Quote:
Originally Posted by DarthYoda
I'm not ready yet for a full SLR and all the additional costs involved. I would like a camera that I can try out some of the manual features that SLR cameras give, without out having all the separate lenses until I am more confident with photography.
|
I would certainly rethink your DSLR position for the following reasons:
1. Buying a DSLR which comes with a kit lens (the Canon EF-S 18-55 is the one that springs to mind) will be likely to deliver better quality than the fixed lens of most mid-ranged bridge cameras. The EF-S, as kit lenses go, is actually very good, pretty sharp and doesn't really suffer from barrel distortion.
2. You have all the same settings, including automatic 'point-and-shoot' on the consumer DSLRs (such as the Canon EOS 400D), so in theory should should be able to get the same results if not better out of it than you would a bridge camera.
3. The viewfinder is 'through-the-lens' which means that you take a picture of what the lens actually sees. Most bridge camera will have a duplicate LCD screen, albiet very small, as the viewfinder, in addition to the large one that many people use to compose their shot. Through the lens is always better.
4. If you break the lens on your DSLR, and people do, you can throw it away and pick up another one on eBay for less than 50 quid. You can't do that if it's fixed to the camera on a bridge.
5. When/if you do feel limited by the lens/lenses you've got - there are literally thousands of replacements to suit whatever types of photography you're doing. From a wonderful 50mm lens that costs about 60 quid and if brilliant for portraits with an outstanding blurred background right up to an 800mm lens that will set you back thousands and is ideal for wildlife and sports photography. And of course everything in between...such as fisheye, tilt/shift lenses for photos of buildings that are of correct perspective, image stabilised lenses for low-light shots, etc etc. And you can get one lens for a couple of hundred quid that will cover 200% greater focal lengths than most bridge cameras, easily. Which means you can take full-frame photos of things 200% bigger, or 200% further away.
6. If you ever want to do studio photography, with proper studio lighting, you'll be unlikely on most bridge cameras to be able to make it work properly...all Canons and Nikons and most of the others, work out of the box in a studio - which opens up another world of creativity to you.
Obviously the decision is yours - lots of other factors need to be considered too - and undoubtedly many tasks are performed very well by bridge cameras - but there's nothing a bridge camera can do that a DSLR cannot - but the opposite is not the case.
Join CF
You are here: 
