Western Railroad Discussion > buying a new camera help! (ot)

I am looking for some help on purchasing a new SLR camera,I'm looking for something with excellent color,clarity,sharpness and does well in bad light situations(shadows).Here are some of the cameras that I've been looking at:

Canon EOS Rebel 2000

Nikon N65

Minolta Maxxum 5

are any of these good choices for what I'm looking for?

Thanks! for any help

salisbury wrote:

> I am looking for some help on purchasing a new SLR camera,I'm
> looking for something with excellent color,clarity,sharpness
> and does well in bad light situations(shadows).Here are some of
> the cameras that I've been looking at:
>
> Canon EOS Rebel 2000
>
> Nikon N65
>
> Minolta Maxxum 5
>
> are any of these good choices for what I'm looking for?
>
> Thanks! for any help
>
> [%sig%]

Any of the cameras you mentioned would be good to start with. However, when it comes to color, clarity and sharpness, the camera body has nothing to do with that. The body just holds the film. The film as well as the lighting conditions will dicatate what the results are when you trip the shutter. The clarity and sharpness depend on the lens that you use. The glass is the most important thing, so don't skimp on cheap lenses. There are some very nice 3rd party lenses available (I myself use a Sigma 28-200 for Canon) but some are better than others. For poor light conditions, you would want to get "fast" lenses, such as those with a fixed F2.8 aperture. A faster lens allows more light to pass through than one that is slower, such as one rated at F5.6. However, these faster lenses can cost much more than your slower lenses, so thats another thing to take into account. Someone else may be able to better explain some of this than I have. Hope you enjoy your future purchase, let us know what you get!

Bryan Jones

You mentioned wanting something with "excellent color" and something that does well in low light... these are issues that have to do with _film selection_ and not the cameras themselves. (Well, for low light you may want some faster lenses such as an f-1.4 or f-2.8 lens, but that's another story...)

I recently bought my wife a Canon Rebel which she loves... I have occasionally used it as a "backup" for my other Canon cameras which I use while railfanning, and I have found that the Canon Rebel offers excellent sharpness (often, sharpness in your photos has more to do with the lens you are using than the camera body). I have been shooting Canons exclusively since 1995 and I've found that generally, the auto-focus features work quite well as long as the lenses I used were in good condition. I'd recommend any of the following: Canon Rebel, Elan or EOS models.

Here's a link with some other camera advice which you may find useful:
http://www.geocities.com/grumpysworld/

WSC

Just buy a Canon and shoot Fuji and you'll be following his advice.

You can save a lot of money buying used lense's, in which case I would go with Nikon. Good glass and a lot of used stuff out there and some great deals to be had. Check ebay or the photo.net classifieds or B&H for used equipment.

This is a good site to get users' reviews of equipment: http://www.photographyreview.com/

IMHO - stay away from the Nikon N65. It's made in taiwan , and is not as good quality as their other cameras. I had an N90S and then recently downgraded to a Nikon N70. It has most all the features of the N90S with an onboard flash. It shoot's up to 3.2fps and is very durable and costs about $400.00 less than the N90S. I just bought another N70 on eBay for $190.00 and it is in Mint condition. I use a Sigma 28-70 2.8 Lens and I always get enough Light with 64 speed film.