I have and use one, I have and, in the past, used a film SLR, and am finally happy with my phone’s camera (Note5).
The one thing I really miss about my film SLR is the eye focus feature. It would use the focus point I was looking at. Selecting one using the wheel is OK, but it was much easier just to look at the point I wanted.
I’d much rather have complete control over the focal point. What if you’re framing up an image and glancing all over the place and it just keeps adjusting focus?
@aWes0m3 You hold the shutter release halfway down, the same way you focus and reframe. It didn’t take long to get used to doing that without thinking about it.
It could be turned off, so it wasn’t mandatory.
If you Google it you’ll find a lot of people who didn’t like it but a lot who miss it and wish Canon would bring it back. Apparently it didn’t work for every eye, but it did for mine.
I still own probably 15-20 film (135 & MF, as well as one 110) SLRs, but I’ve only ever used SLRs begrudgingly. Tech cameras (Linhof TK) in the larger formats, rangefinders in the smaller ones. Oh, and Minox in the tiny. Now that I’m in a weird apartment and haven’t figure out a great dev plan, I’m doing Fuji digital. SLRs are too full of compromises for the shit I do.
@jqubed The question, more or less, is why would I need one? I don’t do sports or birds or the like, and RFs & similar are considerably less bulky, no need to worry about mirror blackout or slap, compromised retrofocal wide angle designs to accommodate the mirror, etc. I would do macro work with SLRs back in the day, but primarily 135 - in medium format, the TK23 handled like a considerably less bulky camera than a Hassy or Mamiya, and having full movements meant far more control. SLRs make sense if you need ridiculously long lenses or blazing fast AF, I guess, but… neither of those things has ever interested me.
@f00l This is a two-or-three parter, so let’s see how restrained I can be Aside from Instax I haven’t done film in a while. I still have all of my equipment (and, if you’re just developing film and not doing prints, you really don’t need much! Just tanks, reels, a dark bag or space without light, then some stuff to store and mix/measure chems, and some way to hang/dry film), and I would like to get back into it, it’s more a matter of making the space to store the chems, etc. I love that process, and I always felt there was more to experiment with. I was big into trichromy for a while - shooting three frames through additive color filters on black & white film, and adding them back together to form a color image:
…which can certainly be done with digital but it feels rather meh. Plus there were the experiments with the chemistry, like this one shot on color film but developed in a common b/w developer with very weak color dev properties (and no bleach):
I very much felt like I was a different type of creative when using film, and I do miss that element. I also long shied away from digital, however, because of how menu-driven and unpleasant to use the cameras were. This started in the film age. I’m the sort who likes an aperture ring, a shutter dial, and everything else can stay out of my way as much as possible. Fuji’s cameras give me this. Real controls! And while they are not rangefinders, the models I mainly use (X100T, X-Pro2) have optical/electronic hybrid finders. It can just be an optical finder, or a pure EVF, or you can use the optical finder with an EVF patch in the corner for focus. One of the focusing aids pulls information from the split phase pixels, and is a pretty pure representation of split RF focusing, though purists will scoff at the idea. I love it.
As for my favorite RFs in the film world, Contax T; Fuji GF670, Leica IIIf, Leitz/Minolta CL.
I used to be able to do a little in the film age, and I had friends … but the people I knew back then ebbed out of my life. Now I’m hard pressed to even follow the terminology.
Have done a lot of BW developing tho, because in high school I used to work for a “party pictures” place. A guy and his crew would hit all the big HS, college, and frat and sorority parties in town every weekend and just shoot roll after roll of candid stuff.
He also had a serious studio w a 5x8 I think for portraits, and “serious crew” he sent out to the socialite events. He partnered with a few photographers who did weddings, because weddings were their bread and butter, and he hated doing weddings.
For all the candid party shots, we would just develop the film and do contact prints and put all the contact prints for each party into a huge binder. Whoever was at the party and wanted pix would come in and look at the contact prints for their party, and pick out what they wanted - and he would print it up for them.
The pictures his people took were all “nice” pictures - if he caught a photographer taking shots where people were unaware, or were doing something steamy or illegal, or shots that would embarrass the party-goers, that photographer got fired.
I worked in that low-end darkroom part of it, the HS and college parties. Just about all candids unless it was homecoming or in honor or someone or other - “homecoming court” and similar got more formal treatment. I should mention my skills were the absolute lowest but were acceptable for the purpose.
