Hey all! I'm a beginner in pet photography and I'm looking to upgrade from my point and shoot Nikon S60 to a DSLR (preferably Nikon). I was wondering if anybody could give me some advice on which camera to purchase. My budget is around $600-ish. I usually shoot using natural light but I do sometimes shoot indoors. I'm looking to get some good action shots of dogs playing and running, etc., so from my research, I gather that a decent FPS would be necessary, right? Shutter lag would be inexcusable. Because of this, I'm more of a person to take a million shots and go through them later to discard, edit, etc.

Any tips or advice that you guys have would be useful! Thanks =)

Nick,

I'm a great believer that the best camera for any photography is the one you have with you.

If you want to upgrade a Nikon D3100 is in your price range. Eventually you'll want either one of their F1.8 primes; either the 35 or 50. I prefer the 50 because the closer I get the more I get licked.

I took these with an old 4-Meg Minota DiMage S404.





The D90 didn't do a bad job with these.





Outdoors I use the 55-200. Not a bad lens for the money.

I think the new V1 would be one heckuva camera for you. It seems to have the speed thing down and may be a sleeper video cam (V1, Video 1, get it?). But it comes at a steep price.

Best advice I can give you is get down to their level and be prepared to take a lickin'.

Here's a nice article in DPreview. It's not quite the way I shoot, but it works very well for this fellow and I did learn from it.

http://www.dpreview.com/articles/7011163510/how-to-shoot-creative-canine-photographs-composition-and-dog-behavior

Have a great day!

Rick

Visit my Nikonians gallery.

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Hi Rick! Thanks a lot for your reply! Thanks also for the advice on lenses. That's a whole new monster that I haven't even looked into yet! There's just so much to learn =)

I absolutely love your pictures! You do a very nice job, and I agree with you about the licking, haha! Thanks a lot for the link also - I'm going to read the article tonight, it looks VERY interesting!

So before reading your post I was considering either the D5000 and the D3100, because they're both in my price range... but they have different specs, as seen below. I've added the V1, as you suggested, to the specs list.

D5000:
MP: 12.3million
Sensor size: 23.6x15.8mm
FPS: 4
ISO sensitivity: ISO 200 - 3200, Lo-1 (ISO 100), Hi-1 (ISO 6400)

D3100:
MP: 14.2million
Sensor size: 23.1x15.4mm
FPS: 3
ISO sensitivity: ISO 100 - 3200, Hi-1 (ISO 6400), Hi-2 (ISO 12,800)

V1:
MP: 10.1million
Sensor size: 13.2mmx8.8mm
FPS: 5 - 10, 30 or 60 fps using Electronic (Hi) shutter
ISO sensitivity: 100-3200, 6400

I'm not sure what other specs I should be looking at but these are the ones I understand. Keeping in mind that I will be doing indoor shooting and capturing action shots, you don't think I'll need ISO 12,800? Is the difference between FPS 3, 4, and the V1's super high FPS a major one? Should I sacrifice the MPs for the FPS?

Thanks so much!

Don't let the specs blind you into buying a camera that is not right for you.

In the end, the camera that feels right in your hands and does what you want it to do is ultimate decider. For example. I'm on my second D90 right now. One broke, I had the opportunity to buy a D7000 or D300, but I really liked what the D90 could do. Sure there are faster ISOs now, and there are a few more pixels but I couldn't see what that little bit more could do for that lots more money. With the intro of the D7000, D90s could be found for half that price.

If you'd like to see some lower-light/indoor photos for the D90, I posted some on another thread in this forum, to Mom who is wondering about a D7000 or D700 upgrade.

Off hand I'd say look at that D3100. It's quite a lightweight piece of kit and the money you'll save will let you buy an extra DX lens. It seems like Nikon is trying to build a stable of affordable consumer DX lenses. Once you have your lenses, then you can upgrade. Remember, lenses last longer than camera tech. (I'm a geezer and have learned to skip a generation or two for electronics tech. Just call me on my "Wall-Street: Money Never Sleeps" cell phone brick and you'll find out.)

