Nikon 3100 or Canon1100d

[ajay124]

stereorules

I think there is a trial offer on Photoshop CS3 also. I can try that out as well before deciding which software to buy. I have already spent a fair bit of cash on the D5100/35mm/55-200mm. Our locals dealers are expecting delivery of D7000's by the end of this month. I may upgrade if the D7000 body becomes available for less than 50K and if I get a fair price for trading in the D5100

 

[stereorules]

It all depends on what exactly you want to do in post processing and how much you want to do ....Lightroom is basically positioned as a quick tool ...arranging your photos and little bit of processing ...Photoshop is the holy grail ...but if you just want to do little post processing maybe LR will be ok ...so try it ..try PS also ....and then decide ...But one thing is certain..post processing is required . And it enhances the photo however good the original maybe .

 

[Kannan_madhu]

@Ajay... as i mentioned earlier in a post you will end up with a d700/800 soon
For a photographer Lightroom is more than sufficient and its much more easier to use than Photoshop since its optimized for photography editing . There is a beta program going on for Lightroom 4 , you can download the latest version of LR4 and use it with out spending any money and its legal also . Shoot RAW and process with Lightroom . There are loads of effect plugins are available for Lightroom . But for a beginner who is shooting jpegs Google Picasa is the best and easy to use editor.

 

[ajay124]

KM

I would love to buy a Nikon FX with a nifty fifty lens in the future But for the moment I am enjoying shooting with the D5100/55-200/35mm. The D5100's image quality and ease of use has finally convinced me that it is a good camera. Some dealers have already received fresh stock of D90. The D7000 is expected next week. I would be willing to trade in the D5100 and the kit lens for a minimum price of 35K and pay a maximum price of 50K for a D7000 body. If the trade does not work out then perhaps next year I will upgrade to a lightly used FX rather than D7000.

LR3 is very good and I was able to pick up the basics within a couple of hours. I will check out the LR4 beta also. After using LR I will not be going back to iPhotos/Picasa/Gimp/Nikon's bundled software again!

red rose | Flickr - Photo Sharing!

 

[thatguy]

I was talking to an (amateur) photographer friend of mine who shoots with a D200 and had been dreaming of picking up a D700 at lower prices after the D800 was released. However, once he saw the specs of D800, he has changed his target to D800. Part of it may be the desire to pick up the latest in tech, but his reasoning was that he can use DX lenses on D800 and still have enough pixels to work with. On a D700, a DX lens will give you around 5 million useful pixels which leave very little room if you want to crop during post processing.

 

[ajay124]

Superb videos on all things Nikon. And a good taste in background music

Lilkiwiguy87's Channel - YouTube

 

[ajay124]

Over the last one month I have being focusing on photography to the total exclusion of everything else. I have shot a lot of mediocre pictures and spent most of my time on a computer trawling photography sites or fiddling around with the menu settings of D5100. I have a far better idea now, than I did a month ago, about the complex interaction between aperture setting, shutter speed, iso, white balance and exposure setting. Since I am only shooting still subjects I prefer to use AF-S and the single point area mode. The D5100 has 11 auto focus sensors and I am trying to learn how to select and use one of them in order to highlight what I actually want to show in a picture. To a large extent the quality and 'credibility' of our composition depends on the focus point, focal length and the perspective from which we look at a subject.

I assume that the default setting of my earlier camera ( D40 ) was Auto area AF but during four years that I used it I never bothered to find out! Auto area AF is good enough if one is simply pointing and shooting and does have the knowledge or inclination to select which point to focus on. More or less the entire object which is closest to the camera vision would become the focus point. When I use this mode I find that the results are always good but most of the time they are also boring, one dimensional and 'dead'. Whereas as intelligent use of single point AF can yield startlingly real images which seem to be 'alive' and 'breathing'. It is easy to get lost in the technology of the camera and the lens. A complete, comprehensive knowledge of the DSLR and the lens/lenses one has chosen is essential. Until that knowledge has been achieved it is the camera which is in control. Most of the credit for a decent picture would go the camera or to the subject. But once that knowledge has been achieved we can assume control and actually claim that we are taking the picture.

It takes a teacher to show you the way. I have a good friend who is a respected and inspired teacher in a local art college. Merely talking composition and perspective with him opens new vistas. Yesterday we spent an entire evening surfing photography and equipment related sites. Halfway through he casually pointed out that if I wanted to learn photography then I should look at what the masters have done. How they composed and took a shot and the lenses and focal lengths they used. I hastily shut the vivid photoshop and modern technology inspired 'miracles' which amateurs upload on websites and we began peeking at what the kings and noblemen of photography have achieved in the past. Alfred Steiglitz, Irving Penn, Man Ray, Helmut Newton....and Henri Cartier Bresson. The man who only shot in black and white and never cropped his photos. Bresson's work is truly extraordinary. His pictures seem to be narrating timeless and universal stories. Looking at them you realise that ultimately it is not your Nikon or Canon which will take a good picture. It is the quality and caliber of your vision which will finally decide how good the picture turns out to be. And acquiring a vision does not come easy. For me the two great 'visionaries' of the 20th century have been Pablo Picasso and Andrei Tarkovsky. Watching their paintings and films respectively taught me how to 'look' at the world. Henri Cartier Bresson has now joined them at the top.

How do artists like Picasso, Tarkovsky or Bresson manage to capture and expose the beauty, ugliness and truth of the world? Why does the work of most other men and women who consider themselves to be 'artists' only reveal their blindness and lack of vision. Why do the films released in multiplexes, pictures uploaded on photo sites and most paintings in art galleries and museums show and reveal nothing except the blindness of the folks who created them?

Henri Cartier-Bresson Street Photography - London Street Photo