Anyway I developed a ton of film, and did a ton of contact prints and prints that had been ordered. I never went out for a shoot - I wasn’t good enough, and since so many of the parties had booze, whether legal or illegal, everyone sent to the parties was over 21, to keep his employees out of trouble.
He sold his color work the same way, but sent it all out for processing.
For the portraits and the socialite party shots, he would do the printing. He knew how to keep those people very happy.
He made an astonishing amount of money doing this, got to know everyone in town, and got invited to every party ever, even private stuff where they wanted no pictures, and the socialites liked him and paid him very well.
Those two pix of yours are astonishing. To me, that’s artistry.
@f00l Thanks for the kind words . The work you did sounds fascinating. I’ve done some portraiture for folks and all, but generally speaking I’m not into people. And the whole sort of culture around ‘candids’ tends to be super creepy. But what you describe actually sounds kind of accessible to an asocial creature like myself — just stay uninvolved and shoot, ha!
I loved my EOS Rebel XS, but never enjoyed having to lug around a bag o’ crap (the lenses and attachments kind, not the broken Sansa Clip kind) when I just wanted to take some pictures. The phone is just as capable with a good app like Camera FV-5.
@rprebel While I agree with you for most uses, a phone can’t hold a candle to a good DSLR and good glass for taking certain types of pictures, such as wildlife and action shots from a distance.
Where’s the option those “superzoom” cameras - y’know, the high end point-n-shoot’s? No gear to haul around, but you can still play around with filters and hacking the camera for more options. I’m quite happy with mine!
I used to kinda know how to do all this, back in the film days. Used a Hasselblad and a Bronica enough to be able to take a few decent shots now and then.
Now I have a DSLR and I’m ashamed to have never trotted it out and mastered even the simplest things.
@chienfou thanks. It does, yeah. I was already on the verge of telling him… But when he hands me my birthday present 3 weeks early, I thought that it would be really shit to keep an expensive present like that figuring he would need the money to live, since I wasn’t going to help support him any more. He ended up pawning it after the girlfriend broke up with him, and he got a fraction of what he paid.
Last March, I got the CANON EOS REBEL T5 DSLR WITH EF-S 18-55MM LENS which I believe was almost a year old at the time. I took it last fall on a trip to Europe. Using it and the Google Nik Collection of photo editing filters they offered for free download last year, I got a few of these sweet shots. [Disclaimer: I feel like I have a good eye for composition, but I have virtually no experience with photo editing. Nik is basically like Instagram filters on steroids.]
I have the great-great grandfather of today’s camera, the Rebel T2i, and I took some pretty great photos of the Northern Lights when I lived in Alaska.
There’s a little firmware hack out there called “Magic Lantern” that you can load up via the SD card that makes things like long-exposures and time-lapse shots way easier.
While I love my DSLR (currently a Canon T5) I find that digital has tended to make people a bit (OK, maybe a LOT) lazier about the pictures they take. Back in the day, you would spend more time creating pictures/framing shots/balancing light etc. knowing that each one had a true cost associated with it, between the film and the processing. Now it is entirely too easy to just point the camera and click away, resulting in a metric shit-ton of pictures of which only a small portion are worth even seeing.
Theoretically you can winnow them out after the fact, but in reality, most of the time people don’t, so when they want to show you a picture of something it:
A) takes forever to find promotes them to show you a bunch of crap pictures while looking for the ‘really great shot I took’.
(this is especially true on a phone… sigh)
I can well remember going to Peru with my 35mm SLR and shooting 18 rolls of film, a whopping 550 or so shots (between 24 and 36 shot rolls) over a 10 day trip. I was happy with about 65% of the pics in the end. Now it is not uncommon to shoot that many in an afternoon at your kid’s b-day party and then expect me to look at them all…
@chienfou WTF… how did my “B )” in the above list become
(that’s what I get for not re-reading the post during the edit window after it went live dammit!)
** wait, it did it AGAIN I had to add a space to get it to read correctly … I say again… WTF!
@chienfou Not for me. When I was shooting 35mm film I took three or more pictures out everything. Then, after I got them developed, I’d pick the one I liked best. Sometimes I’d end up with six I liked equally, but I’d still pick just one.