I bought my daughter-in-law a D-3100 with the 18-55, and the 55-200 was on special, so I got that for her, too. Just a couple of months ago I sent along the new 50mm f1.8, and she's very happy with it. You can shoot just about anything with that combination. My biggest beef with the camera is not having aperture/shutter/ISO all available without diving into the menu.

The V-1 is an entirely different animal. I think it's for those X-game kids shooting action sports, soccer moms and coaches. The speed of the focus on the video I've seen is remarkable. I've heard from testers that the focus speed for stills is pretty awesome, too.

One more thing, kinda half kidding here. That smaller sensor will give you better depth of field, which is a good thing when shooting dog faces -- unless you have a French Bulldog, which doesn't have a nose and you don't have the nose/eye DOF problem.

Get thee to a bricks and mortar camera store. Avoid a big box and see if you can find a serious camera shop in your area. There are still some around. You'll get good advice and you'll get a much better handle on what you'd prefer.

Rick

Visit my Nikonians gallery.

Rick, thanks again for your awesome advice. I was leaning toward the D3100, and with your advice I'm leaning much more! I'll definitely look at those lenses that you recommended, too. I didn't think about the DOF issue with dog faces, ha! Good point! Unfortunately I don't have a bulldog so that would certainly be an issue!

I had plans to go to Best Buy to look at the cameras there so that I could really make my decision, but I will try to find a smaller camera shop instead. Either way, I definitely agree that it's better to have a hands-on experience.

Thanks once again for all of your great advice, I really appreciate it! I'll keep you posted on what I end up doing =)

There a plethora of ways to "cope" with a camera that has a lower FPS rating. The most over-looked technique is just "plain old experience" as an experienced pet photographer be sure to capitalize on your being able to anticipate the action. The "instant" shutter release, fast focusing and exposure determination of the DSLR will do much of the rest and be much more efficient at the task over a P&S.

Secondly a camera with the ability to continuous autofocus can also make your action-life a lot easier. This is the ability for the lens/camera to track a moving subject and continuously refocus on that subject - Nikon DSLRs do that quite well. If you combine continuous autofocus with panning (moving the camera with the subject) and maybe throw in a titch of strobe, you can do wonders.

The Nikon D3100 is a very respectable camera, my daughter uses a D5000 with great productivity. Either of these cameras bring a lot of features and capability to the challenge. The suggestion of the new 50mm f/1.8 AFS would be a good match for this kind of work on a DX camera and would nicely complement the kit lens that comes with the camera. You are likely to find that the kit zoom lens works very well outdoors for this task. The 50mm f/1.8 would also be a good choice for outdoors, but may not be quite long enough unless you can corral or confine your subjects to an exercise area. However, it's speed and bright field of view would be great assets for indoor photography.

Best Regards,
Roger

Hi Roger! I do the glue-my-eye-onto-the-subject with my P&S now, with my finger halfway down, and it seems to work quite well, but my camera just doesn't produce very good results. Like you said, I imagine that the P&S cameras don't autofocus very well. Maybe that's the issue I'm having now... I hope that the DSLR will compliment my technique and allow me to produce some nice pictures =)

Thanks for the suggestion on the lens! A few people have mentioned that one to me as well so I will definitely purchase it at the same time that I purchase the camera. I generally shoot pets on leashes so it's easy to corral them =) What I was really worried about was the indoor shots, but if just the addition of that lens will do the trick, then that's good enough for me!

