Looking to upgrade from my Nikon D3000....advice?

[Batmeat]

Nice shot. I haven't played much with filters yet. I only have one. ICan't even remember what it is, but it's on the tamron and its purpose is to protect the lens is all.

 

[Batmeat]

Instead of cropping out of your images, pick up a used 300mm F4 and 1.4x TC. Not only will you get better image quality, the investment will hold.

Yea lenses generally hold their value much better. The 300mm F4 is pretty expensive.

Hadn't thought about a TC lens at all. You lose a lot of light at all?

 

[turtile]

Nice shot. I haven't played much with filters yet. I only have one. ICan't even remember what it is, but it's on the tamron and its purpose is to protect the lens is all.

Thanks, I'm not talking about lens filters but those that go on the sensor like the IR and AF filter. They affect the color and sharpness.

Yea lenses generally hold their value much better. The 300mm F4 is pretty expensive.

Hadn't thought about a TC lens at all. You lose a lot of light at all?

A quick look on Ebay shows you can get one for $800 or less:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Nikon-300mm...982?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item234bb1d12e

With the new one out in the market, there should be a lot popping up second hand.

I'm not sure exactly how much light you lose but the 1.4x TC will make the 300mm F4 a 420mm F5.6. It does dim the viewfinder slightly and slows the autofocus.

Here is a photo with the 300mm F4 1.4x combo:

 

[finbarqs]

Forget color. Color is handled in post 100% of the time(color correction). Sharpness will depend in the sensor and the lens. Whether or not the lens will out resolve the sensor (what you want) or not depends if you have a high mp sensor bundled with a high lens.

Id look into the Sony a7s

 

[turtile]

Forget color. Color is handled in post 100% of the time(color correction). Sharpness will depend in the sensor and the lens. Whether or not the lens will out resolve the sensor (what you want) or not depends if you have a high mp sensor bundled with a high lens.

Id look into the Sony a7s

Sensors and raw format control the depth of color data. There's also a reason why the Nikon D810 beats the Sony with the same sensor....

 

[Berliner]

I haven't played much with filters yet. I only have one. ICan't even remember what it is, but it's on the tamron and its purpose is to protect the lens is all.

Suggestion: Take it off. Then you lose no light and don't reduce the quality of an already not very great and bright lens.

 

[Batmeat]

Alright, I've decided to hold off on the body and try a new lens first. Going to sell the Tamson lens and try to pickup the 300m F4 and TC. I can always use the lenses with a better body and it's not like the D3000 body is going to depreciate much more then what it already has anyway.

 

[finbarqs]

Sensors and raw format control the depth of color data. There's also a reason why the Nikon D810 beats the Sony with the same sensor....

In the bayer pattern, remember it's RGGB per 4 pixels. Raw format is exactly that. Raw. It'll be the flattest, probably unbalanced, image possible. The sensor will record it's color interpretation with an 'unbiased' POV. If you decide to use their "special modes" then it wont show unless you use JPEG, or TIFF or any other type of compression that can add flare to the raw image.

The reason why we get the 50mp or 30mp cameras is not because it'll be sharper or so it'll basically take an amazing picture for us, but mainly because of what we can do with the picture afterwards. If that was the case, we would've stuck with film and have the labs do it for us. (Unless you're a purist and want to control it yourself... but Velvia has it's own set of rules as well)

 

[turtile]

There's 12bit and 14bit settings for RAW files. Take a series of photos at different ISO and you'll see that the color resolved is different.

 

[Berliner]

Alright, I've decided to hold off on the body and try a new lens first. Going to sell the Tamson lens and try to pickup the 300m F4 and TC. I can always use the lenses with a better body and it's not like the D3000 body is going to depreciate much more then what it already has anyway.

Great decision.

The D3000 is certainly not among the best, but if you stay at lower ISO the images will still be great.

 

[turtile]

Great decision.

The D3000 is certainly not among the best, but if you stay at lower ISO the images will still be great.

Another cool thing about the 300 1.4x combo is its ability to focus close. You can easily take photos of butterflies and dragonflies. You just need a very steady hand at 420mm!

 

[finbarqs]

http://www.diyphotography.net/12bit-vs-14bit-raw-and-compressed-vs-uncompressed-does-it-matter/

here's an article comparing both 12 bit raw and 14 bit raw. 14 bit holds more data, but color recording doesn't seem to be very noticeable. Plus it's flat and unprocessed.

 

[turtile]

http://www.diyphotography.net/12bit-vs-14bit-raw-and-compressed-vs-uncompressed-does-it-matter/

here's an article comparing both 12 bit raw and 14 bit raw. 14 bit holds more data, but color recording doesn't seem to be very noticeable. Plus it's flat and unprocessed.

You can see a difference in the types of colors displayed. The deeper depth adds more color changes - of course, an 8-bit JPEG on an 8-bit monitor with sRGB can't show the all of the color differences.

The article shows dynamic range.

 

[finbarqs]

but then there are so many factors involved as well too. Like if your monitor's are calibrated? Dynamic range changes the color in the sense that it may add or subtract intensity to the purity of the primitive color. But then again. This is not what photographers want. We want total control over our images, hence we take images in RAW hoping for the flattest with the least contrast image possible. Then we grade it in POST. Any color bias is going to through off our work flow, hence we opt for better lenses and filters to eliminate that probability. The edge to the edge sharpness? That's just an added bonus! But then we gotta look at different angles now too: Sensor diffraction and lens diffraction. This can drastically change how color is recorded onto the sensor depending on the situation!

 

[doubledeluxe]

Great decision.

The D3000 is certainly not among the best, but if you stay at lower ISO the images will still be great.

Just thought I'd throw this out there...

Years ago I started with the d3000. I regretted it pretty quick. It's a lemon and produced relatively poor images unless it was a sunny day. Anything above iso 400 was ugly and the biggest problem was that you had very little room to post process with. It just has the ugliest noise possible.

I still think better glass is a good idea for someone who doesn't notice these problems but looking back the d3000 was the worst camera I've ever had. I was just excited at the time to learn how to use a DSLR. Very few d3000 pictures made it into albums.