Camera suggestions?

[Outdated]

I have to have another hobby again, or return to an old one. I decided maybe photography might spark a bit of enthusiasm in me again and get me out of the house more. It’s been an on and off hobby since I was a kid.

I’m seriously thinking about another Canon SLR, that’s what my last camera was and I loved it. The newer versions are available with dual lenses now and this camera has the same lenses that I’m familiar with:

https://www.teds.com.au/canon-eos-200d-mk-ii-18-55-75-300mm-kit
I don’t have a car and I live in a city so wildlife photography is out. Urban landscapes don’t inspire me at all, in fact I find them depressing. Perhaps I could get in to urban lifestyle photography, I like candid portraiture.

 

[Luca]

I hear you... I live as far outside of the city as I can get. Urban landscapes depress me too for the most part. I like being in the woods, and near lakes and mountains and farms.

I have a Nikon D3400 DSLR and it takes great pictures imo. I've had it since Christmas 2017 and I've never had a problem with it.

Portrait photography is fun! That's a nice lifestyle portrait you've captured

@Sherlock77 might be able to give you good advice about cameras as well. I'm more of a hobbyist photographer, but that is his passion and I'm sure he has some useful suggestions.

 

[Outdated]

Some of Sherlock77's pictures inspired me a bit. I'm not keen on posed portraits though, I like the expression you see in people's faces and their body language when they don't realise that they're being photographed. In a way that's a bit like wildlife photography, capturing the elusive.

That was two of my mates and my next door neighbour in the picture by the way, the red can in the beer cooler and the blue tobacco tin were mine. I just stood up mid conversation and took a shot, sometimes those pics turn out the best.

 

[Raggamuffin]

I have a D3500 and a bunch of lenses. But I find with a digital you can just snap away and then find yourself rummaging through hundreds of pictures to find the good ones. Which makes taking photos feel a little more trivial and trial and error. Rather than a limited amount of shots on the film.

I like the pic though. The guy on the right looks interesting. Nice retro phone too. I wonder what's in the tin on the table at the bottom of the picture. My immediate thought was either air rifle ammunition or maybe some sort of chewing tobacco. Or boiled sweets?

Ed

 

[Outdated]

I have a D3500 and a bunch of lenses. But I find with a digital you can just snap away and then find yourself rummaging through hundreds of pictures to find the good ones. Which makes taking photos feel a little more trivial and trial and error. Rather than a limited amount of shots on the film.

I like the pic though. The guy on the right looks interesting. Nice retro phone too. I wonder what's in the tin on the table at the bottom of the picture. My immediate thought was either air rifle ammunition or maybe some sort of chewing tobacco. Or boiled sweets?

Ed

I'm still looking at the Nikon cameras too, but I'm biased towards the Canon because I had one before.

The guy on the right was a boilermaker/metal fabricator, originally from Queensland but had lived in Darwin for about 10 years when I met him. Really nice bloke.

The blue tin was Capstan tobacco, and those phones weren't retro when the picture was taken, ~2007. Maybe I should post a couple more of these, in the picture above this was just a regular afternoon after work.

 

[Outdated]

Bill was actually a pleasure to photograph just because there's so much character in his face. Photographing people with dark skin is often difficult too, if the lighting is poor then most of the detail gets obscured by shadows.

 

[Shevek]

A friend of mine had a photo studio in downtown Toronto with a back alley. The alley ended at a big, white wall. One nice summer evening, he set up a slide projector using that wall, and it drew in spectators from the street. He would explain that there was no charge for the show, which was of flowers and plants, but he wanted people to guess where the pictures had been taken. Most guesses were the various local parks and botanical gardens. Then, he would reveal that they had all been snapped right in that alley, with a macro lens.

 

[Outdated]

A scene from a country pub, the Sand Palms Motel at Dundee. It was the beginning of the wet season, the creeks were flooded and we were mostly cut off from the rest of the world for the next 3 months. When this happens people learn to make their own fun.

The barman at the time was a Chinese backpacker, and a real character. In this picture he was serving beers "Ninja Style".

 

[Raggamuffin]

Do those sleeves around the cans of drink keep them cold?

Ed

 

[Outdated]

Yes, that's exactly what they're for. They're made of wet suit material and you'd be lucky to find a household anywhere in Australia that doesn't have any. Mostly they get sold at pubs as souvineers with pictures of some local attraction on them, or with something comical.

We call them Stubby Coolers, a stubby is a 375 ml bottle of beer.

There's always that little bit of rivalry between different regions in the country, people up north reckon that southerners don't use them to keep their drinks cool, instead they use them to stop their hands from freezing. We like our beer served at -1 degrees celsius.