Thank you for your advice =)

Until you really have the feel of your new DSLR under your belt, it might be wise to just start with the kit lens (I'm assuming that you will buy the lens that is often boxed with the camera in a kit, with your camera.) The kit lenses are a general purpose lens and work extremely well for such an inexpensive addition to the camera body. You will find that they are very good outdoors and often require the use of the on-board flash when moving indoors - at least at first. After using the kit lens for a while you will be better able to make your next lens choice. You can look back at the images you have taken over time and see which focal length lens best suits your typical shooting details, subject distance and general shooting location/venue. The 50mm is a reasonable focal length indoors, but it will likely be too short outdoors unless you have your subjects confined to a "run". Another thing that makes the 50mm desirable indoors is it's fast aperture (i.e. f/1.8). However, keeping a moving subject focused when the lens is set to f/1.8 can be very trying. A solution is to stop the lens down, and then you are often back to using flash and not that far off what you can accomplish with the kit lens.

This might be a time to proceed with some caution and do a lot of testing before the next move. If you have secondary uses for the 50mm then just ignore what I said . I use my 50mm f/1.4 AFD lens on my DX sensor camera (your D3100 would be a DX sensor camera) very effectively as a portrait lens for people. It makes a nice head and shoulders images from very reasonable indoor shooting distances.

Best Regards,
Roger

As it turns out, any of the Nikon DSLRs will do a great job on this, if equipped with suitable lenses. The higher spec models will get you a few more shots, and possibly a few more that are better. But you can get lots of great shots with the least of the DSLRs, even the old D100 or D40. All of them can run at least 2.5 fps and usually 3+ fps. All of them have shutter lag so low that a P&S user would say that there isn't any. They do have shutter lag, even the D3s. And if you are using a D3 and a slower model back to back, you can tell that the slower ones are in fact slower - I discovered that one day shooting an auto race with a D3 and a D100. But you're likely to never notice the lag on a D3100 without such a comparison. The D3100 is quicker than my ancient D100, too. For comparison, a D3s has lag of about 40ms, a D3100 has lag of a little over 100ms, and a Nikon S60 has a lag of about 300ms.

When you're shooting indoors, I'd advise learning to use some bounce flash. Used properly, that typically allows you vastly more flexibility in shooting, yet only the advanced flash photographers are likely to notice that you used flash (and perhaps not even then). Used in the "obvious" way - with the head pointed directly at the subject - everyone instantly can see that flash was used.

As for lenses, you'll want something fairly long - at least 200mm and maybe 300mm. Dogs cover a lot of ground quickly, and you won't want to be huffing and puffing around to keep them big enough in the frame. I also find that indoors, you still want to be a a fair distance from them, for two reasons. Good options are the 55-200VR, 55-300VR and 70-300VR, about $200, $400 and $600, respectively. First, if you get too close, you get puppy nose prints on your lens (or filter - this is definitely one time I use a protective filter). Second, staying further from them helps keep them somewhat less excitable and more relaxed. If you end up with a lens that doesn't focus closely enough to get in close - and none of my regular lenses really do that - a quick and inexpensive solution is a weak screw-on closeup lens. My 70-200/f2.8 doesn't really get close enough for full-frame portraits of pets (nor does my 55-200VR), so I turn to my 200/f4 Micro-Nikkor, but most folks don't have that option.

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Brian... a bicoastal Nikonian and Team Member

My gallery is online. Comments and critique welcomed any time!

Hi Brian! Thanks for commenting on the shutter lag. That was a big issue for me. I was worried about that, and I couldn't for the life of me find the shutter lag rating for my S60! Like you said, going from 300ms to 100ms should be a major improvement. =)

Someone also suggested the 55-200VR lens along with the 50mm f/1.8. That f/stop ratings should I look for on the 200mm or 300mm lenses? The lowest I can afford? Those are good points about the distances from pets - puppy prints on the lens would be bad! Ha ha! For closeups, an 18-55mm comes with the camera - that would probably work right?

Yeah, shutter lag is a real problem on most P&S. It's rarely even a comment for a DSLR. I have to say that I was pretty surprised the day I found that I could tell the difference between the D3 and D100, although looking at the numbers a 2.5x difference means that it's not so surprising. In fact, the difference is almost as big as the difference between the S60 and the D100, which is quite a big difference.