I take more now that there is no cost other than disk space, but I still go through them all, usually in Lightroom, to pick the best one.
Wow, skip right from slr to phone camera. I use a Canon G11. It’s a point and shoot, an older model but very well respected. Its the one pro keep in their pocket for when there’s no time for the dslr. Takes great photos. I’d love to use a dslr, but most of my photography is travelling and I don’t want to have to lug around such a big piece of equipment.
Haven’t ever been to Banff, but here are a few G11 shots. This is strictly on auto setting. Before I bought the Canon I took a community photography class to try and learn enough to be able to either buy a DSLR or to buy a good point and shoot and be able to adjust the settings. My friend and I were getting ready to go to Australia and wanted to buy new cameras and take some good photos.
We were instructed to bring our cameras to class and the instructor was so offended that I’d brought a Kodak Easyshare and my friend brought a very old Brownie film camera that he snubbed us the whole class, even though we told him we were there partly to get information on what camera we should upgrade to. Jerk.
The Arboretum in San Francisco
Night lights in Yokohama
Early evening on the coast of Australia
Butterfly sanctuary in Kuranda
Cemetery in New Orleans
@RiotDemon Unfortunately I have not. But that Kodak gave me some good photos, it was my first digital. I still haven’t learned much about the Canon. I don’t learn well from books or even videos, I am a hands-on, direct feedback learner. Which is why I take community classes. I’ve probably taken a hundred of them over the course of my life, and taught a few as well.
Used to run a home-based photo business with my ex. The DSLR progression was:
-Rebel XT
-50D
-5D Mk2 (used 50D for second shooter)
-5D Mk3 (used 5D Mk2 for second shooter)
After the divorce, I gave her most of the photo stuff since the only reason I got into it was it was her passion. I bought myself a 6D so I can take proper pics during vacations and for friends who need help (selling their house, food pics for menus, small events, etc.).
Love the camera on my Pixel, but when I want to take something to literally put up on my wall, there’s no substitute for the control of a DSLR, both at capture and in post (RAW).
@ScottN I’ve been getting blurry out of focus photos on my Pixel. I have very steady hands and have not had this issue with any other device. Any tips for figuring out what the problem might be?
@moondrake Hmm, not sure on that one. I got my Pixel XL in late March, and it’s operated as expected. A quick Google search suggests disabling picture stabilization.
@ScottN Thanks! I was just hoping a more skilled photographer than me might have some special wisdom. I’ve been pretty disappointed with my Pixel, it fails just about everything I want it to do. If I wasn’t going to be paying for it for the next 2.5 years I’d ditch it and google fi and go back to Republic and my old Moto X.
I had a Kodak Easyshare, and even bought a lens for it, along with a couple of filters.
After two trips, I decided it’s really cool to have, but a serious pain in the ass if you’re the only one with a DSLR and everyone one else is point & shoot.
So, I switched to a Sony RX-100 point & shoot, which was great for the next trip.
(Side note: When I was looking for a replacement camera that eventually became the RX-100, I had no idea how high the prices for point & shoots can get- we’re talking thousands of dollars here.)
@ragingredd If you have the photo in your device, click the button in your dialogue box. It looks kind of like a window shade, beside the 101010. It will open a popup, navigate to your photo and select it.
I’ve had both SLRs and DSLRs and I feel marginalized by the choices in this survey.
@awk I’d like to say my old Canon FTb is still going strong, but that would be a lie. I still like keeping it around though.
I have and use one, I have and, in the past, used a film SLR, and am finally happy with my phone’s camera (Note5).
The one thing I really miss about my film SLR is the eye focus feature. It would use the focus point I was looking at. Selecting one using the wheel is OK, but it was much easier just to look at the point I wanted.
@craigthom That sounds awful.![](data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIABAP///wAAACH5BAEKAAEALAAAAAABAAEAAAICTAEAOw== ":\")
I’d much rather have complete control over the focal point. What if you’re framing up an image and glancing all over the place and it just keeps adjusting focus?
@aWes0m3 You hold the shutter release halfway down, the same way you focus and reframe. It didn’t take long to get used to doing that without thinking about it.
It could be turned off, so it wasn’t mandatory.
If you Google it you’ll find a lot of people who didn’t like it but a lot who miss it and wish Canon would bring it back. Apparently it didn’t work for every eye, but it did for mine.
