rebel EOS XT

[art]

Just got it for a bday gift. Found you can't use the LCD monitor to view your subjext, only the after shot. Is this common in Digital SLR's. I'm new to the digital arena but told my wofe it was the only way to go. I'm old school and only used my wonderful Pentax K1000 until it blew a winder on me and I started buying point and shoots as money was tight. Never liked them but they worked. I want to get back into photography from an artistec point of view. I always had fun shooting B&W and doing the work myself. The reason she got the Canon is because we already had the lenses from her old camera. She always used the program function. I couldn't stand it. Too limiting and lousy shots. I have so much to learn with the digital arena. Any tips for good educational stuff?

[floating minnow]

You will love that camera. With the DSLR you will not use the LCD to compose the photo. You are using TTL or what they call through the lens technology,which means you will be composing your image directly looking through the lens. Steve most likely can explain it better.I won't post a link but there is a site for Canon users called Photography on the Net or POTN. All kinds of information and it's a great site for sharing your photos.

[art]

Thanks FM. I've been so envious of everyones photo shoots. My friends used to always laughed at my time spent hunched down shooting flowers, fungi, dirt and such when we'd be hiking out west limbing mountains and fishing in the rockies or BC or up north in the BW. But then the slide show always delighted everyone. I'm happy at the chance to be back at it. As I said, new format, lots to learn. The basics will get me through (even took a college course in photography-journalism) but all new to digital although I know it emulates old school film stuff. I'm guessing it's all the same as far as f-stops, aperature, etc. just put to a digital format. Am I wrong, what are the major differences, Steve, Buzz, Johhny, others, if any differences? Thankfully she bought the 2 gig FC so I have time to play before I have to install the software and figure all that out while still trying to get some real work done. Then I can go into PS and do what I do best and amaze all of you with my 40 inch, 30lb. walleyes that I catch consistently on my secret little mudhole lake.

[Steve Foss]

Art: Good camera. You'll have fun. Floating Minnow said it just fine.

Modern digital is every bit as good as film, and in many cases better. With an 8 Mp sensor much like yours, I've made wonderfully detailed and subtle prints to 20x30. The techniques you learned with film translate directly to digital. It's the recording medium that's changed, not the principles.

One note: Be aware of your histogram, which you can view on the back of the camera, and watch that you have not blown out any highlights (overexposed to the point that there is no data in the whites). If you have no data in the highlights, you have nothing at all there, and you can't create it after the fact. Your manual is a great aid there.

Also, just do a Google search for digital camera books. There are many, and most any one of them can lead you through the differences in shooting digital vs film. Do the same search for online resources. Lots of great photography Web sites out there from which you can learn for free.

What lens(es) do you have?

I can tell you that, as you progress, you may be more interested in upgrading equipment than you think you are now.

Best advice, if you're bitten by the bug, is to upgrade the glass, not the body. The XT can produce simply gorgeous photos. There are cameras by Canon and other brands that have more megapixels, but the other brands' cameras with more megapixels do it by cramming more pixels onto the same size sensor as yours. To put it simply, the more pixels you jam into a smaller senor, the more heat is produced when the camera processes an image, and the more digital noise you get. That hurts image quality.

There's a wonderful bird photographer named Matthew Studebaker up in New England who does his digital work with the same body you've just gotten, but with the Canon 500m f4L, and his images are compelling.

Aside from his using top glass, it's the eye for composition, light and drama that makes a photographer. You have a plenty good body to produce great images, so it's your talent that will provide the rest. Whatever you do, if you have decent glass, don't get caught up on the treadmill of I-gotta-upgrade-my-equipment-all-the-time.

Equipment doesn't perpetrate art. Artists do.

Hey, don't mean to sound preachy, either. Since you've used that venerable old warhorse, the K1000, for quite awhile, you obviously know your way around photography.

One last point. When experienced shooters entering the digital world, or new photographers in general, ask questions of professionals, it's almost always to inquire about what equipment is being used. It's a rare photographer who asks others how they compose to show how they see the world, but it's the latter question that most often leads to true learning.

OK, enough soapbox! Sorry.

[buzzsaw]

Quote:

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There's a wonderful bird photographer named Matthew Studebaker up in New England who does his digital work with the same body you've just gotten, but with the Canon 500m f4L, and his images are compelling.

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He is good Steve, I believe he may actually be out of Ohio however. But don't leave out Alan Murphy, E.J. Peiker, Jeff Nadler, Jody Melanson, Jim Neiger and the list goes on... google some of those names and see what good is all about.

Art, looking forward to seeing your photos, congrats on the new camera!

[Steve Foss]

Yeah, Buzz, I remembered after I posted that he was farther west. I'll try to look up all those people you mentioned. It would be valuable to learn what "good is all about."

The point I was trying to make about Studebaker is that he's using a "consumer" level body with top glass to produce excellent, artistic images. If a person can afford top bodies and top glass, all the better, but if it comes to one or the other it's the top glass that matters most.

[buzzsaw]

You should already know from your visits to naturescapes...

P.S.

Quote:

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google some of those names and see what good is all about.

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That was in general for anybody who may have interest, not directed at you Steve... didn't want to mis-read into that.

[Steve Foss]

I rarely go there.

And now, back to the topic. Art, show us some of your work when you can. We're not big into critiquing your images unless you ask for it.