 

[Raggamuffin]

Is beer the go-to drink for most people going to a bar? Would things like spirits and cocktails be more of an urban tipple?

Ed

 

[Outdated]

But I find with a digital you can just snap away and then find yourself rummaging through hundreds of pictures to find the good ones. Which makes taking photos feel a little more trivial and trial and error. Rather than a limited amount of shots on the film.

When I got in to photography film was all we had, and if you were serious about photography it cost a bloody fortune. My father was in to photography too and in later years even built his own dark room in the shed out the back.

I was told a general rule of wildlife photography was that one good picture out of 100 was a good average. But back in the 80s that was $1 a shot when a packet of cigarettes cost less than $1.

It's the same with the digital camera, I've taken about 30,000 wildlife photos and about 300 are fairly decent.

 

[Outdated]

Is beer the go-to drink for most people going to a bar? Would things like spirits and cocktails be more of an urban tipple?

Ed

I imagine it's not really all that much different to Britain, beer is pretty much the every day drink. It wasn't all that many years ago that it was considered to be a food. We have a lot of whisky drinkers too, and many women prefer wine.

Climate comes in to play too, you don't want thick sugary drinks in a tropical wet season.

 

[Sherlock77]

I would respond more but I'm off to work in ten minutes...

 

[Gerald Wilgus]

My passion is UW photography. Othes pics are more snapshots for me.

In UW gear it is not IF your housing/camera will flood, but WHEN. I have lost a couple. Now, for speed of focus, features, and being cost effective, I use mirrorless, Olympus PENs.

 

[Mary Terry]

Yes, that's exactly what they're for. They're made of wet suit material and you'd be lucky to find a household anywhere in Australia that doesn't have any. Mostly they get sold at pubs as souvineers with pictures of some local attraction on them, or with something comical.

We call them Stubby Coolers, a stubby is a 375 ml bottle of beer.

There's always that little bit of rivalry between different regions in the country, people up north reckon that southerners don't use them to keep their drinks cool, instead they use them to stop their hands from freezing. We like our beer served at -1 degrees celsius.

View attachment 90156

Everyone where I live, the southern USA, uses huggers to keep drinks cold during the hot summer months. The huggers also trap condensation from the cold drinks so it doesn't drip all over the car, the table, or whatever.

 

[Judge]

I still love my little 10 Megapixel Canon Rebel XS-1 DSLR. With an 18-55 IS zoom lens, and a 55-250mm IS zoom lens. All I've ever needed, apart from a full version of Photoshop. Can't say enough about digital photography having developed my own B/W pictures many years ago. Back in the 80s I had both a Canon AE-1 and an A-1 camera.

Though one thing to be very aware of, is that this year Canon has decided to drop their EOS line to be replaced entirely with their Mirrorless DSLR camera line.

So the good news is bargains can be found with EOS cameras and lenses. The bad news? Those lenses may eventually become quite expensive for camera bodies no longer produced.

And while more expensive, those mirrorless cameras are pretty impressive.

 

[Outdated]

I still love my little 10 Megapixel Canon Rebel XS-1 DSLR. With an 18-55 IS zoom lens, and a 55-250mm IS zoom lens.

That's what the camera for the above pictures was, a 400D. My zoom lens was the 75-300 though. The newer lenses have anti-shake.

Though one thing to be very aware of, is that this year Canon has decided to drop their EOS line to be replaced entirely with their Mirrorless DSLR camera line.

So the good news is bargains can be found with EOS cameras and lenses. The bad news? Those lenses may eventually become quite expensive for camera bodies no longer produced.

That explains it, I was looking at these same cameras about 2 years ago and there were no special deals, no dual lenses. I might end up going for the deal I included in my original post, it'll do for what I want.

The last camera was killed by the tropical climate, the light sensor slowly clouded over. I loved that camera.

 

[Slime_Punk]

I picked up the Rebel EOS T7 recently and I have no idea what I'd even do with anything more expensive. Then again, I'm not a photographer by any means but I love taking millions of photos of everything like I used to do when I was a kid with a disposable camera.

The best part about having a camera at all is that it makes leaving the house fun sometimes, lol

 

[Outdated]

Update: I just bought the camera I linked to in my original post. It's got the lenses I like. Free postage, I should get it just before Christmas. New toys, yay.

And the autistic side of things - they have a shop front just 3 km from where I live but I'd rather buy online than go to a crowded shopping centre. If there's any problems with the camera I'll be in their shop front readily enough though.