Help - Canon 550d or 600d?

[michellemartin]

hi everyone, i am looking for advice. i am looking to get into photography big time and may even do portraits as a career later once i learn. (i love it that much) i am not sure to go for either the 550d or the 600d. also i cant seem to find out it they both have a crop function on the menu? any help woudl be much appearciated!! thanks in advance!!

[Rentham]

Originally Posted by michellemartin

i am not sure to go for either the 550d or the 600d.

At the entry level, don't over think it. You'll spend far more money on lenses anyway. Don't worry about an in-camera crop function. You'll want to shoot RAW and crop in your post production software of choice.

[michellemartin]

thanks for that, would you recommend just going for the 550d and keeping the extra money for lenes etc then? thanks

[Preeb]

Originally Posted by michellemartin

thanks for that, would you recommend just going for the 550d and keeping the extra money for lenes etc then? thanks

That depends on the price difference and whether you think you'd use the articulated LCD screen and remote flash trigger on the 600d. They are fairly similar otherwise from all I've heard. It also depends on your budget. Spending more on a good quality lens is almost always better than spending it on the body.

[inkista]

Actually, given that the OP mentioned professional portrait photography as a possibility, I actually think that blowing the tiny amount of extra money on the 600D might be worth it for the flash master alone. Off-camera lighting is many a portrait shooter's bread-and-butter, and the additional cost of getting a master on-camera dwarfs a $100 price difference. (The ST-E2 being the cheapest option at $230).

I would also say that if a small price difference like that is making you leery, you may want to really truly consider if going dSLR is the right path for you. This is expensive. What you're going to spend on a camera body? Maybe a third of what you'll eventually spend to get a basic kit together. A single lens can easily cost more than a dRebel. This is not like compact digital cameras, where you buy a camera, a few batteries and cards, and you're done. This is a camera system. A body is just the start. Lenses, a tripod, remote, a flash (or five), and a bag to hold everything, not to mention post-processing software: it can all add up.

That's not to say you can't do this on a shoestring budget. There are starving students doing this all the time and the used camera market abounds with older-tech bargains. But it can limit you, and the costs can still get uncomfortably high. It's not worth going into debt, from my point of view, and until you're actually earning with your gear (which is likely to take a few years), this is one big money pit.

Owning a dSLR doesn't make anyone a professional photographer. It just makes them a dSLR owner.

$100 is squat in terms of lens money. There's only one lens you can get for that kind of money (EF 50mm f/1.8 II), and after that, it's $300 => cheap, $600 => moderate, $1000+ => expensive for lenses.

[Doug Pardee]

Originally Posted by inkista

That's not to say you can't do this on a shoestring budget. There are starving students doing this all the time and the used camera market abounds with older-tech bargains.

This.

As with any other activity, getting away with a shoestring budget requires a fairly deep knowledge of what are bargains and what aren't, knowing what you truly need vs. what you don't, and buying almost everything "used" rather than new. If that's the way you want to go, you probably should forget about the 550D and 600D and start looking at used equipment. (Sorry, I'm not knowledgeable enough about the used camera market to provide specific advice there.)

Originally Posted by inkista

Owning a dSLR doesn't make anyone a professional photographer.

Blasphemer! It's a good thing this isn't DPReview. You'd be burning at the stake for a comment like that. Well, they might cut you some slack if you added, "unless you shoot Raw and process your pictures with Photoshop." (*cough* *cough*) Who put the snarky-pills in my breakfast?

[veritasimagery]

Originally Posted by inkista

Actually, given that the OP mentioned professional portrait photography as a possibility, I actually think that blowing the tiny amount of extra money on the 600D might be worth it for the flash master alone. Off-camera lighting is many a portrait shooter's bread-and-butter, and the additional cost of getting a master on-camera dwarfs a $100 price difference. (The ST-E2 being the cheapest option at $230).

I would also say that if a small price difference like that is making you leery, you may want to really truly consider if going dSLR is the right path for you. This is expensive. What you're going to spend on a camera body? Maybe a third of what you'll eventually spend to get a basic kit together. A single lens can easily cost more than a dRebel. This is not like compact digital cameras, where you buy a camera, a few batteries and cards, and you're done. This is a camera system. A body is just the start. Lenses, a tripod, remote, a flash (or five), and a bag to hold everything, not to mention post-processing software: it can all add up.

That's not to say you can't do this on a shoestring budget. There are starving students doing this all the time and the used camera market abounds with older-tech bargains. But it can limit you, and the costs can still get uncomfortably high. It's not worth going into debt, from my point of view, and until you're actually earning with your gear (which is likely to take a few years), this is one big money pit.

Owning a dSLR doesn't make anyone a professional photographer. It just makes them a dSLR owner.

$100 is squat in terms of lens money. There's only one lens you can get for that kind of money (EF 50mm f/1.8 II), and after that, it's $300 => cheap, $600 => moderate, $1000+ => expensive for lenses.

++1. The little amount you would save buying the 550D will never really make a difference when looking at lenses. And the money you would have to spend latter to get the wireless flash far exceeds that savings.

[inkista]

Originally Posted by Doug Pardee

Blasphemer! It's a good thing this isn't DPReview. ...

Why do you think I stopped posting over there and started posting over here?

[ceremus]

Originally Posted by inkista

Why do you think I stopped posting over there and started posting over here?

I'm kind of surprised anyone posts anything on that hideous non-vB, non-phpBB, whatever-the-hell-it-is forum system they run. Yick.

[michellemartin]

Originally Posted by inkista

Actually, given that the OP mentioned professional portrait photography as a possibility, I actually think that blowing the tiny amount of extra money on the 600D might be worth it for the flash master alone. Off-camera lighting is many a portrait shooter's bread-and-butter, and the additional cost of getting a master on-camera dwarfs a $100 price difference. (The ST-E2 being the cheapest option at $230).

I would also say that if a small price difference like that is making you leery, you may want to really truly consider if going dSLR is the right path for you. This is expensive. What you're going to spend on a camera body? Maybe a third of what you'll eventually spend to get a basic kit together. A single lens can easily cost more than a dRebel. This is not like compact digital cameras, where you buy a camera, a few batteries and cards, and you're done. This is a camera system. A body is just the start. Lenses, a tripod, remote, a flash (or five), and a bag to hold everything, not to mention post-processing software: it can all add up.

That's not to say you can't do this on a shoestring budget. There are starving students doing this all the time and the used camera market abounds with older-tech bargains. But it can limit you, and the costs can still get uncomfortably high. It's not worth going into debt, from my point of view, and until you're actually earning with your gear (which is likely to take a few years), this is one big money pit.

Owning a dSLR doesn't make anyone a professional photographer. It just makes them a dSLR owner.

$100 is squat in terms of lens money. There's only one lens you can get for that kind of money (EF 50mm f/1.8 II), and after that, it's $300 => cheap, $600 => moderate, $1000+ => expensive for lenses.

hi guys, thanks for your advice! i am aware that having a dslr dosent make you a photographer!!! i am also very aware of the prices and i know that it will cost me alot to do it for a living, i already have a tripod, flashgun,lenes, bag etc from an old slr and i am looking into backdrops, lighting, photoshop etc!! on that note i will be going for the 600d for the flash and lcd. i am not a student looking at saving money it was really to get real advice and i think i got that! thanks again.