Turn of the Screw

When Canon launched the EOS system with its new EF lens mount in 1987, it was a clean break with past tech. The "Electro Optical System" severed the mechanical linkages between the camera body and lens. The aperture was electro-mechanically actuated, and the focusing was handled by a motor in the lens body itself.

Similarly, when Olympus put out its first DSLR, the E-1, the Four Thirds system represented a clean break from its prior film SLR legacy. All the lenses were from a clean sheet of paper.

The other DSLR makers in the first decade of this millennium were attempting to bridge a gap to prior technology. Nikon, Pentax, and Sony all offered cameras with focus motors in the camera body which operated the lens focus via a screw drive.

I was reminded of this yesterday when I had the Sony a700 out for a walk with the 18-200mm zoom lens on it.

I'd been hoping for birds or squirrels, but when I went to shoot some flowers close-up, the whirring as the focus motor spun the lens all the way to the other extreme seemed interminable...

Reduce, Reuse, Recycle: Great Deals Await!

So, for doing a comparison test for the blog... and also because I love playing with different cameras ...I got the Sony a700 and a Sony 16-50mm f/2.8 zoom lens from KEH for $290, combined.

That's a rugged, weather resistant, pro-grade camera and lens for under three bills. Roberts/Used Photo Pro, locally, had a 16-80mm F3.5-4.5 ZA Carl Zeiss Vario-Sonnar T* for a hundred bucks. It was in "Good" condition, basically the equivalent to BGN (bargain) at KEH because the rubber focusing and zoom rings were somewhat faded and there was visible wear on the lens barrel, but it's functionally just fine, and it's premium glass that sold for nearly a grand back when it came out.

Then the other day I saw that Roberts had an 18-200mm f/3.5-6.3 zoom with caps and hood for $89.

That's a pro-grade APS-C DSLR body, and three zoom lenses, two of them rather high-end, all for less than the cost of the cheapest kit DSLR at Walmart.

Singin' in the Rain

After the LCD display on the top panel, the next two pro camera features I mentioned in my list were a rugged, usually metal body, and weather sealing.

When normal folks would buy that boxed Nikon D3000 or Canon Rebel kit from Walmart or Best Buy, it represented a chunk of change. Especially back in the late '00s, when their only other experience with digital cameras had been a $150-$250 point-'n'-shoot, that $500 to $1000 DSLR kit that they purchased to document their big trip to Europe or their kid's first season of Little League was a luxury item and tended to be treated as such.

On the other hand, working photogs... especially photojournalists, wildlife and sports photographers, et cetera ...treated their cameras like the working tools they were. The body needed to be rugged enough to take a beating, and the weather sealing had to be up to shrugging off the elements.

I stumbled on a leaf-covered sidewalk and faceplanted right on top of this Canon EOS-1D Mark IV

If a camera will stand up to the sidelines of an NFL game or deal with a NatGeo expedition into the Amazon, I figure it's more than up to wandering around my Broad Ripple neighborhood.

I'll note that this is all for naught if not paired with a comparable lens. The Olympus E-5 and the Zuiko Digital 14-35mm f/2 Pro lens are both known for being quite weather-resistant.

DSLR Pics: Vintage Triumphs with the Canon EOS 40D

I was getting lunch at Fat Dan's the other day when a gaggle of Triumph motorcycles pulled up over at Yat's, so I ambled over for a closer look.

The 40D was wearing the excellent EF-S 17-55mm f/2.8 IS zoom lens, which is probably the best glass Canon made for their crop-sensor DSLRs.

I'd been shooting moving cars and the camera was set to Program Mode with the ISO set to 200 despite the fact that it was a sunny day, in order to keep shutter speeds reasonably quick.

Between the good glass and the 10MP CMOS APS-C sensor, the photos are pretty reasonably detailed.

DSLR Pics: Squirrel snapshots with the Canon EOS Rebel T1i

These were taken with the Canon Rebel T1i and an EF 28-200mm f/3.5-5.6 zoom lens while walking to lunch back in February of 2019.

The lack of image stabilization on the lens and the overcast day meant having to shoot close to wide open, even with all the reflected sky light coming off the snow acting as a sort of bounce fill.

