18 replies to this topic

[HSS-Dave]

Just thought I would drop a few notes here after living with the D3100 for a month. I'm VERY pleased with my purchase. It is so light years ahead of anything I have ever used. Mind you this is my first DSLR but the fact still remains. I'm not weaned off of automatic mode yet. I seem to grab it and shoot a few frames and put it down. I've yet to be in a situation where I could study the shot and experiment. My life revolves around two very fast moving boys. I have SO MUCH MORE to learn. I realize that but I have some awesome shots already.

Lastly, my wife saw the boys doing something and wanted to grab a shot of it. She asked where the camera was and I gave the typical male shoulder shrug, "I dunno." The Canon SD940 IS was in the cabinet so she grabbed it. She returned and was mumbling about the Canon in some terms I should probably not type here. The last thing she stated was that we should have had an SLR 5 years ago and for me to sell the *#&% point and shoot!

Thank you for all your help and I look forward to learning more about the camera here in the forums.

Dave

[JediTim]

Just thought I would drop a few notes here after living with the D3100 for a month. I'm VERY pleased with my purchase. It is so light years ahead of anything I have ever used. Mind you this is my first DSLR but the fact still remains. I'm not weaned off of automatic mode yet. I seem to grab it and shoot a few frames and put it down. I've yet to be in a situation where I could study the shot and experiment. My life revolves around two very fast moving boys. I have SO MUCH MORE to learn. I realize that but I have some awesome shots already.

Lastly, my wife saw the boys doing something and wanted to grab a shot of it. She asked where the camera was and I gave the typical male shoulder shrug, "I dunno." The Canon SD940 IS was in the cabinet so she grabbed it. She returned and was mumbling about the Canon in some terms I should probably not type here. The last thing she stated was that we should have had an SLR 5 years ago and for me to sell the *#&% point and shoot!

Thank you for all your help and I look forward to learning more about the camera here in the forums.

Dave

Dave...one thing you will notice is that you will start to take a heck of a lot of photos now. Try and stay on top of keywording the photos so that when you want to find something in the future it is easy. Using Lightroom will make this process rather quick and when you look for a photo like I did last night it was simple and took less than a couple of minutes.

I have way too many photos from 2005 through 2009 without keywords that I am trying to update now...it is a royal PITA.
Tim

[HSS-Dave]

I've installed LR3 but have yet to launch it. Another learning curve for me that i'll have to set aside some time for. I'm already considering an increase in hard drive space due to this camera though!

[ikon]

I've installed LR3 but have yet to launch it. Another learning curve for me that i'll have to set aside some time for. I'm already considering an increase in hard drive space due to this camera though!

same here; installed, launched a couple of times, but almost zero experience time yet

[geek-accountant]

Dave, glad to hear you are liking the Nikon. Have you had a chance to us the 50mm much yet?

As JediTim mentioned, keywording on the front in will be very helpful down the road, but it is a hard thing to make yourself do. If you are like me, you want to get the images off the card, edit them and then share them. Keywording just slows everything down. BUT, if you do keyword the images, you will be thankful later.

With LR I also make heavy use of the Smart Collections and the regular collections. Both can be very helpful.

I should have you on my show sometime. Would love for you to share your experience as a new DSLR owner.

[c0op3r]

Funny think about SLR cameras, I learned on a Pentax K1000 in the early 80's I got the camera my freshman year of high school, When you are a poor high school student shooting on film you take the time to frame the shots and make sure that everything is right.

Now with these really cool dSLR camera, you can just shoot-away and see what shots you like, I have still not been able to make myself do this, I still frame my shots and setup composition as best I can in the camera. So its funny to me to see people that never used an SLR and get a dSLR and just shot shot after shot till they get one they like.

I have a Nikon D90, I enjoy it very much and I see it serving me for a pretty long time, one purchase I would suggest, to go with your dSLR in the Eye.Fi card, it is the single best purchase I made to go with my digital camera. If you are shooting RAW (and you should be) pay the extra and get the EYE-FI Pro which will upload RAW images also.

