Western Railroad Discussion > looking to purchase a new camera, yer opinions please..

hi all, im 22 and have saved up a few bucks to purchase a new camera. ive used my dads old minolta to take pics of trains and i think its about time to get my own. most of my friends have digital cameras, but i wanna take pics of trains, at 60 mph! but i was thinking, it would be kinda neat to make little movies of trains climbing the grade or what not. could someone point me in the right direction here. yer opinions are needed.

thanks

daniel

Canon cameras seem to be taking over from Nikon as the standard Railfan camera these days. They are fairly inexpensive and produce high quality results. I shoot with a Canon A2 and absolutely love it. I understand they have stopped making the A2 recently but the many other EOS series models should work just as well.


--jag

I'm on the other end. I hate Canon cameras. Some models are very cheaply made and their service is terrible. But then a couple of Nikons are too. I have been an Olympus user for years and recently had to convert to something. If you are going to be outdoors a lot put some money in a better body and good lens. Many people buy Canons because of price. I am now using Nikons even though I am not completely happy with the system. I have an F100 and an N70. The metering in the F100 is awesome and the camera is very well built but at $1000 a body it should be. The 28-105 zoom is also excellent. I have used Minolta, Canon, Nikon, Olympus, Pentax, Contax, Yashica, just about everything professionally over the last 25 years and If I had to start again I would look at the midline Minolta or the Nikon N80.

Az
Southwest Graphic Arts
Irving Texas

Everything hinges on your budget.
You can buy a number of 35mm cameras with accessories for a reasonable price either on Ebay or thru a local camera dealer. Asking brand favorites will result in feedback similar to the posts above mine....kind of Ford-Chevy debate. I have used two Canon AE-1 cameras for years. I bought them at an estate auction for $30 each, with lenes and other stuff in the box with them. They have never needed service, and have ridden in open trucks across the Mojave for years. I can say the same for several other brands that friends have used during the same time period.
Another question you have to answer to yourself...are you going to stay with 35mm or go to a digital camera...which opens a whole new series of decisions
First figure what you really want to Spend...Then on the format Film or Digital...then we can begin to evaluate the equipment that will fill the bill...
BTW I have recently jumped to digital myself...Using a Canon G3 and love it...but at $700 it wasn't a "bargain buy"

Check out the Hewlitt Packard 850. It has alot of nice things, the BIG plus is you are not stuck using proprietory Memory or batteries.
Here's the link for the preview. I'v had mine for a couple of months still learning but so far not dissapointed.

http://www.dpreview.com/articles/hp850/

John

If you want to take extended videos, then a video camera is your choice. While many digital still cameras can do short videos, they aren't optimized for that (nor are their audio capabilities all that spectacular compared to real stereo and digital audio in a good viseo cam.). These days, I'd suggest a digital video cam because it will add to flexibility in editing, etc. Don't depend on your video cam to make acceptable stills either.

Whether you should choose digital or film still gear is kind of a tough choice. A lot depends on just what kind of pictures you want to take and how you want to store, view and share them. There is really very little that can't be done digital but the initial outlay will be significantly higher than film gear of equivalent capabilities. Eventually the consumable film and developing costs could catch up but convenience remains a big factor in choosing digital.

I bought a Fuji S602Zoom digital camera last November after my Canon AE-1 broke. The Fuji is a 3.1 Megapixel that has a new kind of CCD and has a high res. mode equal to 6 megapixels. It has a 6x Zoom lens equivalent to a 35mm camera of 35mm to 210mm. Apeture of F2.8 to F11. It uses AA batteries and Smartmedia card or Compactflash or MicroDrive. For fast moving trains you can set the ISO (like for different film speeds) from 160,200,400,800 and 1600 (the default is 200). It also has a "last 5" or "first 5" mode where you continuosly hold down the shutter button and when you let up it remembers the first 5 or last 5 pictures it took. I tried this and it really shoots fast. It will also take unlimited video with sound for as long as you have memory. It's autofocus is supposed to be one of the fastest. It is very fast. It's write time is very fast also. Not a bad camera for the just under $600 market.
Here is a set of pictures taken with the "last 5" mode of a train coming at me about 30mph. You can see how fast its write time is also.
And a few of my favorite shots.

98-99 (Southern Pacific fan forever)

P.S. On the HP850 I heard that it freezes the viewfinder image until it has writen the picture into memory. Not good for shooting a moving train.

---

I have a Minolta S404 and I'd somewhat satisified with it. The low light pics don't always come out good and the auto-focus / auto-everything modes should be avoided. Pluses are 4x optical zoom (TOTALLY disregard digital zoom)which is probablly the minimum zoom you should look at for railfanning (about equal to 138.5 mm) and 4 megapixels for the price of $449 now- I paid $499 + memory card and extra batteries+ tax = $670.

BUT--- this is the baby that I'm holding out for

http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/sigmasd9/

The Sigma SD9 with the X2 foevon technology. I've been drooling over it since last March. List price now is $1700 - $1800. I've read that by next Christmas the price should drop to the $500- $800 range.

Jeff

The SD9 is a great camera but it will be even better when Foven gets another generation or two of sensors under their belt. Also this is Sigmas first digital camera so their is some refinemet due on their part.
The exciting stuff comes later this year when other makers release their first Foveon based products. Think more reasonable point and shoot to advanced fixed lens. SLR is history for most users except pros and hardcore amatures.
Also News Flash Fuji just annouced today that their 4th generation Super CCD has a new SR model with the same Dynamic Range as color negative film. Look for this in new products like the well praised 602 line and S2 SLR model. Go to Fujifilm.com to learn more. If somebody could put this technology in a video camera I would pee my pants because they are so unforgiving.
Paul

pmpete wrote:

> If somebody could put this
> technology in a video camera I would pee my pants because they
> are so unforgiving.

So does that mean you'll have to change your TO handle to Pissmore Pete if that comes about? ;)

It all depends on how big of a enlargement you want. Most of the current ink jet printers will go to 13x19 and if want to make pictures that big you will want the best glass you can get. That is why I went with Nikon, as there is ton of used Nikon equipment out there for sale with some great deals to be had.
As far as digital goes, I would look at a DSLR so as to be able to take advantage of high quality glass, or you could go with slides and get a scanner. Any way you look at it your going to spend some money if you want to make big pictures. If all you want to do is post to the net one of the point and shot digitals is all you need.

Santa Fe fan.