@craigthom A friend of mine had one of those; it sounded like a really cool feature!
I still own probably 15-20 film (135 & MF, as well as one 110) SLRs, but I’ve only ever used SLRs begrudgingly. Tech cameras (Linhof TK) in the larger formats, rangefinders in the smaller ones. Oh, and Minox in the tiny. Now that I’m in a weird apartment and haven’t figure out a great dev plan, I’m doing Fuji digital. SLRs are too full of compromises for the shit I do.
@brhfl What is it you’re doing with your cameras that SLR isn’t a good fit?
@jqubed The question, more or less, is why would I need one? I don’t do sports or birds or the like, and RFs & similar are considerably less bulky, no need to worry about mirror blackout or slap, compromised retrofocal wide angle designs to accommodate the mirror, etc. I would do macro work with SLRs back in the day, but primarily 135 - in medium format, the TK23 handled like a considerably less bulky camera than a Hassy or Mamiya, and having full movements meant far more control. SLRs make sense if you need ridiculously long lenses or blazing fast AF, I guess, but… neither of those things has ever interested me.
@brhfl
What RF cameras do you like? Is that the Fuji? Which one?
Do you ever do film anymore?
@f00l This is a two-or-three parter, so let’s see how restrained I can be
Aside from Instax I haven’t done film in a while. I still have all of my equipment (and, if you’re just developing film and not doing prints, you really don’t need much! Just tanks, reels, a dark bag or space without light, then some stuff to store and mix/measure chems, and some way to hang/dry film), and I would like to get back into it, it’s more a matter of making the space to store the chems, etc. I love that process, and I always felt there was more to experiment with. I was big into trichromy for a while - shooting three frames through additive color filters on black & white film, and adding them back together to form a color image:
…which can certainly be done with digital but it feels rather meh. Plus there were the experiments with the chemistry, like this one shot on color film but developed in a common b/w developer with very weak color dev properties (and no bleach):
I very much felt like I was a different type of creative when using film, and I do miss that element. I also long shied away from digital, however, because of how menu-driven and unpleasant to use the cameras were. This started in the film age. I’m the sort who likes an aperture ring, a shutter dial, and everything else can stay out of my way as much as possible. Fuji’s cameras give me this. Real controls! And while they are not rangefinders, the models I mainly use (X100T, X-Pro2) have optical/electronic hybrid finders. It can just be an optical finder, or a pure EVF, or you can use the optical finder with an EVF patch in the corner for focus. One of the focusing aids pulls information from the split phase pixels, and is a pretty pure representation of split RF focusing, though purists will scoff at the idea. I love it.
As for my favorite RFs in the film world, Contax T; Fuji GF670, Leica IIIf, Leitz/Minolta CL.
@brhfl
I’m a little in awe.
I used to be able to do a little in the film age, and I had friends … but the people I knew back then ebbed out of my life. Now I’m hard pressed to even follow the terminology.
Have done a lot of BW developing tho, because in high school I used to work for a “party pictures” place. A guy and his crew would hit all the big HS, college, and frat and sorority parties in town every weekend and just shoot roll after roll of candid stuff.
He also had a serious studio w a 5x8 I think for portraits, and “serious crew” he sent out to the socialite events. He partnered with a few photographers who did weddings, because weddings were their bread and butter, and he hated doing weddings.
For all the candid party shots, we would just develop the film and do contact prints and put all the contact prints for each party into a huge binder. Whoever was at the party and wanted pix would come in and look at the contact prints for their party, and pick out what they wanted - and he would print it up for them.
The pictures his people took were all “nice” pictures - if he caught a photographer taking shots where people were unaware, or were doing something steamy or illegal, or shots that would embarrass the party-goers, that photographer got fired.
I worked in that low-end darkroom part of it, the HS and college parties. Just about all candids unless it was homecoming or in honor or someone or other - “homecoming court” and similar got more formal treatment. I should mention my skills were the absolute lowest but were acceptable for the purpose.
Anyway I developed a ton of film, and did a ton of contact prints and prints that had been ordered. I never went out for a shoot - I wasn’t good enough, and since so many of the parties had booze, whether legal or illegal, everyone sent to the parties was over 21, to keep his employees out of trouble.
He sold his color work the same way, but sent it all out for processing.