50mm is great for depth of field - its pretty amazing the shots you can get with it.

[ikon]

Funny think about SLR cameras, I learned on a Pentax K1000 in the early 80's I got the camera my freshman year of high school, When you are a poor high school student shooting on film you take the time to frame the shots and make sure that everything is right.

Now with these really cool dSLR camera, you can just shoot-away and see what shots you like, I have still not been able to make myself do this, I still frame my shots and setup composition as best I can in the camera. So its funny to me to see people that never used an SLR and get a dSLR and just shot shot after shot till they get one they like.

I have a Nikon D90, I enjoy it very much and I see it serving me for a pretty long time, one purchase I would suggest, to go with your dSLR in the Eye.Fi card, it is the single best purchase I made to go with my digital camera. If you are shooting RAW (and you should be) pay the extra and get the EYE-FI Pro which will upload RAW images also.

50mm is great for depth of field - its pretty amazing the shots you can get with it.

Keep at it. I'm an old old film photog but I've been able to adjust so that I still frame shots but I do it much more quickly and I will shoot quickly and repeatedly, specially now that I have a 32GB SD card

[Joe_Miner]

Just thought I would drop a few notes here after living with the D3100 for a month. I'm VERY pleased with my purchase. It is so light years ahead of anything I have ever used. Mind you this is my first DSLR but the fact still remains. I'm not weaned off of automatic mode yet. I seem to grab it and shoot a few frames and put it down. I've yet to be in a situation where I could study the shot and experiment. My life revolves around two very fast moving boys. I have SO MUCH MORE to learn. I realize that but I have some awesome shots already.

Lastly, my wife saw the boys doing something and wanted to grab a shot of it. She asked where the camera was and I gave the typical male shoulder shrug, "I dunno." The Canon SD940 IS was in the cabinet so she grabbed it. She returned and was mumbling about the Canon in some terms I should probably not type here. The last thing she stated was that we should have had an SLR 5 years ago and for me to sell the *#&% point and shoot!

Thank you for all your help and I look forward to learning more about the camera here in the forums.

Dave

Your post on the D3100 was the tipping point that pushed me to take a serious look at DSLR's. With my grandson arriving a few month's ago I was becoming more and more frustrated that my point-and-shoot was just not able to capture the photos I wanted. My point-and-shoot is a very compact Sony that we love to take on trips because it is so compact and it does take very decent pictures as long as you're not trying to capture a baby's smile that last's only a split second. The point-and-shoot is still great because it is so easy to slip in a pocket we can take it anywhere on vacation and not look like "tourists". But I wanted something to capture those precious moments with my Grandson -- via some suggestions from Mike and some of his friends and then reading your post and doing some research on line I settled on the D3200 that my wife got me for Father's Day. We took it to see my Grandson over a week ago and I use it quite a bit during our visit (shot over 1GB of photo's not counting several GB of video) -- the pictures I was able to get with the D3200 were fantastic and the quality compared to our Sony or our iPod was simply incredible and looked very professional and resulted in some comments from my wife possibly simular to what you heard We're keeping the point-and-shoots for general travel (We used the PaS when we went into NYC later in the week -- it's very convient to be able to just stick the camera in a pocket and blend in)

I'm finding that I'm getting about one really good shot for about every 20+ pictures I take -- at 12-15MB per picture this is starting to eat up the storage but what has really impressed me is the video quality I'm getting out of the D3200 but in HD I'm seeing about 300-500MB for just a short video! I could see this chewing up a lot of storage fast!

[ikon]

Don't beat yourself up: 1 out of 20 isn't so bad. Pro's typically aim to get 1 out of 10 but, remember, that's for people doing it all the time, and typically with quite a few years of experience. Back in my pro days I knew a guy who shot the Aswan dam in Egypt for National Geographic (during construction). He shot 10,000 frames - 9 were published in the magazine!

