Please Help Out A Digital Camera Novice

[EarDemon]

I’ve always wanted to get more into digital photography but never did. Probably six or seven years ago I got myself a Sony 12+ MP Cybershot camera and thought I was hot stuff since most other point and shoot cameras at the time were 10 MP or less. Hey it was a huge upgrade from my previous FD Mavica and CD Mavica. Then I learned MP count was more of a marketing thing and there other factors to consider.

I don’t take a ton of pictures, but I want that to change. Back in May, I spent a week in the Blue Ridge Mountain/Appalachian area and between that camera and my phone I took about 200 pictures. In reviewing them on my computer, the quality isn’t that great. In the beginning of the summer I won stage level tickets for Brad Paisley, all of the pictures I took were garbage. Some of it is due to my lack to knowledge and skill with this stuff and some of it is due to the poor devices that I am using.

In the beginning of October I am going to the NASCAR Race in Dover and would like to get a decent camera for that. I want a nice beginner DSLR that I can grow into. I’d like to keep this camera for 6 or 7 years, so I don’t want something that will easily be outdated. My total budget is only around $1000 after camera and accessories. I know there will always be different lenses to get and such and this can be an expensive hobby, but the $1K price point is what I want to spend now and then grow over time.

I’m a Sony guy, and even though I don’t take his word as gospel, Leo Laporte seems to really like Sony’s new DSLRs and I know from past research Sony makes some very high quality sensors, so I want to stay within the Alpha product line. I’m considering the a5100 mirrorless or a6000 mirrorless with the 16-50 mm lens. Basically I’m looking for a camera that can capture fast motion sporting events (football, hockey, auto racing mainly), a lens that can give a nice tight zoom at a little bit of a distance and something that can take pictures in low light environments where the pictures don’t come out all grainy and the flash doesn’t white out everything.

Also both of these cameras are from 2014, with 2015 rapidy coming to a close, I don’t want to spend a ton of money, if something better is coming out shortly.

Thoughts?

http://www.sony.net/Products/di/en-us/products/yre3/index.html

http://www.sony.net/Products/di/en-us/products/qb9a/index.html

 

[navychop]

Well, you've already learned pixel count is not the major factor. That's a great start.

I believe everything will be obsolete in 3 years or so.

IIRC, CMOS is currently the better technology. Look for color rendition and low light (if that's important to you). 3 chip$ are $o much better than one.

I personally avoid memory sticks like the plague. Does ANYONE outside of Sony use them? Aren't there murmurings about Sony moving to a more standard storage medium?

 

[KE4EST]

Not high-end but not low end either. An awesome camera!
Will do all you want and into the future.
Amazon product ASIN B00DMS0LCO

 

[Voyager6]

Perhaps this one for a starter kit.
Amazon product ASIN B00O596GF0
I'm more partial to the Canon DSLR.
Amazon product ASIN B00PKSEYX6

 

[Voyager6]

There is also this post from Rocky in the Classified Forum.
http://www.satelliteguys.us/xen/threads/camera-and-lens-sale.352456/

 

[EarDemon]

Thanks, I just checked out that camera, but there's a few things about the Sony's that I prefer over the Rebel T4i.

I love being able to connect my smartphone via wifi to my home network, press a button or two and through the magic of DLNA have my pictures and videos streamed to my TV. With more and more of my friends and family getting smart TVs, it's nice to just connect to their wifi and have my stuff come across the big screen instead of gathering around a small 6" phone or connect via USB to a laptop, since no one uses desktops anymore, with a dinky 13-15" screen. Unfortunately it also really shows how crappy I am at taking pictures. And with NFC, I'd ultimately like to take a picture with the camera, tap on my phone and send off shots via email or MMS, instead of taking the same shot with the camera and the phone.

Also in researching DSLR versus Mirrorless, it seems like mirrorless is the winner when it comes to speeds and auto focus, which is what I think I would prefer when shooting live sports.

 

[EarDemon]

I personally avoid memory sticks like the plague. Does ANYONE outside of Sony use them? Aren't there murmurings about Sony moving to a more standard storage medium?

Years ago a friend of mine had a cheap little point and shoot from, I want to say Olympus, but I may be wrong, but it defiantly was not a Sony and it used one of the variations of the Memory Stick. I shocked as I thought Sony was the only one to use their own media.

The media format doesn't bother me. As of right now I only use two different formats between three different devices. A Micro SD card for my phone, a Micro SD card in a full size SD card adapter for my tablet and the Memory Stick Pro Duo I think for my current cyber shot. Both my desktops and my laptop have built in multicard readers that can handle most of the mainstream formats.

Oh, my tablet that I said I use a Micro SD card in a full size adapter is a Sony tablet. I was mildly pissed when I found out it wasn't a Memory Stick, as I had an unused 16 GB one for my camera that I was hoping to use, but when I saw it was SD I just picked up the adapter and stuck in the 32GB card that I used to use in my smartphones before I upgraded my phone to 64 GB

 

[Ilya]

I love being able to connect my smartphone via wifi to my home network, press a button or two and through the magic of DLNA have my pictures and videos streamed to my TV.