The character of the bokeh on this isn't exactly what I'd call smooth and creamy, but it's not as jarring as the stuff that occasionally comes from its 28-200mm f/3.5-5.6G Nikon equivalent.

DSLR Photos: First pics from the new D300

KEH had a Nikon D300 in EXC condition for $79 and, rather than let my D300S substitute for one in my "Class of 2008 Prosumer Shootout", went ahead and sprang for it. It arrived the other day and I charged the battery, put a card in it, popped the excellent 17-55mm f/2.8G DX zoom lens on it, and took it out for a spin.

The 17-55/2.8 is a monster lens but really delivers great results. The 26-83mm equivalent focal length is good for most around-the-neighborhood shooting situations and the f/2.8 maximum aperture all the way out to the long end means it's a pretty fair short portrait lens in a pinch.

As Zed noted in an online discussion, at the time the D300 was definitely the big dog in this class of cameras, easily outselling its crop-sensor competition from Canon, Pentax, Olympus, and Sony.

For a camera that was released towards the end of 2007, it still holds up quite well. You could still do work with this thing, no problem.

Expert Panel

On my list of features usually found on "pro" cameras, after dual control wheels and dual card slots, I mentioned an LCD readout on the top panel.

This was necessitated on Canon's EOS pro bodies as far back as the film days because almost all the controls were set via buttons and control wheels, and the new EOS lenses themselves had done away with physical aperture rings, so other than turning the camera on and looking into the viewfinder, there was no other way to tell at a glance what mode the camera was set to, or what the current aperture and shutter speed settings were.

This is generally not a feature found on the sort of budget DSLRs bought at big box stores for three interconnected reasons:

• These cameras generally have a mode dial that can be read at a glance.


• Budget cameras are most often used by beginners who will either leave the camera in the most automated setting, or perhaps use one of the preset modes like Sports, Closeup, Landscape, Portrait, or whatever. They are unlikely to fiddle with aperture or shutter speed.


• Therefore, like leaving off that second control dial, omitting the LCD screen makes the camera cheaper. 

Of my "Class of 2008" prosumer cameras, the Canon EOS 40D, Nikon D300, Pentax K20D, and Olympus E-3 all have LCD readouts on the top panel. Only the Sony a700 lacks one.

DSLR Pics: Straight-out-of-camera JPEGs from the Sony a700

The Sony 16-50mm f/2.8 lens is downright petite when compared to the Canon EF-S 17-55mm f/2.8 IS or the Nikon 17-55mm f/2.8 G lenses, but it still gives really excellent results. (It's an inch shorter and nearly a half pound lighter than the monster DX Nikon pro glass.)

The a700's sensor is modern enough that ISOs as high as 800 or 1000 still give pretty acceptable results.

Grip Gripe

If you're gonna build a grip into the body of your DSLR camera, like most every manufacturer does, I feel like it should be deep enough that I can let my arm hang by my side and the camera will dangle with just my fingertips in the grip, even with a fairly small lens on it. (If you've got some monster telephoto hanging off it, any camera will do that.)

With the small lenses that I have for it, the Pentax K20D will not do that. I has a sad.

Dual slot? Maybe not!

The second on my list of "pro features" after dual control wheels was dual card slots, although in the year 2008, that was still generally found only on the top models of most lineups.

The 1D Mark III and 1Ds Mark III each had one Compact Flash and one SD card slot, but the contemporary 5D Mark II only had the CF slot. Similarly, Nikon's pro D3 had a brace of CF slots, but the D700 only had the one.

Stepping down from full frame to crop sensor, the Canon EOS 40D and Nikon D300 only had one CF slot. Likewise, the Pentax K20D, which was the top digital Pentax of the time, had a lone SD card slot for storage.

Only the Sony a700 and Olympus E-3 had a pair of card slots among the cameras in this tier, but that's for a specific reason. See, both Sony and Olympus had their own in-house memory card formats, so their DSLRs had one slot for Compact Flash and one for Sony Memory Stick (on the a700) or xD (on the E-3).

