First Digital SLR

[berry120]

Could someone clear up if I could re-create this effect with that lense? http://static.photo.net/attachments/bboard/00P/00PrqY-50059584.jpg

Probably nowhere near as contrasting as that image as that is major clarity on the person and ridiculous blur on the background, but that general idea.

I've been playing with some raw images from my wedding recent in Adobe Light Room and you can create some nice Bokeh effects in that by turning the clarity and sharpness of the background down but as I understand the best way is to capture it right in the first place and do minimal if any work in software afterwards, and not capture images that require a lot of work.

Not sure what lens you mean, but with the 35mm prime foothead's suggesting, yes - with the kit lens, no. It's the larger aperture of the prime (somewhat confusingly given by a lower number) that can give you that affect.

I personally have the D3200 with kit lens and planning to grab a prime (probably the 35mm) at some point soon too. The aperture on the kit lens goes down a fair way, enough to get a blurred background, but nothing near totally throwing it out of focus beyond recognition.

It's true the D3200 does have many more megapixels than it's older sibling, but that wasn't really the reason I went for it, you'd really need a better lens and be producing very big prints to notice the difference in that regard. It's also got a much better screen, slightly faster continuous burst, and has the option of an external mic input for recording video - and that last feature was actually the one that most swayed me, however simple it might seem! The others are all nice touches too however.

I'd also recommend shooting fully manually at least for a while to learn what settings to use best, you'll really get the most out of the camera this way rather than sticking it in P mode or fully auto. For a while I often took 2 shots, one in manual using my settings and one on auto. The camera often got a better shot, but I could then look at what settings it used and therefore *why* that meant it was better, then seek to recreate that shot in manual mode. Before long you should be beating auto mode hands down

One other general point, don't be afraid to bump up the ISO a bit when you need to - avoid the few at the very high end of the range as they'll be noisy as hell, but going up to (say) 800 on modern digital cameras gives perfectly decent noise free results, and is much better than a slightly less noisy but very blurry photo that came from opening the shutter for too long!

In terms of tripods, I grabbed the Slik Sprint Pro II GM for a steal (£35, haven't seen it anywhere near that low since) and it's been worth every penny - a great little tripod.

Enjoy

 

[foothead]

^ Good advice Berry. I second shooting in manual mode, but it's usually pretty annoying to navigate in modern cameras. Aperture priority is also a good choice. Here, you select the aperture you want, then the camera automatically sets the shutter speed to what it thinks will be a proper exposure. Eventually, you'll learn the properties of your camera's meter and you'll instinctively knaw how much compensation to use in any given situation.

As far as the photo you posted, the kit lens will not come close to recreating that. The 35DX will give you a good bit of bokeh shooting wide open, but not quite to that level. If you picked up a 50, that'd give you a good bit more than the 35, while also being a better focal length for portraits. It will not be a good all-arounder though. You could actually go longer if you really wanted a lot of bokeh. Samyang makes an 85mm f/1.4 ($250-300) that is actually pretty good optically. Keep in mind that you will have to manual focus with this, so expect to use a tripod and live view zoom for every shot. Adding a split prism would help, but may not be enough since modern cameras come with stupid tiny viewfinders. 85mm would actually be about perfect on aps (maybe a bit long, but not too much so) for portraits, and you can expect the background to be completely obliterated. You will have to stand rather far away from the subject though.

With any of these fast primes, you will need to pick up a neutral density filter if you intend to shoot at max aperture in bright sunlight. If your camera supports ISO 25 or 50, you may be able to get by, but it'll be a problem if 100 or 200 is the minimum. Normally, you'd just stop down in these conditions, but that causes the depth of field to widen too much, ruining the bokeh effect.

So you understand what you're getting into, here are wide open samples for each lens. 35mm f/1.8 50mm f/1.8 Samyang 85mm f/1.4 Based on these, I'd say you probably want either the 50 or 85. The 35 is an excellent lens which you absolutely should buy (every nikon DX shooter should have one really), but the bokeh isn't as pronounced as you'd probably like when photographing human subjects. The 85 is obviously the one with the thinnest DOF, but this comes at the expense of being a very long focal length that is awkward on a crop camera for pretty much anything but portraits.

 

[foothead]

I just thought to pull the exif on that image you linked. It was taken with a Nikkor 85mm f/1.4, wide open. Since it's the same focal length and max aperture as the samyang, you should expect to get pretty similar results from them, at least as far as depth of field goes.

EDIT: One more thing I just realized. It seems nikon has been intentionally leaving out features on their lower end cameras, so anything below D7000 won't meter on manual lenses. The best workaround would be to use the histogram. This actually gives you a lot more info than if you were just using the meter, but it does require you to take a test exposure then look at the lcd.

It seems they do have an "electronic rangefinder" though, which would allow some focus confirmation in the finder with a manual lens. This makes things a lot easier, especially when hand-holding the camera.

 

[ja6on]

i have that lens on my d3100, have a look at my image posted in the photography comp this month..
mine is the Helicopter in motion

or this one where the item closer to the lens is blurred

 

[foothead]

^ By "that lens," he means the 18-55. (I pulled exif to be 100% sure) You're not going to get creamy oof areas with that. Best you can really hope for is "blurred just enough to look terrible and distracting" unless your subject is 10cm from the lens.

By the way, if you are going for the bokeh effect, don't shoot at f/7.1. It's the wider apertures that create the effect.

 

[setishock]

Bokeh - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

[ssc456]

(Sorry for the long delay, I've been busy getting married . . . )

I've narrowed it down to these two:

Nikon D3200 Black Digital SLR with 18-55mm VR Lens (VBA330K001) - Wex Photographic

Nikon D5100 Digital SLR with 18-55mm VR Lens (VBA310K001) - Wex Photographic

I'm leaning more towards the D3200?

Also 1 more side note that might be a silly question, do these cameras come with a built in flash? I know if they do then it won't be sufficient for all my needs but just some shots that are slightly too dark that need brightening up a little bit?

 

[ja6on]

yeap both have a built in flash. it pops up on the top.

 

[berry120]

Both have a flash, both can accommodate other (more powerful flashes) via the shoe.

As for 3200 vs 5100 - The 3200 has a greater resolution, does 60fps video, and from my brief comparisons it's slightly cheaper. The 5100 has a flip out screen, does HDR and has a slightly better battery life.

When I was making the same decision I went for the 3200 based on the fact I don't really like HDR stuff and wouldn't really use a flip out screen, so the slightly cheaper price and better resolution swayed it for me. Spare batteries can be picked up for <£20 so that wasn't really an issue either - I can take the charger (which is small) and the spare battery!

Tbh the differences between those two (and in all honesty, even the newer D5200) are minor (the 5200 has all the 3200 features plus the flip out screen, HDR, loads more focusing points and a bit better low light performance, but not much else.) The real useful improvements are in the D7xx series - weather proof, much larger viewfinder, in built focus motor, much faster maximum shutter speed, much faster x-sync, almost double the battery life, 1080p 60fps, 2 storage slots... the list goes on, and that's the 7100 model (presumably the 7200 will be out relatively soon.) Unfortunately though it costs almost 3 times as much...!

 

[ssc456]

Hi Guys,

Just ordered the D3200 with lens kit.
What SD card do you guys recommend?

I think I'm only going to go for either 8Gb or 16Gb for the moment while i'm testing but I will look to be getting more.

---------- Post added at 04:51 PM ---------- Previous post was at 04:49 PM ----------

I'm looking at this:
Kingston 16GB Class 10 SD SDHC Memory Card - Moby Memory

Should do the trick