For the portraits and the socialite party shots, he would do the printing. He knew how to keep those people very happy.
He made an astonishing amount of money doing this, got to know everyone in town, and got invited to every party ever, even private stuff where they wanted no pictures, and the socialites liked him and paid him very well.
Those two pix of yours are astonishing. To me, that’s artistry.
This is an area where I regret not knowing more.
@f00l Thanks for the kind words
. The work you did sounds fascinating. I’ve done some portraiture for folks and all, but generally speaking I’m not into people. And the whole sort of culture around ‘candids’ tends to be super creepy. But what you describe actually sounds kind of accessible to an asocial creature like myself — just stay uninvolved and shoot, ha!
I loved my EOS Rebel XS, but never enjoyed having to lug around a bag o’ crap (the lenses and attachments kind, not the broken Sansa Clip kind) when I just wanted to take some pictures. The phone is just as capable with a good app like Camera FV-5.
@rprebel While I agree with you for most uses, a phone can’t hold a candle to a good DSLR and good glass for taking certain types of pictures, such as wildlife and action shots from a distance.
Currently using a Polaroid SLR
SLR. Manual focus and white balance; an external light meter.
@narfcake Don’t you find it harder and harder to find film and processing options?
@chienfou I haven’t looked, actually. My comment was moreso extending on the “No but I had an SLR [oldschoolcool]” answer.
@narfcake oh… sorry to call you out like that…
@chienfou It’s worse than it was five years ago, but it’s still easy enough to get film. And perhaps it will be getting better - Kodak is bringing back Ektachrome this year (discontinued 2012). Even if the well dries up, a lot of b/w film still works perfectly well decades after the fact, and you can always develop it in coffee.
Where’s the option those “superzoom” cameras - y’know, the high end point-n-shoot’s? No gear to haul around, but you can still play around with filters and hacking the camera for more options. I’m quite happy with mine!
@QuietDelusions Me, too. Canon G11.
I used to kinda know how to do all this, back in the film days. Used a Hasselblad and a Bronica enough to be able to take a few decent shots now and then.
Now I have a DSLR and I’m ashamed to have never trotted it out and mastered even the simplest things.
I owned one for about 5 minutes before I handed it back to my husband at the time, telling him to return it, because I wanted a divorce.
He didn’t return it. A few weeks later he was using it to take photos of his new girlfriend and her kids.
I should of kept my birthday present and broken up with him anyway.
Oh well.
@RiotDemon That sucks!
@chienfou thanks. It does, yeah. I was already on the verge of telling him… But when he hands me my birthday present 3 weeks early, I thought that it would be really shit to keep an expensive present like that figuring he would need the money to live, since I wasn’t going to help support him any more. He ended up pawning it after the girlfriend broke up with him, and he got a fraction of what he paid.
@RiotDemon Karma is a bitch!
@chienfou
Last March, I got the CANON EOS REBEL T5 DSLR WITH EF-S 18-55MM LENS which I believe was almost a year old at the time. I took it last fall on a trip to Europe. Using it and the Google Nik Collection of photo editing filters they offered for free download last year, I got a few of these sweet shots. [Disclaimer: I feel like I have a good eye for composition, but I have virtually no experience with photo editing. Nik is basically like Instagram filters on steroids.]
@theredia Nice!
@theredia
Yeah, I like.
I have the great-great grandfather of today’s camera, the Rebel T2i, and I took some pretty great photos of the Northern Lights when I lived in Alaska.
There’s a little firmware hack out there called “Magic Lantern” that you can load up via the SD card that makes things like long-exposures and time-lapse shots way easier.
@jachee And, because I’m somewhat shameless:
While I love my DSLR (currently a Canon T5) I find that digital has tended to make people a bit (OK, maybe a LOT) lazier about the pictures they take. Back in the day, you would spend more time creating pictures/framing shots/balancing light etc. knowing that each one had a true cost associated with it, between the film and the processing. Now it is entirely too easy to just point the camera and click away, resulting in a metric shit-ton of pictures of which only a small portion are worth even seeing.
promotes them to show you a bunch of crap pictures while looking for the ‘really great shot I took’.
