Beginner Total Newbie Looking For Recommendations

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connor123

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I've never had a proper camera but recently i've been cycling alot at night and thinking it'd be nice to be able to take high quality pics. Landscapes, city at night, woodland at night, etc. I think I could really get in to night photography as a niche.

I want to buy second hand, as if things don't work out then hopefully I can sell for whatever I bought for. I'd be happy spending about £300.

So, I am looking for recommendations on camera and kit. Whatever I get must be good for low light photography, and small enough to be able to carry in a rucksack on my bike.

I've seen Nikon D7100 recommended, and these seem available at the right price on Ebay, but I need more suggestions.
I am also clueless as to kit and accessories. Should I be buying certain lenses too?

Thanks!
 
I tend to keep cycling and photography separate, as never feel happy riding with expensive camera kit on my back. Having said that, I do fancy one of the Fuji X100 series for taking with me on rides, as it is significantly smaller than my current kit.

For night photography a tripod is often needed too.
 
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I suppose a lot hangs on how dark it is and what you think are high quality pictures.

If you are going to be taking pictures in dark areas, as in really dark countryside or woods not just a relatively well lit evening high street, then you're possibly going to need to be doing longer exposures with a tripod or if shooting handheld is at all possible you'll be looking at exposures in the region of 1/xx with high ISO's and a wide aperture lens.

Looking at those two scenarios doing longer exposures and using a tripod could be the cheaper option but I don't know how you feel about carrying a camera and a tripod on a bike?

In your position I'd trawl the internet and look for pictures similar to the ones I'd like to take and see what kit they were taken with and what settings were used. That could give you some clues. But I think that a budget of £300 is going to be challenging.
 
You're really pushing the envelope here in terms of spec & price.

To me, low light needs a big camera! Ok, the D7100 might be a good starting point, but isn't exactly small or light. But only you can gauge what you can accommodate in that regard.

So say you go with that - essentially it's a camera body, & you need a lens. I'd think about something like a 24mm or 28mm f/1.8 that's compatible with the body. On that body they'd be a reasonable all-round focal length, and have a largish aperture that'll help with low light.

Everything is compromise, & in the end it's a personal journey.

You'll have to get to grips with exposure principles - shutter speed, aperture and sensitivity (iso). All are adjustable and you need to understand what they do & the relationship between them, which is at the core of photography. This is a step up from using a phone camera. Even if using the camera on auto, you still have to set it up before it'll perform correctly for the circumstances.

Anyway, after any portabilty issues, your photographic enemy is likely to be digital noise ...
 
Have a look at the Olympus range, smaller and lighter and Mirrorless
 
Why not look at 2nd hand MPB have a good range as do Park cameras
 
I would suggest a mirrorless camera too - have a look at Sony

Les :)
 
Yet another "post and run"
Joined 30/08
last seen 31/08.

It'd be great if these people at least came back once and said "Thanks for the info" though.
 
Cobra said:
Yet another "post and run"
Joined 30/08
last seen 31/08.

It'd be great if these people at least came back once and said "Thanks for the info" though.
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Out of interest, what is the retention rate for new posters?
 
I
Mauri3205 said:
Out of interest, what is the retention rate for new posters?
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I've never done the math, but at a guess I'd say better than 50%. heading towards 75%
After all these years I can usually tell those that are going to "hit and run"
And at an educated guess these types of posts are usually posted on several forums.
 
Well, if what the OP wanted is true then they are going to be sorely disappointed with their results; night shots with a camera and lens that cost three hundred quid?! He might as well get himself a shoebox and a roll of film and leave a pinhole camera out for a few hours, damn sight cheaper and probably just as effective.
 
Cobra said:
I've never done the math, but at a guess I'd say better than 50%. heading towards 75%
After all these years I can usually tell those that are going to "hit and run"
And at an educated guess these types of posts are usually posted on several forums.
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That’s a much better rate than I anticipated actually. I suppose a useful metric is the one month mark, if someone is still posting at that point then odds are they will continue beyond the initial enthusiasm of joining something new.

ShinySideUp said:
Well, if what the OP wanted is true then they are going to be sorely disappointed with their results; night shots with a camera and lens that cost three hundred quid?! He might as well get himself a shoebox and a roll of film and leave a pinhole camera out for a few hours, damn sight cheaper and probably just as effective.
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Sadly this is true. I think it’s a shame that testing the waters of enthusiast level photography is a £500+ endeavour and I’m really scraping the barrel here. This leaves it open to only those with a healthy disposable income.

I’m mainly comparing this to one of my other interests in audio gear where you can start getting decent results with £50 and there are products to satisfy any price point all the way to silly money (and logic/science defying products in my opinion but that’s a discussion for another day).
 
Mauri3205 said:
That’s a much better rate than I anticipated actually. I suppose a useful metric is the one month mark, if someone is still posting at that point then odds are they will continue beyond the initial enthusiasm of joining something new.


Sadly this is true. I think it’s a shame that testing the waters of enthusiast level photography is a £500+ endeavour and I’m really scraping the barrel here. This leaves it open to only those with a healthy disposable income.

