Entry tags:

howto, photography

How to buy a digital camera #5: To Infinity and Beyond
Today I finish the series by focusing on the professional rigs. "Professional" is marketing-speak, and means, among other things, "really expensive." You don't have to buy one of these to be a professional, and if you do buy one it certainly doesn't make you professional, but they are the most capable cameras offered by their manufacturers -- whether they're actually the best for you is another matter. I've been wrapped up in end-of-the-year stuff, so this entry is a bit late for the holiday shopping season, but if you can afford to get someone a $5,000 Christmas present you don't need my advice on anything.

Remember that when you buy in the top market, you're buying into a camera system. It's foolish to get a great camera without having money left over for top-quality lenses that do the jobs you need to do, as well as thinking about other tools that will serve your needs, mainly lighting and tripods.

Cameras are just a small part.
Looking like a dork is another thing entirely.

Should I buy a pro-quality camera?
If you have to ask, you probably shouldn't. Look at my #4 and #4b entries in this series -- those are some fantastic cameras, and they are capable of taking amazing images. The main reason to be looking at this market is if you have a specific need that those cameras can't fill. If you haven't used an SLR before, you may not really know what your needs are, so I'd be very careful about a huge outlay of cash right at the beginning. You may find you don't like carrying a bulky camera, no matter how good it is.

Although it's counter-intuitive, pro cameras make it harder to take good pictures. You start losing the automatic modes. You start losing scene modes. A pro camera won't give you a "sports mode"; it will assume you know how to shoot sports. It won't give you a "portrait mode," because it assumes you know that there's no one way to shoot a portrait.* If you put in the time, though, it can make it easier to take great pictures. I would only recommend jumping into this market if you absolutely know that photography is going to eat up a big chunk of your life. When I see someone take a bad photo, well, that's life. When I see them take it with an $8,000 camera, that's tragedy.

Of course, I found myself walking around Midtown East the other day, and I realized half the people there spend $8K on their hankerchiefs, so your mileage may vary.

What will this market get me?

As you move up the ladder, cameras become more and more specialized. Your basic "do everything pretty darned well" cameras are the Canon 30D and Nikon D200, and it diverges a bit from there.

Machine-gun speed
For now, at least, 5 frames-per-second is the domain of the expensive (although used 20Ds are pretty cheap these days). Eight frames-per-second is the domain of the really expensive, available only on the Canon 1d Mark II N, Nikon D2Hs, and a cropped output of the Nikon D2Xs. Very few things actually require eight frames per second, but if you need to capture the absolute best moment in sports or wildlife, three frames-per-second might not do. If you shoot indoor sports, for example, the 30D might be worth the cost over the XTi, even though the XTi has higher resolution.

Strong, metal bodies
OK, so the expensive 5D doesn't have weather sealing, and the cheap Pentax K10D does, but in general the cameras in this market are much tougher than the cheaper models, having magnesium or metal skeletons instead of just plastic. The other cameras are fairly tough, too, but if you spend a lot of time playing in the dirt (or, like many photojournalists, you treat your camera like dirt), you might want to consider this.

In the true pro-class -- the Canon 1D series and the Nikon D2 series -- the cameras are rated to survive most forms of extinction-level apocalypse.

35mm sensors
All of the cheaper models these days have sensors cropped smaller than a 35mm film image, giving lenses a different field of view. This is most obvious at the wide angles, where crazy-wide lenses become merely wide, and wide lenses become pedestrian. Only two cameras -- the 5D and the 1DS Mark II -- are currently offered with a 35mm-sized sensor. Some Nikon users sour-grapes this, but I think it's a fairly big thing. It becomes harder to design effective cameras the larger the sensor is, so my rule is that I want to use as large a sensor as possible until it becomes too much of a headache. Medium format tends to be much clunkier to use the 35mm, but for various reasons not worth getting into here, a 35mm-sensored dSLR isn't much clunkier than a smaller-sensored dSLR. It does point out the flaws of bad lenses, which tend to be awful the further you get away from the center, so you'll need a good investment in glass.

35mm sensors are MUCH, MUCH more expensive to make than smaller sensors, though, so you need some really good reasons to pay the premium. Even after its price has dropped $1K in a year, the 5D is still more than $1K more expensive than the Nikon D80, which has similar features but a smaller sensor. Unless you've used 35mm film for years and years and are wedded to what a given focal length should look like, the premium may not be worth it to you. There will always be a premium, but unless the rules of technology and economics change in the next few years, the premium will be much smaller than it is now in a matter of a few years, which may be when more companies jump onto the bandwagon.

Lenses, lenses, lenses
I did say this was a system, right? If you're outlaying the money, at least half of your expenses -- and probably more like two-thirds -- should go to glass. If you only have $2,500 to spend, don't get the $2,200 camera -- get the $1,200 camera. A camera can't even start with a picture until your lens is already done with it. Pro lenses are specialized tools that do a certain job very, very well. They tend to be built like tanks and suck in vast amounts of light. You need to ask yourself exactly what you need to achieve -- if you shoot wildlife, you'll need long telephoto, if you shoot documentary, you'll tend toward fast, wide zooms, etc. -- and then figure out the lenses that will get you there. This can cause problems -- one of the lenses I need based on the question doesn't exist -- but generally it's a good way to go about it. It can help to look at what lenses the pros use to shoot their pictures, but never assume that you'll get the same results as they do -- everyone has different shooting styles.

There are few enough models in this range that to talk about them would mean doing mini-reviews of each one. A project for the future here, but not for now. In general, look at the features you need, try the cameras out at the store, and if you really don't know what will best suit you, go back and take a hard look at the cameras in entry #4.

*The Canon 30D and 5D are exceptions here, but for most users the scene modes are vestigial.