The 55-200VR is an f/4-5.6 lens, not a fast lens by any definition. The 55-300VR is the same. Your $600 budget won't permit a lot of flexibility. A 300/f4 (ie one stop faster) is about $1500. The 180/f2.8 AFD is $700 and it won't even AF on your D3100. And the 70-200/f2.8 AFS VR is $2400. So really, the 55-200 and 55-300 are the only ones in your price range.

I'd advise looking for a D3100 with the 18-55VR and 55-200VR as a bundle. You save about $100 that way. The 50/f1.8 is a terrific lens, and it's a great value - but at $150, it's a quarter of your budget. Right now the D3100 is on sale for around $550, and the 55-200VR is another $250 - so even there you're probably over your budget by a good margin. I would strongly resist the temptation to economize and get the 55-200 non-VR. It only saves $80, not enough to get to your budget, and don't forget that you still need at least an SD card and very possibly a SD card reader.

In order to make your budget, I think you'll really have to go for used equipment. I'd start with a D3000, such as this, about $300. Then the two lenses can be had like this ($120) and this ($150). That will get you in at about $600 after shipping, and provide a good base from which to work.

Even at this you're short an SD card ($25), and you would be advised for this application to get a couple of clear protective filters to use with the lens hoods. I don't normally use them or recommend them, but this is definitely a circumstance where I do and I do. The least expensive quality ones I know of are here. You need the multi-coated ones. (Even if you don't get these, get multi-coated ones.) I've suggested vendors and products that I personally have used reliably, but there are surely others. (I am one of "the usual suspects" at keh.com, I'm afraid.)

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Brian... a bicoastal Nikonian and Team Member

My gallery is online. Comments and critique welcomed any time!

I ended up getting exactly what you said - a D3100 bundle with the 55-200mm VR lens. I bought it brand new from Best Buy - they had a deal where the camera and the lenses were both $100 off - so the camera was $550, and the lens was $150. After buying a memory card and a nice camera bag, I was around $800. For such an awesome camera, I don't feel that I'm too far over my budget. =)

I'm going to look into a 50 f/1.8 or 50 f/1.4 for the future. Maybe I'll ask for it for Christmas from my hubby =)

Thanks everybody for all of your comments and help! I really, really appreciate it. I'm a new member here and I will definitely frequent these forums for any help that I need!

Get the 50mm 1.8. You can't go wrong. I took this using that lens just a couple days ago. Finally got the little guy to sit still for 1/320 second.

Visit my Nikonians gallery.

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Great pic! I got a D3100 with the 18-55mm lens about a month ago. I'm trying to decide what lens I should look at next. I'm considering a couple of telephotos - the 55-200VR and 55-300VR, and a couple of primes - the 50mm f1.8 and 35mm f1.8 I haven't decided on anything yet - I'm still playing with the camera and trying to figure out what I plan to do with it. I like the prime due to the large aperture and speed of them compared with the telephotos - we have 2 cats and 1 dog, so I'd be using the camera a lot inside the house. My wife also does running and triathlons, so I'd be using it for that, but I am not 100% sure if the 18-55 f3.5-5.6 lens would be sufficient for those.

Any thoughts? With Christmas coming, I may be able to squeeze a new lens unit in!

oxhoward, what a great pic! I'm thinking of getting the 50mm f/1.8, or possibly the f/1.4. bwgreen, I have the 18-55mm kit lens and a 55-200mm VR lens and the pictures that I shoot indoors or my dogs aren't the best I've ever seen. They're obviously better than my P&S but they do have a bit of fuzz to them. This is why I'm seriously considering the 50mm f/1.4 or f/1.8. oxhoward, how is the 50mm lens in low lighting? Do you have any pictures that you could show us where you photographed pets indoors? It would be greatly appreciated =)

The 55-200 and especially 18-55 aren't soft ("fuzzy") lenses. My advice is to work with your current lenses a bit more. The 18-55 is a very sharp lens, actually. I'm away from home so can't do some samples, but I'll do that this weekend.