Olympus, Nikon, and others are also now producing some very high end Point N Shoot cameras that you might want to consider. They have resolutions similar to many DSLRs but are much more compact.

[geek-accountant]

I guess it depends on your definition of good. You are only going to get so many photos published no matter how many you take. My recent shooting has been swim meets and I would count my ratio as photos I am willing to post on Facebook & Smugmug for the parents to view vs the total taken. The last meet, I shot 425 and posted 167, so that's a little better than 1 in 4. Joe, I would interested in talking to you about what was wrong with the other 19 images.

[ikon]

Absolutely it depends on the definition of 'good'. And I, too, would be interested to see what photos Joe_Miner is rejecting. I think you and I both suspect he's being pretty critical (which is fine if what you want is to show only your very best work). Your ratio for acceptable 'snapshots' seems quite reasonable. By 'snapshots' I only mean that they're shots you willingly show to friends & family but you wouldn't want them published (or to be judged using them as examples of your best work).

[Joe_Miner]

I guess it depends on your definition of good. You are only going to get so many photos published no matter how many you take. My recent shooting has been swim meets and I would count my ratio as photos I am willing to post on Facebook & Smugmug for the parents to view vs the total taken. The last meet, I shot 425 and posted 167, so that's a little better than 1 in 4. Joe, I would interested in talking to you about what was wrong with the other 19 images.

Well, their pictures of my grandson so of course I'm critical about the quality and whether or not I'm able to capture a smile or expression. I'm also experimenting with all the different modes, with and without flash, continuous shutter, etc.

Many are close and I certainly keep like (didn't frame it right with head too close to the edge):



While a few I think I did good and just need a little cropping with PSE:



Just been going to JPG which are huge (10-12+ MB ea).

[ikon]

2 comments/suggestions:

• now that you have a big-boy DSLR, shoot RAW format as much as possible. It gives the best quality and you can do so much more with it in post processing.
• study up on fill and bounce flash. Use fill flash outdoors and bounce flash indoors. The difference in quality can be amazing. To do these right, however, you will need an external flash unit. You can do fill flash to some extent with the built-in flash, but it's not as good. One tip when shooting fill flash using the built-in flash: try placing some crumpled up Kleenex in front of the flash. Experiment with it. You can use this technique indoors as well but, like I said, bounce flash is far better indoors.

[geek-accountant]

Joe, you and I should start a podcast called - jpeg2RAW - Beginner Series. It is actually a show I am going to start. Just looking for the right co-host(s) and to complete the new website.

[ikon]

Good idea. It seems more & more cameras are supporting RAW (or am I imagining it), so a basic show would help a lot of beginners.

[geek-accountant]

I think there is a big market for a beginners show. In the next 6 months I hope to have that once launched, plus I have an idea for a really short weekly show and a couple of industry specific shows. Will not be able to get them all going in the next 6 months, but we will for sure be expanding the jpeg2RAW brand.

[vinylfreak]

I think there is a big market for a beginners show. In the next 6 months I hope to have that once launched, plus I have an idea for a really short weekly show and a couple of industry specific shows. Will not be able to get them all going in the next 6 months, but we will for sure be expanding the jpeg2RAW brand.

Wow! That's a great idea Mike!

Please try to include some Basic tutorials for LR and PS if you can..

Good Luck!

[geek-accountant]

Wow! That's a great idea Mike!

Please try to include some Basic tutorials for LR and PS if you can..

Good Luck!

Funny you should mention that Tim. We are also planning to kick off a short format podcast called - jpeg2RAW - Quick Tips. It will be a video only feed and will be 10 minutes or less for each episode. LR & PS will be some of the topics we cover. Over time, we will also include some "on location" stuff as well.

[ImTheTypeOfGuy]

Looks like we have another podcast junkie on our hands.