10+ Things I Learned With my First DSLR

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Max Slowik
Kurtis
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May. 19, 2008

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My advice to potential DSLR buyers

This is the same thing others told me, and it's true to a fault: if you're on a budget, and you should be, since you can easily spend yourself out of house and home, is to buy an entry-level "prosumer" body and expect to spend an equal amount (and then some) on good lenses and accessories. By all accounts, the superior Pentax K200D was in my price range, but not in the budget. I bought a lens right away, I bought filters, I bought batteries, memory cards... it adds up unbelievably fast. My next lens will cost as much as the body and my first lens put together.

Give the manual a read through after you play with the camera if this is your first SLR. Reading it first will leave you deep in the dark and teach you to hate your manual.

Then go take pictures of everything: every party, every trip, your office, your pets, everything. The practice adds up quickly. Better yet, find a friendly group of photographers; they'll help more than any guide you'll ever find. Flickr is already your friend--it's good for changing the way you see things, exploring other people's work, and can be good for critique, too.

[Editor: Flickr is great for what it is, but if you want to learn from a community more densely populated with actual photographers (as opposed to amateurs), I highly recommend checking out some of the following sites - register on the forums, look at all the photos you can stand, submit your own photos for critique, and absorb as much information as you can: FredMiranda.com, Photo.net, and iPhotoForum.com.]

Make it a point to take photos. Go for a drive to take a shot that you always thought might look cool. Walk around your neighborhood and catalog the stop sign graffiti. Shoot a hundred and keep one if you want; it's better than not taking any photos at all. The flipside to this: it's perfectly OK to delete the photos, since keeping every last frame is going to make you hate taking them. You'll drown yourself with bad signal-to-noise.

Shoot. Full. Manual. I started with a manual lens, which denied me the luxury of letting the camera do the thinking, forcing me to learn. It's still head-and-shoulders easier than learning with film cameras, but there's no sense in taking baby steps; really, the only thing you have to lose is ignorance of photography. After you get the swing of it, auto may come in handy, but you'll likely find that you're faster and smarter than the camera.

Set your camera to taking raw photos. Any computer is better than the .jpg encoder inside your camera. The result is no more noisy photos with RGB artifacts where you least want them to be. And that's just the beginning, because once you get into the post-production, you'll see that a .jpg is fixed to the settings you shot the photo with. You have a lot more flexibility manipulating raw images than encrypted ones, because there's much more information to work with. This flows right into deleting photos, too, since raw photo megs turn into raw photo gigs alarmingly fast.

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Page 1: My First DSLR
Page 2: What I Expected, What Surprised Me
Page 3: My Findings
Page 4: My Findings, continued...
Page 5: The End Bit

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6 User Comments

1 - Posted by aireiq on May 20, 2008 - 3:02 pm

> [Editor: Max has been hounding me for weeks to purchase this lens for him. On behalf of TheTechLounge. Because he totally needs it for product shots...]

So did you buy it for him?

2 - Posted by aireiq on May 20, 2008 - 3:03 pm

I mean, since he seems to be responsible for something like 90% of your content....

3 - Posted by Kurtis on May 20, 2008 - 5:45 pm

No, we didn't buy it for him. But I'm REALLY considering it. ;-)

4 - Posted by handrail on May 20, 2008 - 10:54 pm

me and my clunker D70 will take you and your pentax on any day, max!

brad.

5 - Posted by justsomebody on October 30, 2008 - 10:33 pm

Hi!

i read all your articles on slr cameras and i am really interested in getting one. i know you recommended some cameras, but what other things do will i need to start off eg lens etc? i'm looking at cameras now and there are lots of different bundles i can get - or should i just get the standard kit?? i'm just going to take pix of friends, bdays, holidays - nothing fancy!

Thanks!

Ps ur articles are really cool, easy to understand and funny!

6 - Posted by Kurtis on October 31, 2008 - 12:35 am

My recommendation, if you're just getting started, is to just go with the kit lens. That's a great starting point. If you get more serious about it, you'll learn the ins-and-outs of the camera and the limitations of the kit lens, and that's where things start to get really expensive. But that's the best place to start. :)

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