot with an overexposure bias. Because a sensor collects light linearly (counting photons from 1 to n), but the eye sees light logarithmically, fully half of the data captured by the digital sensor is in the brightest stop of exposure; 1/4 of the data is in the second-brightest stop, 1/8 in the third-brightest stop, and so on. When you look at an exposure you've made, nearly 94% of your actual image data is in the four brightest stops the camera can capture. So if you underexpose, you're dead... you're forced to do heavy amplification of a very poor signal since you have very little data in the shadows. But if you overexpose a little, you can then bring the exposure down in post-processing (computer) and you'll get much richer data in the shadows, with much lower noise overall.
That's why, in digital, we use a concept called ETTR ("Expose To The Right"). The idea is that, if you want the best-possible image out of a given exposure, you should overexpose the shot somewhat in order to make the capture as bright as you can but without blowing the highlights. Then, bring it down in post, and you'll get the best-possible data set for your image that way.
Very easy to understand and to do, but the exact opposite of how things were done on film.
