Need help with lenses or cameras!

[Caleb SF]

Hey, I've been taking photos of most of the events that we've been going to. I currently have a Canon T3i Rebel with a 18-55mm lens and a 50-250mm lens.

 

So this starts off with a small story. We were at westpoint for R-day. I was taking pictures of all the first years from the bleachers with my 50-250mm lens. Fully zoomed, I was able to take some good shots but was not able to get extremely close to the persons face. This lady infront of my had some cheap looking camcorder and was able to get a close-up of the peoples faces. The Canon T3i Rebel works extremely well, but the lenses are quite expensive for anything over 250mm. But I was looking at the Nikon p900 which has amazing zoom. Although, most of the Nikon p900 footage was video and not photos.

 

Should I get a new camera or lens? Any recommendations?

[ALwin]

24 minutes ago, Caleb SF said:

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You're certainly right that lenses over 250mm, the good ones, are expensive.  As for why the lady with the camcorder was able to get a close up... sensor size, crop factor's field of view and zoom capability of the lens.

 

If you want to invest in better or longer lenses, you need to think "If I invest $#### of money, what sort of return am I looking at?"  Also, longer lenses tend to be bigger and heavier, you probably will not be able to shoot without some sort of support for long periods (i.e. monopod or tripod).  What I do when I don't have my 400mm lenses with me on such occasions:

• rely on the 36MP of my D800E to zoom in post, or
• try to get closer

So how much are you willing to spend?

 

If you buy the P900, what will you use it for besides such a situation?  It is after all an investment of around $600.

If you buy a lens, such as this one which costs around $1000, do you foresee that $1000 investment being worthwhile?  Do you see yourself using either the P900 or the lens being used for other things, and not end up sitting in a bag all the time?

http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1082154-REG/sigma_150_600mm_f_5_6_3_dg_os.html

[Caleb SF]

22 minutes ago, ALwin said:

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Ya, I mean I am not sure what I will be doing in the future with photography, so I don't know if getting a new lens would be worth it since most of my current applications can be done with the 18-250mm lenses i have.

 

There was another camera made by olympus I think that was like $200 less than the p900 and had very similar zoom quality. But once again, those seem to be used for video. Do you know anything about the quality of their pictures? Also do you know any cheaper options that are similar to the p900?

[ALwin]

8 minutes ago, Caleb SF said:

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Here are other superzoom cameras:

http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/search?Ns=p_PRICE_2|0&ci=8612&setNs=p_PRICE_2|0&N=4288586279+4052359762&srtclk=sort

 

As for their quality, look at their specs.  You're getting what you're paying for, though the images they produce will be decent if used properly in the conditions they were designed for.  They're not designed to be used in very low lit situations like a $3000 Sony A7s II or take high resolution images like a $25,000 medium format Hasselblad.

 

You can also use the camera finder tool on Flickr to see images taken with such cameras.

https://www.flickr.com/cameras

[ALwin]

Another thing you can do, if it's not urgent, sit on it for a while and think about the direction you want to go in the future with a camera.  You don't have to spend any money.

[Evanair]

On ‎7‎/‎23‎/‎2016 at 1:47 PM, ALwin said:

rely on the 36MP of my D800E to zoom in post

ALwin touched on this.  Remember, you're comparing an 18mp camera with effective pixels of aprox 5200x3300 to that of a video at 1920x1080 (could be 4k, but I'm making an assumption).

 

To get an effective comparison of your "zoom" length, you have to crop in to 1/3 the size of your actual image.  You can effectively throw out about 2/3 of the imageand still have a comparable "HD" image.

 

 

[ALwin]

14 minutes ago, Evanair said:

ALwin touched on this.  Remember, you're comparing an 18mp camera with effective pixels of aprox 5200x3300 to that of a video at 1920x1080 (could be 4k, but I'm making an assumption).

 

To get an effective comparison of your "zoom" length, you have to crop in to 1/3 the size of your actual image.  You can effectively throw out about 2/3 of the imageand still have a comparable "HD" image.

 

 

It works for stills, but if he uses his DSLR to record video it will scale that 18MP seen by the sensor into a 1080p footage inside the camera.  Depending on the resolution and scaling factor, sometimes the image can be sharp and other times it can be soft.  I don't know if his Canon has a "center scan" or "cropped" mode video recording, where instead of using the full 18MP of the sensor it uses only the center 1080p resolution's worth.

[Evanair]

Just looked into it.  Apparently the T3i defaults to full sensor, but can be switched to the pixel for pixel cropped recording, and has a digital zoom to 10x over that as well.  Never seen digital zoom on a DSLR for recording before, that or I've never used it. 

[ShadowCaptain]

On 23/07/2016 at 9:39 PM, Caleb SF said:

SNIP

 

Honestly its almost impossible or like hundreds of thousands to get the insane zooms you can get on bridge/camcorders on a DSLR

 

Considering that a camcorder has a teeeny sensor its really easy to get that amount of zoom

 

Honestly, most people dont need more than 200mm, unless for specific events or sports shooters who might shoot up to 600mm, but thats really quite a  specific thing

 

normally I would just say...walk closer  plus the fact that objects further away are generally harder to capture due to haze and reflections etc

[ALwin]

31 minutes ago, ShadowCaptain said:

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The OP could even rent good quality telephoto glass for when they are needed.  Doesn't have to buy.  But I do agree that most people don't really need more than 200-300mm focal lengths and there is always the option of getting closer.

[Caleb SF]

6 hours ago, ALwin said:

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Well the events are personal events, not like anything huge. So renting wouldn't be necessary.

[Caleb SF]

6 hours ago, ShadowCaptain said:

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You'd be suprised how far away a 250mm allows you to be. It's not great. Also, you can't always "move closer".

[ShadowCaptain]

6 hours ago, Caleb SF said:

You'd be suprised how far away a 250mm allows you to be. It's not great. Also, you can't always "move closer".

I am a photographer, you don't have to tell me

 

 

[Riley-NZL]

There camcorder is probably also using digital zoom, not jsut the lenses zoom. 

 

Lens cost is based on three main things (assuming built to same/similar quality standards). Sensor size, maximum aperture size and focal length, simply because making any of these bigger, requires bigger piece of glass. You can work out your self how big the minimum size for the main front element in an lens has to be (focal length divided but maximum aperture size). Because the camcorder probably has a tiny sensor (which also gets the bonus of "crop factor"), its cheap and easy to build super zoom lens with an huge range.

 

Without spending a whole lot more money you're not going to get much better than 250-300mm, although you don't necessarily need an longer lens, an higher quality lens will allow you to crop more, most of the kit lenses only have an effective resolution of 5-10 MP. If you absolutely need a longer lens, Canon does have the relatively affordable 300mm f4, 400mm f5.6 lens (and the 100-400, but that's a fair bit more $)

 

 

 

In terms of buying new lenses, for events there is what we call the holy trinity, which is an *-24, 24-70 F2.8 and 70-200 f2.8. These three lenses will be suitable for 95% of all photography. They are fairly expensive, but there are third party options and you can get one at a time. The focal lengths won't be quite as good on a crop sensor, but some manufactures do have crop sensor equivalent lens, like the canon 18-50 f2.8 is fairly similar to a 24-70 f2.8 on an full frame camera.