The Best Digital SLR For You

Canon 40D High ISO Image Samples

High ISO settings and image grain or "noise" have long gone hand in hand.

With many digital SLR cameras, the minute you get above ISO 400, the speckling in the image becomes readily apparent, especially in areas of shadow or continuous color (like the sky).

The latest breed of digital SLRs is eliminating the relationship between high ISO and noise.

Here's an image taken with the new Canon EOS 40D at ISO 1600 (well above the usual grainy threshold):

It's hard to see ANY noise at all here, but the image is not at its full size - the reduction in size makes the entire thing look pretty smooth.

Let's solve this problem by selecting a portion of the image and blowing it up to 100% size:

Can you see the grain now?

At 100% size the grain does become visible, but this is exceptionally low for an ISO as high as 1600. This means that you have a lot of leeway with the Canon 40D to boost the ISO any time you feel like it without having to compromise your image quality.

More high ISO samples are available from the link.

Olympus E-510 ISO 1600

One thing that I always like to do when I'm taking photos for a digital SLR camera guide is to see how the camera performs under low-light conditions.

The two things that I look for specifically are:

1. Can the autofocus still lock onto its subject even when there's minimal ambient light?
2. How much digital noise gets added to the image at high ISO settings?

The photos associated with this post answer the second question when it comes to the new Olympus E-510.

The verdict?

The E-510 introduces very little noise even at its highest ISO setting of 1600 - so little that I had to check the ISO value encoded with the image when it's saved to the memory card to be sure that the ISO really is 1600 (and not something lower).

This is good news for low-light photographers who can't use a flash, and also don't want their images to appear excessively grainy.

Nikon 18-135mm Lens Distortion

In my Nikon D80 Guide, I mention that the primary kit lens that comes with the camera has one noticeable flaw: it distorts straight lines.

The technical term for this optical problem is pincushion distortion.

Imagine that you're taking a photo of vertical lines: when there is no distortion, the lines are straight up and down in the final image. In an image with pincushion distortion, the lines bow in toward the center of the photo.

You can see this distortion quite clearly in the photo to the right. Just take a close look at the building wall on the left side of the photo: notice how it bows inward? That's the pincushion distortion at work.

Of course, if you don't photograph a lot of buildings, the distortion is much harder to see. Take a look at some of my other Nikon D80 photo samples (that don't include straight lines) and see if you can see the distortion in those images.

Nikon D80 Black and White

One of the new features on the Nikon D80 (as compared to the D50, D70 and D70s) is the ability to take black and white photos in-camera (without having to edit them later).

I've always been partial to black and white and feel that sometimes capturing an image without color produces better results than eliminating color after the fact.

Getting to the point...I was duly impressed with the quality and tone of the black and white photos produced by the D80 and found myself leaving the camera in black and white mode a lot more than I originally thought I would.

If you're a black and white enthusiast, then the Nikon D80 is definitely worth a look.

Sony ALPHA DSLR-A100 Photo Samples

Whenever I write a new digital SLR camera guide, I typically post a few sample shots to this blog so you can see how the camera handles color and ISO settings.

Well, this time it's a bit different.

I just discovered this little utility called PictoBrowser that - rather than just one photo at a time - lets you insert an ENTIRE image gallery into a weblog post.

If this works out well, then I will continue to use this format when I get my hands on future digital SLR cameras.

Olympus E-330 Black and White

Whenever I write a camera guide, I always like to see how well the camera generates photos in black in white in addition to color.

This is a sample black and white shot taken with the Olympus E-330 digital SLR camera.

This is the basic black and white mode, although the Olympus does offer the ability to simulate filter effects like red and yellow.

Click on the photo to see a larger version.

Olympus E-330 Photo Sample

This image is a great example of the flexibility of the Olympus E-330.

While it's hard to tell from the shot, this is a small stream of water running down a hill that is only about two feet wide.

With the live view LCD mode, I was able to place the camera right down next to the water - with any other digital SLR, I would have been forced to take this shot blind.

Find out more about the Olympus E-330 with the Olympus E-330 Guide.

Nikon D50 ISO 1600

Here's a sample photo taken by the Nikon D50 at ISO 1600.

It's pretty clear to me that digital SLR manufacturers are getting very good at reducing digital noise, even at high ISO settings.

I took an entire series of pretty much the same image, only changing the ISO and I had a tough time sorting out which one was which.

Thank goodness the camera was keeping track for me!

Primary Colors and the Maxxum 5D

Since there's not a ton of breaking news on the digital SLR front today, I decided that another sample photo from the Konica Minolta Maxxum 5D might work.

In this case I wanted to see how well the Maxxum 5D would handle colors, and in this case, the primaries seemed like a good test.

I leave the judging up to you.

Minolta Maxxum 5D Black and White

This is a sample of how the Minolta Maxxum 5D handles black and white photography.

The setting to change from color mode to black and white is very accessible, not 3 menus deep as it is on some other digital SLR cameras.

This shot also illustrates the exceptional flash on the Maxxum 5D - notice that there aren't a lot of harsh shadows and that the light is very even.