Old Camera Blues!

[juan2shoot]

If I were strictly a pro photographer, I guess this decision would be easier: What digital camera should I buy. Because I could justify any price tag if the results were worth it. Cameras are related to my work, since I am a creative director. Here are my questions:

1. Do I throw out my old 35mm Nikon lenses? Or can I keep and use these old friends?
2. Low light is both a friend and enemy! With real film, low, natural light has always provided the most emotional shots... But digitally, it's hard to see and use the camera controls, I can't do it by "feel" since the camera doesn't work like a 35mm SLR, and the color and light responses are very different and erratic!

Dollar for dollar, what advice does anyone have for me in terms of cameras to look at?

[Doug Pardee]

If you've got some nice Nikon lenses, I'd suggest you look at the Nikon D90 and up. The low end of Nikon's line doesn't have an autofocus motor in the body, so you're pretty much stuck with AF-S lenses (unless you want to try to manually focus).

Pretty much all of the DSLRs out there give good results once you've become accustomed to the device. There are lots of small operational details that distinguish the cameras.

By the way, another alternative with Nikon lenses would be the more expensive Fuji S5 Pro. Fuji's emphasis is on providing better color in their JPEGs. If you shoot Raw, the color is provided by the Raw development software that you use, so the camera isn't much involved. Fuji also uses a sensor with more "dynamic range" for capturing shadows and highlights. The main market for Fuji DSLRs seems to be wedding photographers.

I don't know what you mean by "the color and light responses are very different and erratic".

[OsmosisStudios]

Keep the old lenses (or send them my way XD). They're great on a D80/90+ body and are a great way of getting a kit off the ground for not-that-much.

[inkista]

How old are your Nikon lenses? If they pre-date autofocus, you could use them on a Canon dSLR as well, with an adapter ring. The upside of using them on Canon is that if you can only afford an entry-level body, you'll still get accurate stop-down metering, while on a Nikon entry-level body (irony of ironies), you'll lose metering with an old manual focus lens. If the lenses are pre-AI, Canon may also be a better choice, since non-AI lenses can damage the D80 and above Nikon bodies.

If the lens autofocuses, though, definitely go with a Nikon body.

I'm not sure I get what you mean by not being able to work "by feel" with a digital SLR--the aperture/shutter speed/iso are all displayed clearly in the viewfinder, regardless of how much light there is in the scene, and you can adjust them by touch without having to take the camera away from your face: the only control you have to remap, if you're using an old manual focus lens, is shutter speed. The aperture ring will still work the same way it always did.

And dollar for dollar, if you're thinking of a new camera body, I'd say the D5000/D90 or the T1i [aka 500D] are probably the ones you want to look at for entry level and to save the money, for high midlevel if you want to splash out for more features, I'd say the D300s or the 7D/50D.