Overland Photography - Hints & Tips

[rossi]

Originally Posted by switchback

In summary:
Buy the best lenses you can afford.
Buy the body that has the control over the settings you will use/need.
Unless you are printing posters, megapixels are irrelevant in the SLR world these days.
Shoot RAW if you are willing to learn to develop your own photos and have the capacity to store them (otherwise JPG at the highest resolution).
Even a 3mp point and shoot can take a masterpiece.
Everyone has an opinion, this is just mine. Do what works for your situation.

Agreed

I have photos enlarged to A4 on my wall taken on a 2.1MP compact and another printed A2 from my 6MP DSLR.

These days the camera I use most is a sigma DP1. A compact camera with a fixed 28mm equivalent lens and a sensor the same size as a DSLR. This is not a camera for everyone but I find the limitations of a fixed lens make me think more about the photos I take and give better photos as a result. The quality of the lens and the sensor gives fantastic results, but a high quality image is no use if it is poorly composed in the first place.

Browse peoples photo albums online, identify pictures you like and study the composition. Perhaps get a book which can give tips on how to get the effect you want. Then take your camera out and practice, thinking about the photo you are taking and what you want the end result to look like. You will take better photos as a result which can be very satisfying.

Finally, you're not going to take good pictures if you don't have your camera with you. So perhaps the best camera is one that you are happy to carry with you. Another reason why I take more pictures on the dp1 than my DSLR.