Upgrading from P & S to dSLR, but which one??

[TLO-M]

I'm needing a new camera, a dSLR, that will take photo's of animals (horses) quickly. I've been reading, reading, reading and when I think I've found just the right camera, I read a review and the camera isn't the right one.

It must have a view finder, must process photo's quickly or have the ability to take a series of photo's quickly, and take clean crisp action photo's. Is there a camera out there for me?????? The photo's will primarily be used on our website to advertise the horses or on printed material A4 paper size.

Thank you,

Tami

[wulf]

Pretty much any DSLR will do the job; it is more about the lenses.

As a Nikon D40 owner, I would be happy to recommend one of those - the two limitations would be:

(a) there is a limited range of lenses that will do autofocusing

(b) only three autofocus points

However, you may get better results manually setting the focus and adjusting the parameters to give a wide depth of field, so both of those may be moot points, making the D40 (towards the cheap end of the scale and lightweight, but still a well-made piece of equipment) a good choice.

Wulf

[Scottie137]

The D40 would indeed be a good choice. Its competition is primarily the Pentax K100D (which I own) and the new Olympus e410/510. Both the Pentax and the E510 add optical image stabilization built into the body. This is an extremely useful feature (imho). The E510 also gives the option of using the digital screen in real time to take the photos (like a point and shoot camera), one of a very few to do that. I love my K100, but it has a crippled buffer of only 3 shots raw and 5 shots jpeg, so that somewhat limits its capabilities as an action photography tool, though it does have 11 auto focus points and is an excellent camera for tracking moving objects. Good luck with your decision.

If I was buying with someone else's money right now, I think I would probably go with either the Pentax K10D or the Nikon D80....

[NaturesPixel]

most base DSLR are only gonna give you 3 RAW and 5 Jpegs bursts...
my Nikon D50 and the my D80 both only shoot 3 raw shots consecutively but my D80 is faster than the D50 i had... because my D80 can handle the faster SD cards...so that comes into play when your camera is trying to save images to the card :)

[Saralonde]

The problem is not somuch is there a camera out there for you as there are many cameras out there for you. You just need to decide what suits you best.

Try going into a camera store and asking to hold various dslrs. That may help to eliminate some. Canon and Nikon are the most popular, but there are others, too. Sometimes just the "feel" will help you decide. Also, keep in mind your budget and with a dslr, that includes the cost of a lens. If you know what you want to spend, that will help you narrow the field down.

Try this website. You can compare camera characteristics side by side (including price).
http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/compare_post.asp?method=sidebyside&cameras=canon_eos30d%2Cnikon_d80&show=all I put in the Canon 30d and the Nikon D80 because they are somewhat comparable, but you can plug in what you want.

[Scottie137]

most base DSLR are only gonna give you 3 RAW and 5 Jpegs bursts...
my Nikon D50 and the my D80 both only shoot 3 raw shots consecutively but my D80 is faster than the D50 i had... because my D80 can handle the faster SD cards...so that comes into play when your camera is trying to save images to the card :)

Ahhh, but the D40 has a (much) larger buffer, and I say crippled on the K100 because it is artificially limited for some reason. You can reduce the resolution and image quality to their lowest settings and still only shoot 5 jpegs...

[smc1377]

Seems to me that if you're looking for a more entry level camera that can take lots of pics (large buffer), the Canon Digital Rebel XTi aka 400D would be a natural choice being that it has a 27 picture buffer.

BTW, on any camera I've tried this on, reducing the quality of the photo does not increase the buffer size. Meaning, when you take a picture, it takes a full picture and still has to process it in the exact same way whether it be a 10MP large Jpeg or a 640x480 picture (provided that your memory card is up to task in writing speed).

[photofixation]

I'm needing a new camera, a dSLR, that will take photo's of animals (horses) quickly. I've been reading, reading, reading and when I think I've found just the right camera, I read a review and the camera isn't the right one.

It must have a view finder, must process photo's quickly or have the ability to take a series of photo's quickly, and take clean crisp action photo's. Is there a camera out there for me?????? The photo's will primarily be used on our website to advertise the horses or on printed material A4 paper size.

Thank you,

Tami

I think D40 perfectly suits you and the limitations of D40 have been mentioned above, you can surely live with it. It very decently priced. A wonderful camera with nice quality. Its kit lens is better than XTi.
My upgrade flow would be

P&S -> D40 -> D200

[TLO-M]

Thank you very much for the information everyone. A quick question though, what determines the processing/saving photo speed on the camera? As the slr doesn't really shoot bursts like some of the p & s camera, I would be happy with a camera that doesn't take long to save a photo.

Cheers, Tami :)

[NaturesPixel]

here are some performance specs for the D80 and the D40
http://www.imaging-resource.com/PRODS/D80/D80A6.HTM

http://www.imaging-resource.com/PRODS/ND40/ND40A6.HTM

and the canon 400D XTi

http://www.imaging-resource.com/PRODS/XTI/XTIA6.HTM

you can check out any camera as long as they have done a full review and click on the performance TAB..

http://www.imaging-resource.com/MFR1.HTM

[inkista]

Thank you very much for the information everyone. A quick question though, what determines the processing/saving photo speed on the camera?Typically, there are three main factors:
The size of each individual image you're taking (depends on the resolution and file format. (E.g., more pixels -> bigger file; RAW > JPEG, etc.)
The write speed of the memory card (how fast it can be saved to the card) This only has an effect up to the write ability of the camera.
The camera's buffer size

Think of the buffer as a pipe, and its size as the pipe's length. You stuff images into one end, they get written to the card, out the other. You're forced to stop taking continuous bursts when the pipe is full, because there's no room for the image.

Unlike smc1377's experience, I've found that changing the image size actually does change the number of images I can take in a continuous burst on my Canon Rebel XT. If I'm taking RAW, I can burst about three or four shots. Highest resolution JPEG, about a dozen. Lowest resolution JPEG--maybe a hundred. The problem is that if you want to reproduce A4, you're going to want to use the highest resolution.

More info here (http://www.digital-slr-guide.com/continuous-photo-speed-and-buffer.html).

And dpreview gives burst info as follows.

Canon:
XTi: 3 fps, 27 JPEG, 10 RAW
XT: Yes, 2.8 fps, 14 JPEG or 4 RAW frames
30D: 5 fps or 3 fps up to 30 JPEG images
5D: 3 fps max 60 JPEG, 17 RAW
1DSIII: 10 fps max, 110 JPEG or 30 RAW

Nikon:
D40X: 3 fps, unlimited JPEG
D40: 2.5 fps, unlimited JPEG
D80: 3 fps, up to 23 JPEG, 6 NEF images

As the slr doesn't really shoot bursts like some of the p & s camera, I would be happy with a camera that doesn't take long to save a photo.
Errr.. what? My XT shoots continuous bursts faster and longer than my old S30 P&S ever did.

In my experience, however, relying on burst mode alone rarely gets me as many keepers as being judicious in its use. Pray'n'spray tends to net you good results at random. You still have to choose your moments, and paying attention to autofocus points, autofocus mode, and confirmation of autofocus is key in action shooting. The lovely lovely part of having a dSLR is that you don't have a shutter delay. You can actually time things with accuracy (it's one of the main reasons I jumped to dSLR).