Posts Tagged ‘canon 40d’

One of those effects of those weeks of spreadsheet-peering is that I’ve become intimately familiar with pricing of camera systems, lenses and accessories. It’s funny too, because currently right now, the local camera body prices for the Canon 40D and Nikon D300 are about on par with prices at say Amazon.com - but lenses and accessories are dreadfully more expensive. If you’re following my train of thought right now, you’d also conclude then that buying the latter from online retailers would be a great idea - but as it is, these retailers won’t ship to Singapore. Boo!

Still, Matt - our best bud up in Missouri - will be flying to Singapore next month to visit and staying with us for several weeks. Would you believe it - someone who’s flying quite literally halfway round the world and paying a few thousand moola just to eat Roti Prata at Jalan Kayu, and especially when I think Jalan Kayu roti prata is so overrated. Anyway, I’ve asked him to tompang a few lenses and accessories; so orders were made at Amazon.com and I’ll be having the items shipped to his home address prior to his departure.

As for the camera itself, wow - the size of the 421 page manual says it all. There’s a learning curve and more customization tweaks and options than you can shake a tree with. While exposure, metering and focusing techniques remain familiar, button layouts took a while to get used to. This was only my second Nikon SLR, and things have completely changed since my old FG-20 23 years ago.

Not only that, I’m going to miss a few other things. Firstly, there’re no scene modes. I’m guessing that Nikon believes that anyone who buys a D300 had better learn how to create their own custom settings for the scenes they’re shooting. But while there’re banks to save your customized options into, it’d still be nice to have a landscape or a dusk scene on a mode dial somewhere for ah peks like me.

Secondly, a couple of times I was wondering in the initial test shots eh how come the shot is so super underexposed when I realized that “Programmed Auto” in the D300 isn’t meant to be taken literally. You could have the mode set right there but because of some other esoteric option you’ve changed in one of the gazillion menus, the shot you’ve taken now is of incorrect exposure. And lastly, one of the very nice things the KM-5D had was to automatically create new folders based on date. That was a really nifty feature that allowed one to sort photographs easily when transferring back to the PC. That must had been a Konica-Minolta innovation because there’s no equivalent option in the D300 (or maybe I just haven’t figured out where it is yet).

All that said, Ling’s at least impressed with the shuttle release sound that goes like a muffled “ker-(p l o c k)” instead of the very loud “KER PLAK” in the KM-5D. She said it sounds a lot more “pro” haha. Another difficulty I had with the old DSLR was how tough it was to determine if pictures were in focus during playback zoom. The higher resolution LCD in the D300, one of the much touted advantages over the 40D, is thus a godsend. Zoomed all the way in, one could easily see if pictures had been taken in focus, and I, all of Ling’s zits haha. She ran right into the bathroom to scrub her face after I showed her the above test shot.:) There’s even a very useful option that displays during playback the focusing points used for a picture.

So, all said and done, as painful as the purchase outlay was, I certainly have no regrets picking this. I imagine I would had been quite satisfied with the 40D too with the substantially lower asking price, but there’s a good chance I would have outgrown that camera too quickly and then I’d be back hitting the spreadsheets to buy a more advanced model.

And ironically, this essentially encapsulates the placement of the photographer in the equation relative to the advancement of technology. Camera bodies will improve on both systems and prices will decrease. While the best cropped sensor DSLR Nikon has right now has outdone the Canon equivalent, that’s just current. What counts is the learning that takes place. Whichever camera one goes with when choosing, it’s a heck of a lot more important to reflect on what you’ve taken and figure out how to improve the shot the next time. Otherwise, there’s no point spending three thousand dollars on a camera.

Well, that ends this series of posts. I figure I’ll be getting the new lenses in late May when Matt arrives, and in late June its first run with the D300 on Temasek Poly’s Family Day at the Singapore Zoo. Now, I’ll just need to wean Ling off the the Casio Exilim compact she loves.:)

Ling can say the strangest things. I was explaining and showing her the different functions on our D300 yesterday at home. Clearly impressed, she asked innocently:

“Wah - got game or not too?!”

“Aiyoh dear, you think this is a handphone ar…?”

Laughs aside, of the four Canon and Nikon DSLRs the list narrowed down to, the Canon 40D was actually on the top of the list. It had great image quality, an extremely sexy-black body, not too heavy, and compared to Nikon had a marginally better midrange zoom and 50mm prime lenses that I was including in the initial outlay. And the great asking price of $2K for the body and kit lens was made even more attractive when Canon Singapore announced another price cut of $300 a fortnight ago.

I have a friend at work who just picked up a similar configuration that I was also considering and she was clearly pleased with her acquisition. And there’s of course our friend Ann who’s also a Canon user (whom I think is going to give me dagger looks now the next time we meet.:) ).

