cameras, cheap or expensive?

[generalvegitable]

What do you prefer when you take your photos, do you use a basic £20 camera that you got from tesco or do you prefer a digital SLR camera with huge lenses that cost well over £1000 to get the photos just that bit better.

(Just so you know my photos were taken with the cheap one)


note to moderators/admins, the purpose of this poll is to see which camera type is more popular

Edit:
By expensive I mean over something like £400 to £500 depending on what you think

 

[43034 The Black Horse]

I use a SLR, it wasn't cheap but over £1000. So what do i vote for?

 

[generalvegitable]

I would count expensive as over about £400

 

[43034 The Black Horse]

Righto

 

[Ferret]

GV - it all depends how seriously you want to take things. For me, the main part of the hobby is the photography and as such I want to be able to take top quality shots which may even get considered for magazines now and then. I would never be satisfied by the results from a £20 one use camera. However, if you're happy with the results your camera produces then that's firmly your perogative!!! It's all down to the individual and there's no definitive answer to that poll question.

 

[Teaboy1]

Vague and skirting around a direct issue......?
Its a fact of life that one generally get what ones paid for, be it a car, camera or a bottle of champagne. So my take GV is that you go for the best and most expensive that you can afford to buy. Dont know about you but a camera for 20 quid does not exist outside Tesco -Toys-R-Us! A camera (SLR/semi compact for 400 quid will be a pretty good piece of kit while a 1000 pounder will be for the pro's. Now your pro is not going to submit their work with a 20 quid kiddies special and vice-versa.
I think that most of us start cheap and work our way upwards as we get more experience/skilled. So I will side with Black Horse man and say you go for the most expensive you can afford if you can justify it. Mine was thick end of 1100 but I waited and saved 2 years for it. :razz:

 

[Demps]

This surely cannot be a serious question.

 

[mumrar]

Hmm, how do you measure the expense, because in the 5 years I've used dSLRs I've took over 50000 photos, these would have cost somewhere in the region of £9000 to develop if they were 36 shot reels at £7 a go. I haven't spent anywhere near that on my camera equipment. So I'd say moderately expensive, but actually quite cheap!

 

[CCF23]

I have a 10 MP DSLR that cost £107 on Amazon (about £200 in the shops) it was cheapish and gives me good results, plus it is very compact and small. The main reason i bought it was because i was annoyed with getting blurry and bad pictures with a 6 MP digital.

 

[D107]

Lens. Consider the lens. I collect Olympus Trip 35's. These are 35mm auto compacts with zone focussing and 2 shutter speeds if you go to manual. Whilst 35mm film is slowly declining, it is still available and processors will make a CD ROM of your shots for a small supplement.

OK, you have a fixed lens and little room to manoeuvre, but the lens is stunning and you can get fab results. What it will give you is old-school experience of composure and having to think a little about your shots.

Cost? £20 on FleaBay will give you a fine example. Try it, you might be surprised.

 

[Demps]

Argh how the hell can you answer to that question, its stupid no offence.

 

[yorkie]

It's a daft question. It doesn't fulfil the purpose to see what "type" is more popular. I'm not sure how all cameras can be made to fit either a £20 cheapo category or a £1,000+ expensive category, or are middle ground cameras excempt from the poll?

I wouldn't go round taking photos on a £20 camera, it would be a waste of time and pointless.

A £1,000 camera won't allow you to take photos "just that bit better" than a £20 camera, it will allow you to take good quality photos, while a £20 camera will not.

A £20 camera is unlikely let you choose settings such as shutter speeds, sensitivity, aperture, etc, so there's hardly going to be much room for creativity or skill there... other than framing the shot!

 

[HSTfan!!!]

I'd consider a DSLR an investment personally, you can do alot more with a dslr than you can a point and shoot type of camera. A good lens is what makes a camera. I certainly myself shoot with a nikon d60, and a friend of mine shoots with I think a d300 or something along those lines and the difference in quality is amazing. But then again my d60 will produce excellent results over my more portable digital camera.

 

[will1337]

I personally think it makes sense to have either a fairly cheap compact at about £100 which will give you a little room to play with and give hardly terrible shots OR spend £300+ on a DSLR. The mid-range/high end compacts and bridge cameras I don't see very appealing unless you need a very small camera ie Canon Ixus series as the shots will be nothing like in the league of a DSLR costing not a huge deal more. A lot of the features in them also seem quite gimmicky like the recent Sony's which have a mode that won't take portraits unless the subject is smiling and image processingy stuff that you'd be much better doing on a computer anyway. That's why I currently have a Canon Powershot A460 and when I can afford to will get a Nikon D60 or similar entry level DSLR. Obviously I wouldn't bother with a sub £50 camera for serious picture taking but I can see their value if one wants to take a few shots in an emergency and isn't in to photography.