Theoretically you can winnow them out after the fact, but in reality, most of the time people don’t, so when they want to show you a picture of something it:
A) takes forever to find
(this is especially true on a phone… sigh)
I can well remember going to Peru with my 35mm SLR and shooting 18 rolls of film, a whopping 550 or so shots (between 24 and 36 shot rolls) over a 10 day trip. I was happy with about 65% of the pics in the end. Now it is not uncommon to shoot that many in an afternoon at your kid’s b-day party and then expect me to look at them all…
@chienfou WTF… how did my “B )” in the above list become
(that’s what I get for not re-reading the post during the edit window after it went live dammit!)
** wait, it did it AGAIN I had to add a space to get it to read correctly … I say again… WTF!
@chienfou Not for me. When I was shooting 35mm film I took three or more pictures out everything. Then, after I got them developed, I’d pick the one I liked best. Sometimes I’d end up with six I liked equally, but I’d still pick just one.
I take more now that there is no cost other than disk space, but I still go through them all, usually in Lightroom, to pick the best one.
I have no problem finding the good ones.
Wow, skip right from slr to phone camera. I use a Canon G11. It’s a point and shoot, an older model but very well respected. Its the one pro keep in their pocket for when there’s no time for the dslr. Takes great photos. I’d love to use a dslr, but most of my photography is travelling and I don’t want to have to lug around such a big piece of equipment.
Haven’t ever been to Banff, but here are a few G11 shots. This is strictly on auto setting. Before I bought the Canon I took a community photography class to try and learn enough to be able to either buy a DSLR or to buy a good point and shoot and be able to adjust the settings. My friend and I were getting ready to go to Australia and wanted to buy new cameras and take some good photos.
We were instructed to bring our cameras to class and the instructor was so offended that I’d brought a Kodak Easyshare and my friend brought a very old Brownie film camera that he snubbed us the whole class, even though we told him we were there partly to get information on what camera we should upgrade to. Jerk.
The Arboretum in San Francisco
Night lights in Yokohama
Early evening on the coast of Australia
Butterfly sanctuary in Kuranda
Cemetery in New Orleans
@moondrake most cameras can be decent cameras one you learn how to use that camera to its fullest.
@RiotDemon Unfortunately I have not. But that Kodak gave me some good photos, it was my first digital. I still haven’t learned much about the Canon. I don’t learn well from books or even videos, I am a hands-on, direct feedback learner. Which is why I take community classes. I’ve probably taken a hundred of them over the course of my life, and taught a few as well.
Used to run a home-based photo business with my ex. The DSLR progression was:
-Rebel XT
-50D
-5D Mk2 (used 50D for second shooter)
-5D Mk3 (used 5D Mk2 for second shooter)
After the divorce, I gave her most of the photo stuff since the only reason I got into it was it was her passion. I bought myself a 6D so I can take proper pics during vacations and for friends who need help (selling their house, food pics for menus, small events, etc.).
Love the camera on my Pixel, but when I want to take something to literally put up on my wall, there’s no substitute for the control of a DSLR, both at capture and in post (RAW).
@ScottN I’ve been getting blurry out of focus photos on my Pixel. I have very steady hands and have not had this issue with any other device. Any tips for figuring out what the problem might be?
@moondrake Hmm, not sure on that one. I got my Pixel XL in late March, and it’s operated as expected. A quick Google search suggests disabling picture stabilization.
@ScottN Thanks! I was just hoping a more skilled photographer than me might have some special wisdom.
I’ve been pretty disappointed with my Pixel, it fails just about everything I want it to do. If I wasn’t going to be paying for it for the next 2.5 years I’d ditch it and google fi and go back to Republic and my old Moto X.
I had a Kodak Easyshare, and even bought a lens for it, along with a couple of filters.
After two trips, I decided it’s really cool to have, but a serious pain in the ass if you’re the only one with a DSLR and everyone one else is point & shoot.
So, I switched to a Sony RX-100 point & shoot, which was great for the next trip.
(Side note: When I was looking for a replacement camera that eventually became the RX-100, I had no idea how high the prices for point & shoots can get- we’re talking thousands of dollars here.)
I have a sony A300 and I love it! Don’t know how to post a photo tho…
@ragingredd If you have the photo in your device, click the button in your dialogue box. It looks kind of like a window shade, beside the 101010. It will open a popup, navigate to your photo and select it.
Ah, now I see it’s supposed to be a landscape of mountains with a moon over it. LOL.