Chris MarquardtLearn to See

All camera manufacturers produce good cameras these days. And everybody has their specific needs and preferences and therefore camera that suits them best. I highly suggest that you go to a camera store and see which camera feels best. If you need to find out if a specific camera gives you specific features, www.dpreview.com is the place I typically look. It is a good resource that has a ton of camera tests and comparisons.

To get some first-hand information from people who might already own the camera you're looking at, you could also ask your question on the Tips from the Top Floor forum..

Which lens to buy really depends on a lot of things including the application you will use it for, the size of your wallet or credit card, your taste, the amount of weight you're willing to carry around with you, and so forth. So I'm really sorry but I won't be able to simply tell you "get this and that" and you'll come out happy on the other side.

If you want to go for expensive glass, I suggest you rent those lenses for a weekend first and give them a good round of testing before you go out and buy them. borrowlenses.com comes to mind, but there are others too, depending which part of our planet you live at.

As a general rule of thumb, I suggest you buy the brightest glass that you can afford. E.g. the lens with the widest possible aperture. As I said, I haven’t tried every possible lens of every manufacturer, so I can’t give you specific recommendations, but in general, DSLR bodies are subject to be swapped out for new ones sooner or later, but you will typically keep the glass - so when it comes to where to spend, I’d rather spend more on lenses.

Other than that, I usually prefer original lenses made by the camera manufacturer to third-party lenses. Third-party lenses can be exceptional, but with a few exceptions I have personally found a higher spread in quality levels.

The important thing to keep in mind is that once you buy from a specific manufacturer, the more accessories and lenses you add over time, the harder it will become to switch to a different brand. Or in short: you’ll be locked to that brand for a long time. All manufacturers produce decent quality.

Make sure you go to a camera store and spend time with each of the manufacturers and models that you're interested in to develop a feeling for them.

Are you a sports photographer? Do you shoot a lot of long 10-picture bursts when you take photographs? Do you use a lot of 16GB memory cards? If your answer to all these questions was “no”, then you’re safe with slower memory cards. Here’s why: your camera has a built-in buffer that can keep at least two to three pictures, for bigger camera models as many as hundreds. This buffer holds the pictures before the camera writes them to the card, and it is completely independent of your memory card. What this means is that you can take several pictures at maximum speed (think fast burst) until the buffer is full. Then the camera needs to write an image from the buffer to the card first before it can take another one into the buffer. But typically the camera will start emptying out the buffer as soon as you take your finger from the shutter button, which in turn means that you will rarely notice that the camera is doing that. And that's true regardless of the speed of the card. Higher card speeds just mean that the camera can empty out the buffer faster.

Copying pictures from the card to your computer is a different story, and cards do have a bigger influence there. However, there are so many different standards (USB1, USB2, UDMA, USB2 HiSpeed, FireWire400 FireWire800, ...) that if not properly matched up can make even the fastest card go slow, so even a fast card can be very slow.

It depends. I shoot with a 21 megapixel camera, I also shoot with a 10 megapixel camera. And with 5 megapixels. And sometimes I even shoot with a 2 megapixel camera. It always depends what you want to do with the pictures, how much you are willing to invest in processing equipment (more megapixels = bigger files = more hardware for post processing). I believe it’s safe to say that you will most likely need less megapixels than the manufacturers are trying to sell you.

Having others look at your photography and receiving (and providing) critique is very important, and I appreciate your request to review your pictures. Unfortunately that doesn't always work out due to my full schedule. This is why I have compiled this list of places where you can get and give feedback on photography:

» Flickr
» Tips from the Top Floor Forum (check the Listeners Pictures section)
» DeviantArt

Under certain circumstances a polarizer can be a great help. If you shoot a lot in very bright conditions, getting an ND filter might be advised (if you know what you need it for). If you shoot a lot of landscapes, an ND Grad filter can be of great value.

You should only use filters if you really really need them though.

Reflections. Everything that sits in the light path will contribute something to the picture, be it in a positive or in a negative way. If you put a $50 protective filter (substitute UV filter, Skylight filter, Haze filter, etc.) in front of your $900 lens, each and every single one of your pictures will be degraded thanks to reflections that the filters produce between themselves and the front element of the lens. Every year around Christmas time I receive requests from people who can't understand why their shots of the Christmas tree with all its lights look so weird. What they experience is ghosting: reflections off of filters that create ghost images.

Scratch protection? Using a filter for scratch protection is so deeply engrained in many people's minds that they don't even question it anymore. Which turns it into a really easy sell for every camera salesman. They really love selling you protective filters. "You obviously don't want to buy a lens without a protective filter, right? One little scratch and your investment will be down the drain." Well, not so far. Here's a video for you to watch. The answer is actually simple: don't spoil the majority of your pictures while you could get the same or an even better level of protection using a lens hood. That's right, there are many reasons to get a lens hood, and one is that it will give your lens protection from bumps. The other reason for a using a lens hood is that it which will increase the overall contrast and clarity of each and every picture you take.

Color correction? These are a staple of film photography. We don't need color correction filters with digital photography. All color correction can be done in post processing or by setting the proper white balance before the shot.

Effect filters? Today star effects, cross filter effects, diffusion filter effects etc. can be much more effectively produced during post processing. There's no undo if you shoot with a filter and you get it wrong.

So what filters are okay? The few reasons where I agree with using filters are these:

• a few Canon L lenses require a filter to complete the weather sealing.
• the ND grad filter will help you control dynamics in certain scenes
• the ND filter will help you shoot very bright scenes at wider open apertures
• the polarizer lets you control non-metallic reflections, increase color saturation and contrast and get darker blue skies (but take it off indoors, as it also steals some light)
• some specialized filters will allow you to do things that would be hard to do any other way in a single shot (example: split diopter)

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