I’m mainly comparing this to one of my other interests in audio gear where you can start getting decent results with £50 and there are products to satisfy any price point all the way to silly money (and logic/science defying products in my opinion but that’s a discussion for another day).
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I think something can be had for £500+ if willing to look at the used market.

I'm a bit of a fan of my Sony A7 which is a cheap way into mirrorless FF and also of the Panasonic MFT cameras which can be had for reasonable money. One thing I often think about when using MFT kit is how it relates to the Canon 5D I had and the MFT kit is just superior in just about every way except of course the ability to get very shallow DoF. Anyone willing to look at MFT could possibly pick up a good camera for around £200-250 from the well known sellers and possibly have enough left over from that budget for a basic kit lens and a prime.
 
Mauri3205 said:
there are products to satisfy any price point all the way to silly money (and logic/science defying products in my opinion but that’s a discussion for another day)
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The psychology of marketing is a curious area to study, and is heavily dependent on the creation of myths! But as ever, whether to subscribe to the myths or not is a free choice. ;-)
 
droj said:
The psychology of marketing is a curious area to study, and is heavily dependent on the creation of myths! But as ever, whether to subscribe to the myths or not is a free choice. ;-)
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Absolutely. I find it especially difficult because I’m an electrical engineer by background. Being told that installing crystals along the power cable improves the quality of the power supply just hurts my soul. The other one is audio cables costing thousands per meter and adding anti resonance feet to electronics with no moving parts because it improves sound quality. I got a cheap but good copper cable roll for £1/m or something like that.

Very happy that the photography world has none of these things to my knowledge.
 
Mauri3205 said:
Absolutely. I find it especially difficult because I’m an electrical engineer by background. Being told that installing crystals along the power cable improves the quality of the power supply just hurts my soul. The other one is audio cables costing thousands per meter and adding anti resonance feet to electronics with no moving parts because it improves sound quality. I got a cheap but good copper cable roll for £1/m or something like that.

Very happy that the photography world has none of these things to my knowledge.
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When I worked in computers I was amazed at the effect a wire or a track on a circuit board could have on a signal. Seeing this on a scope is pretty easy but if humans can hear the difference is another question.
 
woof woof said:
When I worked in computers I was amazed at the effect a wire or a track on a circuit board could have on a signal. Seeing this on a scope is pretty easy but if humans can hear the difference is another question.
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You are correct on that principal however your AC load is going to get converted to DC before being used in the circuits. Trying to clean up the AC load is just silly, electronics are designed to handle input voltages of 220-240 and whatever fluctuations in the power supply there are.

Noise on DC is a different matter but considering the digital nature of modern day electronics you are going between 1’s and 0’s. the fluctuation won’t matter one bit here.
 
Audio tech is full of myths and surprising truths.

A decade and more ago I built and modified guitar amps. There was a lot of discussion about the audio quality of different components (carbon comp resistors, mustard caps etc). Some of the serious professional builders carefully constructed multiple otherwise identical chassis to test different key components for tonal quality, carefully recording and then posting audio clips for blind assessment by others involved. We discovered this way that some of the myths were true, that some components really did sound better, while others made no difference. Zoso caps (a big deal at the time) sounded mushy at first and needed a burn in time before they were good. Etc.

But it's hard to measure this stuff outside an oscilloscope, which can't tell you what will sound good.
 
Mauri3205 said:
You are correct on that principal however your AC load is going to get converted to DC before being used in the circuits. Trying to clean up the AC load is just silly, electronics are designed to handle input voltages of 220-240 and whatever fluctuations in the power supply there are.

Noise on DC is a different matter but considering the digital nature of modern day electronics you are going between 1’s and 0’s. the fluctuation won’t matter one bit here.
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I was talking about in circuit effects rather than mains AC and I suppose audio cables would be in there too and could I suppose easily show a difference on a scope. I think AC mains could still have an effect despite digital. Maybe it could and would be more obvious and maybe even destructive rather than just a general degradation in sound quality as a basically designed amp with bad mains just might not be able to cope and could lead to the odd squeak, blip or explosion. I have seen that with a guy who blamed his speakers for being crap and repeatedly blowing up but in reality it was his cheap and nasty amp which occasionally couldn't cope and vomited and blew his speakers up. There wasn't an actual fault as such, it was just a basic and poor design but I'll save blushes and not say who it was made by. To his amazement changing the amp for a better one did indeed stop his speakers from blowing up. In these extreme cases or in instances of blips and squeaks an audio mains lead instead of good old mains cables is not IMO going to make a difference.

You've probably seen inside audio equipment and you'll probably know that some aren't really that well thought out or specifically designed to filter out whatever rubbish may come in. Years back I spent what seemed like years (and indeed was) fixing switch mode power supplies for a computer manufacturer and they generally did a good job but I've never seen anything approaching that level in a consumer audio product. Home hifi wise it's a long time since I used to fix it but only maybe 11 years since I worked for a company that made components for some well known hifi brands and some of those designs were frankly very basic or questionable in other ways. But, can humans hear the effects and difference? Sometimes yes but for a lot of people probably not until it actually goes bang.