Hmm... I don't think I ever have a need to stream pictures from the camera (or even from the phone) directly to the TV set. Just from my workflow standpoint.
First of all, I take hundreds of shots and only a small percentage of them are worth showing to others. So, I save them all to the hard drive first, and then decide which ones are worth showing.
Second, TV sets have way lower resolution and color accuracy than the pictures taken. Previewing, selecting, cropping and editing shots should be done on a good monitor or a good laptop, not on TV screen.
And advanced editing (like lens correction for example) requires a computer and special software. I usually spend hours editing shots before I am ready to show them to anyone.
Once a new album is ready then I can put it on a file server, to a cloud storage or a flash drive.

 

[EarDemon]

Like I said, I am a real novice at this. Other then cropping and down rezing photos in Microsoft Paint, I've never done any photo editing. And to be honest the only reason I even do that much is to reduce the file size for pictures that I'd like to email out. Without Googling it, I have no idea what lens correction even means. I'll show whatever I take to others if I feel the need to regardless if it's pristine or not. Every TV, monitor and other display I own is 1920 x 1080, no better, no worse. Most people I know I have 1080p smart TVs, but have WalMart special laptops that are at best 1366 x 768, so a TV is the highest resolution screen available. Color accuracy is not a big deal to me personally. I'm not the artistic type and can't tell the difference between 20 different shades of the same color, just as long as it's some where in the ball park of what it is supposed to be is good enough for me.

I'd just like to take pictures that look decent and aren't blurry or grainy, and be able to zoom in tight without losing quality.

 

[Ilya]

I’ve always wanted to get more into digital photography but never did...
I don’t take a ton of pictures, but I want that to change...
I want a nice beginner DSLR that I can grow into...

Once you get a DSLR and start getting a bit more serious about photography, you will also want to invest in a better laptop and/or monitor and some photo-editing software, like Adobe Lightroom. Trust me!

 

[EarDemon]

I already have Adobe Photoshop and Lightroom, I'm just lost as how to use them. Someone I work with took a Photoshop class last year, and the instructor provided all of his notes, videos and screen recordings and burned them to DVD and she made me a copy. So I have a starting point. My laptop cost me upwards of $3,000 four years ago this month and will not be replaced for at least another 3 or 4 years. Core i7 Quad Core 2.3 GHz, 16 GB RAM, freshly installed Windows 10 Pro on a brand new Intel 730 SSD, switchable graphics. When I do get a new one, I will have to think long and hard if I can deal with a matte screen, and if so, I will be getting a 17" HP ZBook mobile workstation.

 

[Foxbat]

I have been living with bridge cameras for the last ten years or so. I can't say I can justify the cost to go to a DSLR even though I want something that can shoot raw in addition to JPEG. I'm partial to Olympus but know that larger sensors (APC, 35mm) do better with light collection than the dinky sensor than the micro4/3 and especially the bridge cameras.

The alpha-7II is one sweet APC mirrorless camera that marries Sony's sensors, Leica lenses, and Olympus' 5-axis Image stabilization. Of course, it costs over $3,000!

 

[lfp302]

As far as learning Photoshop, I had purchased two different books on the subject, and was slowly pick up this and that. I really got much more when I
started buying various photography magazines that have tutorial disks attached.

 

[EarDemon]

I’m not one to go back and forth on something this long and I'm running out of time before Oct 3rd arrives, so yesterday I pulled the trigger on the a6000. I got it online from some place I never heard of before for $579. I figured what the hell, I’ll chance it. It shipped oyt today and I'll have it on Firday. The camera accepts, SD, SDHC, SDXC, Memory Stick Pro Duo and Memory Stick Pro HG-Duo, I haven't kept up on memory cards but after a few minutes of research I grabbed a Sony 64GB 64GB High Speed SDXC Card from their SFUZ series of cards from Amazon for $45, I also have the high capacity battery coming. I've got a $25 Worst Buy gift card that I received for Christmas, that I had every intention of trading it in at a loss for gift card from a place I actually shop at, but they have the OEM carrying case I want on sale for $22.99, with tax that's exactly $25, so I will never step foot in there again.

 

[Ilya]

Check out Julieanne Kost's Blog for some nice video tutorials on how to use Adobe Lightroom.
http://blogs.adobe.com/jkost/lightroom-training-videos

 

[EarDemon]

Thanks, I will check them out.

Got the camera on Friday, and I've been getting used to the menu structure and different mode settings. Watched a couple videos on You Tube last night about this camera and learned a few of the basics. There's an hour long video I will check out sometime during the week when I have time that looks really helpful. I took a few pictures of the front lawn with the a6000, my Cybershot W200 and my phone, and the difference is incredible.

 

[EarDemon]

The a6000 served me pretty well last weekend.

Sunday in Dover, Monday in an unplanned trip to NYC. Took over 800 pictures in 2 days.