Me doing London to Brighton in my Charlton shirt and in just under 4 hours
Sorry mate, is that other guy in the photo on his way back to London? ; )
Didn't even notice him when he cycled past as I was knackered or I the photo. Made me laugh that did (he doesn't look in the right shape to make it bake to London ; ) )
What camera do you use? we have a LUmix SLR but when we went Grizzly Bear watching last year others with a digital SLR had much clearer pictures. We are planning a safari in 2012 so want to get a digital SLR. Great photots
Harry, most of those were taken with my Canon 7D, though one or two might have been with my old 450D. I love the 7D for wildlife as it has such a fast burst rate; you can get up to 8 frames per second, so it's hard to miss any action. Basically with one exception you could buy any DSLR from the Canon range or from the Nikon range and you are going to get a very nice piece of kit (the exception is Canon's 50D which suffers from very soft images). I'm also told that Pentax are very good, but I've never used one. The thing to watch out for is that each brand only supports their own lenses. There are 3rd party suppliers, notably Sigma and Tamron, but whichever company's camera you buy, you can't use the other's lenses. This to me is the reason I've never tried Pentax, because their range of lenses is so small.
Some things to think about:
- Price: Basically if you compare Nikon and Canon bodies, you can get a very idea of how good each camera is by the price. There's not a lot to pick between them pound for pound. How often are you going to use it? At the top end they can be very pricey. How likely are you to get value for money out of all the features?
- Weight: If you're carrying it around your neck all day, do you want one of the really heavy ones? Best to go to a shop and try this out.
- Lenses: You're better buying a cheaper camera and saving your money for better lenses than doing what I did and blowing all your cash on the camera and making do with cheaper lenses. Think very carefully about the sort of lenses you want, if you don't want to fall prey to shop assistants on commission. Also try to avoid lenses that have a very large range, they are notorious for sucking up dust.
- Filters: Normally I'd avoid buying these unless you have something specific in mind. Shop assistants will love to tell you how UV filters will improve your images. If you live up a mountain that might be true, but if you live anywhere within 100 miles of Charlton you won't normally need them (not even on Shooters hill). The one exception I'd say though is, if you are going on safari, a UV filter might be useful to protect your lens in a difficult environment.
JohnBoy, That's a very good image. I'm impressed that you could get that with a compact.
Tbh, I was impressed too. I've was given a fairly good macro lens for my dSLR as a present a few year ago but not really had any decent results with it. If we're being picky, the compact doesnt offer that much control over DOF like the dSLR and its very much shoot and hope with the compact. I must have took a good 50 shots to get that and only 2 or 3 had the head in focus. I'll have a play around with manual focusing points next time when I've got more time on my hands.
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