San Antonio Senior Portrait Photographers

The 10-megapixel Canon EOS 40D is a bit pricey compared to some of the other semi-pro digital SLR cameras in the market. But many reviews say that the 40D is worth your money, what with 6.5 frames per second shooting speed, magnesium body, good water resistance, and built-in sensor cleaner. The EOS 40D also has a nine-point autofocus which improves accuracy. The LCD has a live preview feature and shows the camera settings on another LCD screen at the top part of the camera. This camera is ideal for action shots because of its fast shooting speed.

Amongst professional and semi professional photographers you’ll find many heated debates about different camera makes, models, and designs. Where you will find no argument whatsoever, is in the statement that “The single most important factor in determining the quality of your photographs, is the abilities and styles of the person taking the picture”. In other words, the camera is secondary, you the photographer are what really matters in the whole process.

Shooting videos with the Flip Video, and viewing them on the camera seems to work fine. The problem comes once you attach the the video camera to your PC or MAC. Problems include intermittent uploading of videos. Meaning, sometimes videos upload and sometimes they don’t . Sometimes only a few will upload, and sometimes none. In addition uploads can be painfully slow. Some consumers have reported complete computer crashes while attempting to load their videos. Even MAC users have seen their virtually bullet proof systems crash when hooked up to a Flip Video. Pure Digital, the company behind the camcorder has been madly releasing software, and firmware updates for Flip Video. Some of the patches do seem to be helping. This ultra compact digital cameras and this digital camera guide 2009 should help with digital camera and camcorder buying guide.

I don’t mean to pick on the Flip Video too much, but there are a few other smaller problems as well. Small size of unit can be cumbersome for people with larger adult size hands. Interface is not as simple to use as it should be. Customer service unable to keep up due to the popularity of the camera, and numerous software problems. Lens quality and placement make it prone to scratching.

The most obvious shortcoming of the Nikon D40 camera, is the absence of an autofocus driver in the camera body. What this means, is that if autofocus is important to the way you take pictures, they you are somewhat limited in the number of lenses you can use with the D40. Only about ten percent of the available lenses for the Nikon D40 have autofocus drives built into the lenses. Needless to say, those lenses are considerably more expensive than lenses without autofocus (upwards of $500 or more). Autofocus would be important to anyone shooting shots with lots of movement, such as sports or wildlife.

For a camera in this price range I would have expected better. Again, your photo taking preferences come into play here. If all you ever take is only RAW, or only JPEG format pictures, then don’t concern yourself with this issue.

Even though the E510 is a SLR camera, and allows for a lot of manual tweaking of it’s setting, it also comes with several auto settings. Default settings for macro, landscape, action and sports are all included. This is nice if your a first time SLR user, as many Olympus E510 purchaser will be. The problem however is the calibration of the auto settings seems to wander to the dark side. New purchasers taking their first few photos with the auto settings, may end up thinking there is something wrong with their camera. If you do buy a E510, be sure to learn how to make manual adjustments early on to get the best pictures possible.

There are other items of concern with the E510 Evolt, but I think you get the idea. There are a multitude of contenders in the entry level SLR category, to consider, and the E510 is one of them. It just may not be final best choice for some photographers. What it really comes down to, is how you want to take pictures and which camera that allows you to do that best.

Tags: Photographers