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Good excuses: Not SLRs, but these two new digitals are sound alternatives. Minolta’s $1,200 DiMAGE A1 gives you steady low-speed shots, thanks to its anti-shake function. Sony’s $1,000 Cyber-shot DSC-F828 has a CCD, packing four color filters that promise a new level of color accuracy. |
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Control and versatility have long made the film SLR the standard for serious photography—and now these advantages are drawing so many of us to digital SLRs. This month’s tests of two new DSLRs—Canon’s $899 EOS Digital Rebel and the $2,200 Olympus E-1—will boost that interest even further. But I don’t have to tell you that buying a DSLR is a major investment, not only in terms of money, but also in time, technology, and focus.
It was easy to dismiss these cameras when image quality was in question. Now, however, that’s not an issue for prints up to 8x10 or even 11x14.
Dismissing DSLRs was even easier when $2,000-plus was the point of entry for a 6MP model. But that barrier has been smashed by the new Rebel (just $999 with a lens!), as it joins other under-two-grand DSLRs, such as Canon’s EOS 10D ($1,500 street), Nikon’s D100 ($1,700), Fujifilm’s FinePix S2 Pro ($1,800), Sigma’s SD9 ($1,100), and the new $1,800 Pentax *ist D.
So what’s holding you back? If you’re a film-only loyalist, that’s understandable. But many of us want to make the leap to a DSLR; it’s just that it’s easier to make excuses why we shouldn’t.
Excuse 1: “I don’t want to be first.”
You won’t be. According to the Photo Marketing Association International, about 1.2 million SLRs (film and digital) are sold in the U.S. each year. Although market-share leaders Canon and Nikon don’t divulge U.S. sales of DSLRs, analysts I’ve talked to put 2003’s DSLR sales at over 500,000. Put simply, more than 40 percent of all SLRs now sold are digital. And that figure is climbing fast.
Excuse 2: “I’m waiting for a DSLR that will use the lenses I now own.”
If your bag is full of Canon EF or AF Nikkor lenses, that excuse evaporates. The camera you want exists. Same now for Pentax. If Minolta lenses represent a chunk of your net worth, perhaps you should wait for a Maxxum digital (though it isn’t on our radar).
If you’re waiting for that DSLR that will let you use every lens you have (including old manual-focus off-brands), you’re in for a long wait. Unless your lenses are relatively new—made in the last four years or so—chances are their electronics aren’t going to match the DSLR’s any more than they’d match a new film camera’s.
Don’t let a DSLR’s “35mm lens factor” (typically expressed as 1.5- or 1.6X) scare you. As you know, since a digital sensor is smaller than a 35mm film frame, getting the same effect as you do with your current 28mm lens requires a 17mm. To do what a 17mm now does takes an 11mm.
Yes, this means you’ll probably need a new wide-angle lens or two. But there seem to be real advantages to wide-angles made specifically for DSLRs. After all, light falloff at the edges of the frame is a problem with wide-angles, even on film cameras. And as Olympus says, this gets even worse on digitals unless the lens is engineered for this duty. (Our test of the Olympus E-1 backs their claim.) That helps explain why, in addition to using 35mm EF lenses, Canon’s Digital Rebel has a new designed-for-digital lens. Nikon, too, has new digital lenses. Some of the wide-angles we now have on our film SLRs could be mere stop-gaps on our DSLRs.
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