A PS. Not audio but TV.
Some people spend a fortune on the latest TV and then don't appear to notice they're watching something in the wrong aspect ratio. Some people seem to have a different level of consciousness :D
 
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Cycling and Photography - I'd get a used Sony RX100 Mk V and give that a go - 20MP images - easy to use - great instant AF

Taking images in low light - you will always fight "noise" and at £300 that goes nowhere near solving that problem
 
ancient_mariner said:
Audio tech is full of myths and surprising truths.

A decade and more ago I built and modified guitar amps. There was a lot of discussion about the audio quality of different components (carbon comp resistors, mustard caps etc). Some of the serious professional builders carefully constructed multiple otherwise identical chassis to test different key components for tonal quality, carefully recording and then posting audio clips for blind assessment by others involved. We discovered this way that some of the myths were true, that some components really did sound better, while others made no difference. Zoso caps (a big deal at the time) sounded mushy at first and needed a burn in time before they were good. Etc.

But it's hard to measure this stuff outside an oscilloscope, which can't tell you what will sound good.
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This reminds me of when I first came across gallium arsenide kit, it looked radically different to me when testing to the point that I had a real WTF moment.
 
BillN_33 said:
Cycling and Photography - I'd get a used Sony RX100 Mk V and give that a go - 20MP images - easy to use - great instant AF

Taking images in low light - you will always fight "noise" and at £300 that goes nowhere near solving that problem
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Bill, it's doubtful if it's worth trying to help the op as he hasn't been back.
 
woof woof said:
This reminds me of when I first came across gallium arsenide kit, it looked radically different to me when testing to the point that I had a real WTF moment.
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The oddest thing I ever tried was cryo-treating vavles - Watford valves had started doing it and everyone was a bit sceptical. I had access to liquid nitrogen and -80 freezers, so ran some valves through an annealing cycle over a weekend. It make a noticeable difference in terms of clarity and brightness for both power valves and preamp valves, although 12AX7s got rather bright and EL84s sounded brittle, it worked a treat with some muddy 6L6s. I had pairs of valves that sounded quite similar before treatment, and afterward I got my wife to swap valves out blind while I played and made notes to compare with her order.

I still have 5 or 6 amps laying around in various states of un-usability. Now when I play out it's either acoustic or people want amps off the stage & to use in-ear monitoring. :mad:

woofwoof:
Bill, it's doubtful if it's worth trying to help the op as he hasn't been back.

It's why I've not bothered to stay on topic.
 
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In these digital days I think one improvement has been in the design of CD stages. That's probably one of the things I've most noticed but I suppose things have moved on from CD's now for many people. I still buy them.
 
I’m enjoying this conversation so much more than the original question.

100% agree with you Alan. I’m by no means comparing and contrasting a poor vs. good product but two well built products. I have no doubt that modern measuring equipment can pick up differences at various stages and as you say it is a question of whether we can really hear it.

There is a definite engineering improvement between £50 and £500 speakers/headphones. I posit that on well made and engineered systems from reputable suppliers, you can’t really improve performance of a digital system using cables, wiring, other hocus pocus. Perhaps improving the quality of capacitors and power supply to remove any hum among other components but I’m hard pressed to find others (DACs and such are a different story)

Moving to Toni’s valves, here I also agree. Analogue equipment picks up every little hiss or bump across its way. Worth treating every part of an analogue system well. Digital not so much as long as your signal is clean enough to not trigger the wrong bits.
 
Just a quick note on analogue and noise. In my switch mode PSU days one computer system could take either the digital PSU the maker made or a third party analogue one that just slid in to the same slot and surprisingly the analogue one gave the smoothest output by far. Here's something people might remember, the digital PSU had a 555 timer in it and a 301 amplifier. Many hobbyists might remember those. I wonder if people still use those chips. That analogue PSU gave a beautiful and stable output but the transformers kept melting.
 
woof woof said:
Just a quick note on analogue and noise. In my switch mode PSU days one computer system could take either the digital PSU the maker made or a third party analogue one that just slid in to the same slot and surprisingly the analogue one gave the smoothest output by far. Here's something people might remember, the digital PSU had a 555 timer in it and a 301 amplifier. Many hobbyists might remember those. I wonder if people still use those chips. That analogue PSU gave a beautiful and stable output but the transformers kept melting.
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I never built anything using chips, and only one device (a compressor pedal) using transistors.
 
ancient_mariner said:
I never built anything using chips, and only one device (a compressor pedal) using transistors.
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I'm not quite old enough for valves :D

I haven't built anything for many years now. At one time I did spend hours bent over veroboard, I wonder if people still do that.
 
woof woof said:
I'm not quite old enough for valves :D

I haven't built anything for many years now. At one time I did spend hours bent over veroboard, I wonder if people still do that.
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Sure you are, or you SHOULD be as someone who cares about audio quality. :-)
 
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