Looking for a cheap(ish) DSLR, either new or second hand.

Primary job will be to take property photos for our website, so a nice wide-angle lens option is pretty much essential.

Being able to shoot DSLR video with it (MTB/snowboard) would be a nice bonus.

Whats your budget?
Lots of options but if you have a budget its a good starting point

Wide angle lens won’t be cheap, think around the 300 quid mark for a Sigma 10-20mm and then upwards from there

I wouldn’t rule out compact and bridge cameras. They often produce more satisfying results straight out of the box. Especially when only used on the web. Easier to carry on the bike, and for the price of a bottom of the range dSLR you’ll get a decent bit of kit.

Primary job will be to take property photos for our website

Have you budgeted for a couple of flashes?
Don’t go too wide on the lens either, curved walls look crap.

I use a Nikon D3100 with a Sigma 10-24 wide angle. Not too expensive, love the wide lens and it does shoot vid as well

Just paid £130 for a SH Pentax K100d and loving it! Reviews said good camera, despite the ‘only’ 6mp and slow between multiple frames, it takes ace images. Doesn’t take vid 🙁

BUT, the point being latest/bestest like MTB stuff is often marketing it seems, and I am limiting factor on my bike/camera/ski’s/boat etc….

i’ve had a Nikon D3100 for about a year – great camera, cant recomend it enough….

Sony Alpha SLT’s are great cameras and up with the best (if not the best) for video.

Was hoping to spend about £200 on a body, maybe £500 with a “standard” lens and a wide-angle.

don_simon – I’ve always done our interior photos using a tripod and a long exposure rather than using flash. Looks more natural to me. Have resorted to doing separate shots, one with the room properly exposed and one with the view through the window properly exposed, then combining the two.

That’s fair enough me ol’ mucker. There’s nothing worse than interior shots with over exposed windows, equally nothing worse than reflected flash from those blinged out bathrooms. 😉

http://www.digitalrev.com/product/canon-kiss-x4-eos-550d/OTgxNw_A_A

Not sure what the best ultra wide for cheap is, maybe try and get a second hand tokina 11-16 2.8 or Sigma 10-20mm

Both of these together would be a fair bit over budget but the 550d has a very good HD video mode, and a wide angle is good for action video stuff to IMO.

Sony A33/A55 (Image stabilisation is in the body and will take old Minolta lenses)

Whatever you get, make sure you can manually set white balance and learn how to do it – essential when shooting interior property shots with a variety of lighting.

Or just shoot RAW and sort it out afterwards. New Lightroom can do selective WB using brushes etc too I think.

Dont forget the 1.6x crop sensor will make a 20mm lens theoretically 32mm
Personally id buy a used canon 20D with low shutter count for <£150 or if you want really wide a used 5D with a FF sensor.

Have recently bought a D5100. The camera itself is ace but it’s crippled by the std kit lens which is like fitting RS Darts on a carbon V10

Try and buy a decent body and budget for a couple of lenses

That’s fair enough me ol’ mucker. There’s nothing worse than interior shots with over exposed windows, equally nothing worse than reflected flash from those blinged out bathrooms.

I do live in fear of being accused of photoshopping the views though.

There was once (still is, hence nameless!) another chalet operator whose brochure showed lots of different chalets with beautiful views through every window. The same view. Through every window. In every chalet. 😉

Had my NIkon D40 for years now, and don’t see any reason to upgrade. Its brilliant. However, I agree, the main cost will be getting a decent wide-angle lens as mine came with the stock 18-55mm.

Don’t think they make the D40 anymore but you could look for a 2nd hand one.

Or just shoot RAW and sort it out afterwards.

I find that no amount of repairing of an image can beat a correctly-taken shot in the first place. The more you understand about how your camera actually works, the better IMO.

Side note, but this just got me thinking – when doing the 2 exposures thing to get the room/windows properly exposed, I often find the trickiest bit is getting the window frame looking decent. It tends to be over-exposed in one shot and under-exposed in the other – never just right.

Would a wee bit of fill-in flash on the shot correctly exposing the window be a good way to sort this?

I find that no amount of repairing of an image can beat a correctly-taken shot in the first place.

‘If you shoot in RAW, white balance will not affect you at the time the exposure is made. White balance corrections are normally applied by the camera in post-processing of the image, before it is saved to the card as a JPEG file.

By shooting RAW, you avoid this processing as the image saved on the card is exactly as captured by the CMOS sensor. It is then up to you to adjust the white balance in your RAW file editing program.’

http://cpn.canon-europe.com/content/education/infobank/white_balance/white_balance.do

The more you understand about how your camera actually works, the better IMO. 😉

Steveomcd have you tried HDR? You can make it look quite realistic it doesn’t have to involve weird CGI looking stuff with gaudy colours. CS4 has a HDR function that can do quite normal looking stuff.

grum – you’ve lost me! HDR?

OK, just looked that up! Yes, I looked into that a while back and was planning on trying it the next time I do an interior photo-shoot. Looks interesting, and is basically what I’m currently doing by hand.

I now only have Photoshop Elements though, not sure if the facility exists there, need to check it out.

Yeah essentially automated exposure blending. This guy apparently uses it a lot with nice results:

http://www.davidpalermo.com/sources/ipad/index.php#portfolios/4/3

I doubt Elements will do it though TBH.

The more you understand about how your camera actually works, the better IMO.