The card slots on an Olympus E-3

Unlike the dual slots on the pro Nikon and Canon cameras, you couldn't record to both of these cards at the same time, it was strictly one or the other.

It wouldn't be until later, in cameras like the Nikon D300S and D7000 that Nikon let dual card slots trickle down, and Canon users had to wait for the 5D Mark III and 7D Mark II.

Dead Format Bonus

Sony discontinued their A-mount DSLRs (all basically evolved Minoltas) back in 2012, and the A-mount pellicle mirror SLT cameras not too many years after, so that leaves the A-mount an essentially dead letter.

Used prices on fairly high-spec glass are dirt cheap. That 16-50mm f/2.8 in the picture? Less than two hundo. I found a Sony DT 16-80mm F3.5-4.5 ZA Carl Zeiss Vario-Sonnar T*, which listed for nearly thousand bucks new, for barely over a Benjamin used.

Of the cameras in its class at the time (Canon EOS 40D, Nikon D300, Pentax K20D, and Olympus E-3), the Sony a700 was the only one without an LCD panel on the top plate. Interestingly, like the Pentax and Nikons, it also has a focus motor in the body, allowing it to use older autofocus lenses.

The 12MP sensor has enough resolution that you can get away with a bit of cropping, too.

MGA snapped with the 16-80mm lens. Cropped somewhat.

Dual Wheels

When Canon did away with aperture rings and shutter speed dials on their EOS film cameras, they replaced them with a pair of control wheels on the camera body. Nikon held on to aperture rings a bit longer, but put dual dials on its F5 and later high end cameras.

This is still a hallmark of enthusiast and pro cameras.

While Nikon and Canon both hoped that the buyer of a Rebel or D40 would get bitten by the photography bug and move up the corporate product ladder, they also knew that a lot of people who grabbed a DSLR kit at a big box retailer did so because they were about to take a honeymoon in Europe or a Caribbean cruise or take the kid on her first trip to Disney World and decided that they needed a Real Grownup Camera™to do so...and very likely that was all it would ever be used for.

One dial was cheaper than two, and if the photographer never left the more automated settings like Auto or Sports or Landscape or whatever, it would only ever get used for menu navigation.

If the budding photographer ventured into Aperture Priority or Shutter Priority modes, one dial would still be adequate. It was only when they decided to try Manual mode that it became a hassle.

As an aside, when I first got back into photography, I lamented the loss of aperture rings and shutter speed dials, but having gotten the hang of dual wheels, I recognize their superior utility in being able to adjust settings without having to pull my eye away from the viewfinder. The only downside is that you can't tell at a glance what the camera's settings are...sorta. But that's for the next post.

What is "Pro"? What isn't?

What is a "pro" camera? The flippant answer would be "any camera that takes pictures which are then sold for money", of course.

As a marketing term, in the DSLR era the "pro" camera body was used to signify the big cameras with tough, weather-sealed bodies, built-in vertical grips and enormous batteries that were marketed to working photojournalists.

At the other end were consumer grade cameras that put more emphasis on affordability and ease of use than ruggedness, a full feature set, and cutting edge specifications.

In between these two...but closer to the former than the latter...are those "prosumer" bodies I was talking about the other day.

What are their defining features? If I had to make a list...

• Dual control wheels, so that in Manual mode you have one for aperture and one for shutter speed.
• Dual card slots (although not always)
• An LCD readout on the top panel (although not always)
• Rugged, usually metal, body
• Weather sealing
• A pentaprism, rather than pentamirror, viewfinder

What they don't have is a built-in grip, and they usually lack the latest and greatest technology that the pro bodies have. Historically they had more cost-conscious crop sensors.

Canon's 7D is practically the type specimen.

DSLR Pics: Cars with the Pentax K20D

So I had the Pentax K20D out for its inaugural outing of car-spotting, even though the DA 16-45mm f/4 lens is a little short for the task, being a rough equivalent of a 24-70mm lens on a full-frame body.

The Samsung-made 14.6 megapixel CMOS sensor gives a little leeway for cropping if necessary, so it wasn't that much of a hindrance. Pentax has an 18-135mm f/3.5-5.6 zoom that was shipped as a kit lens with some of their nicer crop sensor DSLRs and is therefore available for a song on the used market. I might pick one up for comparison purposes.