So, the Canon 40D is a lot of great camera for a low asking price of $1.7K for one of the kit sets. In fact, up till as recently as 4 days ago I was reasonably certain I was going with the 40D. I’ve got two other colleagues in my department who’re Nikon users (one is a D40X and the other a D70), and both were clearly disappointed when I remarked during gossip I was going with Canon.

The trouble began ironically when I casually asked Ling for her opinions. “Darling, if you had a choice between a Nikon or a Canon, what would you choose?”, and she promptly replied “Nikon!!!!” She has this impression that professionals all go with Nikon. Come to think of it, I think even my dad’s generation had the same funny perceptions. Both of two uncles I’ve got who are also photography enthusiasts swear by Nikon and both would hear nothing of other camera systems. There’s even a remark here that:

“Canons are the best cameras available designed by engineers, and that Nikons are the best cameras one can buy designed by photographers.”

Personally, as said in the earliest post, I think both systems would have served me equally well. Putting aside that Canon has marginally better optical quality for a midrange zoom and prime lens I’d included in the configuration, the decision between a 40D and the D300 came down to just two criteria: price and camera body features. The differences between the two units have been well discussed in many online threads, with most - Canon users included - recognizing that the D300 was much more expensive, but also a substantially better-featured unit with a lot of learning opportunities for casual users willing to invest time in.

Interestingly, image quality (which is what should ultimately matter for people) between the two were about equivalent though the D300 had reportedly very slightly better noise control at high ISO levels. But all this for an additional thousand moola - ouch! I guess even Ling saw how difficult the decision was going to be. She looked over my shoulder several nights last week while I agonized over the spreadsheets, and chuckled “Wah - still deciding between the two huh?”

But I had to move on at some point, so on Saturday late morning, we headed down to MSColor @ Ang Mo Kio hub. I was already reasonably familiar with both models’ feature sets by then, so decided to get Ling to help provide the tie-breaker. Her initial impressions of the D300 was that while it was really heavy, the 40D felt a bit like too plastic-y. When I asked her what her gut feeling was, she said go with the Nikon.

That about settled it there and then. Who am I to argue with my wife haha? She wanted to buy me the thing as a present, but I said we’d do this as a joint purchase, if nothing else to give her some incentive to get into photography too.

I think I was a pretty easy customer at the shop. I didn’t bargain. When given the initial quoted price, I plainly pointed out that someone else had bought the D300 at this XXX price at the very shop a week ago (which was apparently about the current lowest price you could get the item for), and asked for the same courtesy. The sales fellow said he’d need to check with his boss, and a phone call later, said yep he’ll also sell it to me at that price then. So, 15 minutes later, we were out of the shop, and as business-like as usual, we were next at NTUC for me to buy the things I needed to make Green curry that night for dinner.

Funnily, it’s strangely therapeutic to write reflections on this process of buying a capital item. I’m pretty certain in the years to come, reading these entries will bring back great memories of marriage life and co-decision making.

OK, the next and last - I promise - entry will be on the new camera itself.:)

After a nearly six month search for a new camera system to replace my current Konica-Minolta DSLRs setup, we finally decided on going with Nikon. We picked up a Nikon D300 at MSColor yesterday. This post will be really long so it’s broken into several entries.:)

Those of us who dabble with photography will know that switching camera systems can measure up to a huge investment especially if you’re already heavily entrenched in one camp with lenses and accessories. Truth to tell, the sort of differences and nuances between the two major camera systems on the same tier i.e. Nikon and Canon would matter especially to enthusiasts and professionals, but most casual users would do pretty OK with either of these two major players. Ironically, that made things especially difficult for me as I’m sandwiched somewhere between three parts: a casual user, an enthusiast, and a technogeek who loves to discover toys.:)

Still, Ling had this to say about the way I went about in the last few months on this search: “There he goes again with his spreadsheets.” Yep, like how we went about choosing our Latio last year, I wasn’t going to buy anything this major without having done thorough research first. So, spreadsheets identifying functions, feature sets, lenses that I was interested in, and prices got started and updated on a weekly basis as I collected information. The initial range of choices was pretty wide, and included the Canon 40D & 5D, Pentax K20D, Nikon D80 & D300, Sony A700, and even the Olympus E-3.

Of that list, only the 5D employs a full-framed sensor which is probably more suitable for the sort of photography I dabble in - landscape, occasional portraits, and minimal sports - but costs were a few thousand higher than the next most expensive model. So, that option was put on the backburner, but I imagine that eventually my next DSLR down the road in 5-10 years will be a full-frame unit when prices have come down.

I was pretty certain I didn’t want to get another Sony (who bought over Konica-Maxxum) DSLR, what with their limited range of lenses and higher comparative prices. The Olympus was a huge tank and I had some reservations about the Four Thirds system, and while the Pentax K20D was a really attractive option, the local user community was small and as quiet as a mouse.

So, a month ago it came down to the two biggest camera system players - Canon and Nikon, and four of its offerings: Canon 450D, Canon 40D, Nikon D80, and the D300. More in the next post tomorrow.:)