I don’t agree at all. By shooting RAW you are just assuming it will be okay when you get back to the computer and process the image and snap away because you can fix it later. By manually setting white balance on site you are going to be closer to the correct exposure than by pressing buttons on your computer later. Of course you can get the right white balance on site and STILL shoot in RAW format giving you more correct information to work with during processing. No?

But I am old school – I never knew what the results would be like until the prints came back from the chemist/when I processed them myself in the darkroom so I spent more time getting things right on site and I have the same mentality now.

Of course you can get the right white balance on site and STILL shoot in RAW format giving you more correct information to work with during processing. No?

Pretty sure there would be no point, as if you shoot in RAW it doesn’t save camera settings like WB, it’s purely just the raw data from the camera sensor. What you could do is shoot a picture of an 18% grey card, then in post use the WB dropper to set that as your grey reference, and apply that to all the shots taken under the same lighting.

I’ve never looked back since I started shooting RAW. As grum says, RAW doesn’t save white balance in any way, and by using a grey card you can get it pretty much 100% perfect, if you want to put that level of effort into it. But shooting jpeg you’re limited to a handful of options which don’t always turn out that great even when you think you have them set right.

And that’s before you set all the jpeg settings in the camera. The resultas are so much better when you can do that after the picture has been taken, I find.

It’s a preference thing really, but I’d urge anyone to give it a try.

How can there be a ‘perfect’ white balance? Surely you adjust it to get the effect you want?

HDR would be useful, bounce flash would be essential.

Try Sony. If you want a wide angle lens you could use legacy lenses, and Sony have good support (as do others of course).

If the OP is in the business of selling property I bet automatic HDR is going to save a lot of time on photoshop.

Molgrips:

How can there be a ‘perfect’ white balance? Surely you adjust it to get the effect you want?

The grey card method grum mentions above will always give you an accurate white balance, with correct colour tones and no unsightly casts. Thus near enough perfect. If you want colour casts, or innacurate tones, then fair do’s, it might look great, but I’m refering to the way they would be seen with the human eye in their natural context.

Pretty sure there would be no point, as if you shoot in RAW it doesn’t save camera settings like WB, it’s purely just the raw data from the camera sensor. What you could do is shoot a picture of an 18% grey card, then in post use the WB dropper to set that as your grey reference, and apply that to all the shots taken under the same lighting.

I might have to try that then sometime. As I said, I am old-school so have old habits.

EDIT: But how does that adjust for different lighting types? Ie, tungsten, LED, halogen etc. Surely that just measures the exposure level? Or am I being utterly thick?

You can get different light colours in the same scene……daylight coming through a window will be a different colour to the lamp that’s on in the corner of the room…..

I think (and I am by NO means an expert, so am probably wrong) that using a grey card will only give you the ‘correct’ white balance for the light falling on the card. For example, if the white card is placed with daylight from a window shining on it, but there is a lamp in the corner of the room that doesn’t reach that far, then it won’t have much/any influence on the white balance result, so will probably look very orange in the ‘corrected’ image.
My SB-700 came with an orange & a green clip on filter to correct it to incandescent & fluorescent lighting. Newer bodies will even detect this filter has been fitted & adjust the white balance accordingly. On my D80 this has to be done manually.

At the end of the day, white balance is largely subjective. You might take a pic of a room that looks quite cold/blue and comparing it to the actual room it might be spot-on accurate.
But, you might actually want a nice warming appeal to the room, so you would perhaps shift the white balance to give it a bit of a warmer glow…..or exaggerate the clinical nature of a laboratory or hospital by making it colder and more stark.

Regarding HDR & Elements – I don’t think Elements specifically has an HDR function.
I recently looked at the latest Paintshop Pro though, which does and is pretty cheap for a fairly comprehensive package.

Ideally I want to get CS5 and am currently looking at doing a local college evening photo course, so I can get it at educational cost…

If you want colour casts, or innacurate tones, then fair do’s, it might look great

At the end of the day, white balance is largely subjective

That is what I am saying innit. If I take a picture of an indoor scene I might make it look warm and cosy as I remember it, to give a bit of how I felt.

If I am using a flash I often try and bounce it of something reddy or browny, like curtains, if they are available.

At the end of the day, white balance is largely subjective

I worked as a photographer back in the days of film and within our establishment we did all our own developing and printing as well and I can confirm it’s a very subjective judgement. You’d never get all 5 photographers agreeing and even the section head who was colour blind had his own strongly held views on the subject.

There was once (still is, hence nameless!) another chalet operator whose brochure showed lots of different chalets with beautiful views through every window. The same view. Through every window. In every chalet

That’s just classy, I love it. 😆

Side note, but this just got me thinking – when doing the 2 exposures thing to get the room/windows properly exposed, I often find the trickiest bit is getting the window frame looking decent. It tends to be over-exposed in one shot and under-exposed in the other – never just right.

Would a wee bit of fill-in flash on the shot correctly exposing the window be a good way to sort this?
Using a fill in flash is likely to give you other problems as the natural light from the windows will not look the same as the flash light, it might produce un-natural shadows and of course the reflected flashlight off bliny things.
Have a look through this for some ideas.
http://www.all-things-photography.com/introduction-to-property-photography.html

Digging this up from the depths, but was doing a bit of googling and discovered there is a High Dynamic Range function in PhotoShop Elements. Works pretty well. It’s called “photomerge”. Info here:

Photography website