These were shot in RAW and run through a quick auto JPEG conversion in Photoshop.

Retro Shootout?

Remember how I was talking about the "prosumer" grade crop sensor cameras the other day? In the 2007-2009 period, that would have meant the Nikon D300, the Canon EOS 40D, and the Olympus E-3. It also would have included the Pentax K20D, which had full weather seals and a plastic shell enclosing a rugged metal chassis.

I don't have a D300 anymore, having traded it in on a D300S, which is basically the same thing, but with dual card slots and video, but I do have a 40D and an E-3.

Hey, you know what you can get really cheap on the used market these days?

A Pentax K20D with a 16-45mm f/4 zoom lens

That DA 16-45mm F4 ED AL lens came out in 2003 and was one of Pentax's first digital-specific zoom lenses and, like the camera itself is available for a song because there are newer and cooler alternatives. Altogether the whole setup was a couple hundo at Used Photo Pro.

Getting an old fave some exercise.

One problem with being an inveterate hoarder of old cameras is sometimes they fall out of use for a bit.

Love those Peak Design Slide straps.

Yesterday I realized hadn’t had the D7100 out to play for some time.

I could tell this was so because when I turned it on to check the battery, it was quite low. Swapped it out for a fresh EN-EL15 and, sure enough, the most recent pics on the card were of Halloween decorations in the neighborhood.

I have three cameras that use EN-EL15 batteries (this one, plus the Nikon 1 V1 and the D800) and four batteries, so every now and again a little battery rotation dance happens.

Anyway, I got it charged up and headed out to lunch.

I was glad I brought it!

A 24MP APS-C DSLR still feels pretty modern to me. It's hard to believe these things came out a dozen years ago now.

The Sweet Spot DSLRs...

Back in the 2000s, when full-frame sensors and all the various tech that was packed into full-house pro bodies from Canon and Nikon made them eye-wateringly expensive, both manufacturers produced a line of cameras that used rugged and weather-sealed bodies combined with APS-C crop sensors and a slightly less-than cutting edge feature set.

They wound up getting called "prosumer" bodies, but cameras like the Nikon D200 or the Canon EOS 40D were as often as not used by professional photogs and serious amateurs who did photography as side gig and couldn't justify a $4,000-$5,000 pro body.

A Nikon D200 with battery grip mounted.

As sensor prices dropped and the full-frame craze spread, these cameras kind of lost their niche.

Starting with the EOS 60D, Canon's two-digit crop sensor cameras lost their metal body shells and weather sealing, with the pro-grade crop sensor torch getting passed to the then-new 7D, whose single-digit moniker made no bones about its target market.

Nikon let the D300S linger unchanged for years and actually abandoned the category for a while until the D500 debuted in 2016. 

I really like these on the used market because they're great values and built like tanks.

DSLR Pics: Indiana State Fair with the Nikon D3

These photos are from the 2021 Indiana State Fair Pioneer Village, using a Nikon D3 and the 24-120mm f/4 VR zoom lens, which is an excellent and versatile all-purpose walking-around lens.

Dating from 2007, the D3 is quite long in the tooth, but it was Nikon's top-of-the-line pro body until it was supplanted by the D3S in late 2009.

It's got all the features you'd expect from a pro DSLR: tank-like build quality, full weather sealing, dual CF card slots, and 9 frames per second burst mode.

You can click on all these photos to see them in their full 12MP glory.

DSLR Pics: Tractors at the State Fair with the Nikon D700

These are from the 2019 Indiana State Fair, using a Nikon D700 and a basic, inexpensive 24-120mm f/3.5-5.6 VR zoom lens.

Despite dating to 2008 and having "only" a 12MP full-frame (FX, in Nikon-ese) sensor, the D700 is still an extremely viable camera. They're built like tanks and there are examples running around out there with seven-digit shutter counts.

Mirrorless Pics: Around downtown Indy with the Olympus PEN E-P5

These were all snapped with an Olympus PEN E-P5 wearing Panasonic's little 20mm f/1.7 pancake standard prime lens.