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Brian... a bicoastal Nikonian and Team Member

My gallery is online. Comments and critique welcomed any time!

blw, thanks for your input. I definitely have worked with my lenses quite a bit. I just don't have a lot of light in some areas in my home and the dogs move sharply and quickly, so they're hard to capture in a crisp image. I'm not sure how else to improve the situation with these lenses aside from purchasing a better flash. Do you have any tips?

I've ordered the 35mm F/1.8 - I should get it tonight! Hopefully sometime in the next few weeks I'll have something worth posting using the new lens!

Thanks for the input and advice!

The first thing I'd suggest is turning up ISO. It also depends on just what kind of light you're in.

More hardware is always a possibility, but my experience has been that people often give up far too easily, especially beginners. I can't tell you how many times I read that thing X is impossible - but I know that people have exactly thing X with even less equipment. I'm not immune. When I first came to Nikonians I had just tried to shoot some ducks and I thought that it must have been impossible to get them in flight, and my post said more or less that. Some people told me that I needed a 70-200/f2.8 ($1400 at the time, this coming right after we'd plunked down about $2700 for a D100 and lenses). Fortunately other people explained how I could do better with my current equipment. I remember that experience vividly - it was my introduction to Nikonians.

And now I remember that we had to squeeze your existing hardware into a pretty limited budget, so I'm hypersensitive to telling you to go spend more money before we've exhausted other avenues.

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Brian... a bicoastal Nikonian and Team Member

My gallery is online. Comments and critique welcomed any time!

Here's what's possible.


D100, 55-200 AFS VR @ 116mm, 1/60th, f/4.8, ISO 200 - flash, bounced off wall to camera right.

On the other hand, consider this:


D100, 55-200 AFS VR @ 145mm, 1/20th, f/5.3, ISO 1600, hand-held with VR. This one isn't nearly as crisp, largely because Pi (the subject) moved a tad in the 1/20th of the shutter. Note ISO 1600, and also that this was shot on a D100, whose noise performance is far worse than any current model. (The D100 was discontinued in 2004, essentially "forever ago" by technology standards.)

In essentially the same conditions (plus a couple of Pi-treats), here is the 50/f1.8 AFD:


D100, 50/f1.8 AFD, 1/125th, f/1.8, ISO 800, hand-held, no flash, no VR. First, it appears that I missed the mark on the AF target by a very small amount. That's pretty easy to do on the D100 as its AF targets are very large, and Pi in this case was a bit squirmy. (Yes, that's Pi as in the statement "Pi is an irrational number.") As a result of the AF miss - which is visible here but not easy to see on the camera LCD - the left eye isn't tack sharp, while the first just a bit above that is pretty sharp. Note also that the nose is way out of focus, and would have been even with the quarter-inch of missed focus correct. The f/1.8 aperture has rendered his bell out of focus. Compare with the bell in the 55-200 shot #1. The conventional wisdom is to shoot portraits with the widest possible aperture, for the thinnest possible depth of field. And sometimes that works, but I think that in this case, a bit more than minimum DOF is best. This was shot as a demonstration, but my preference would be to shoot at around f/4 or f/5.6 and arrange for the light to suit. There is a pretty big difference in apparent sharpness between #3 and #1. Even though #3 was shot at 1/125th, easily within the normal range for hand-holding, #1 is pretty obviously much sharper - mostly due to the fact that the flash is lighting the subject and is probably quenched after about 1/4000th in this environment. Again, note that this was shot at ISO 800, pretty high for this camera, even though we were at f/1.8. And there was a fair bit of indirect sunshine in the middle of the afternoon - the light gets a lot dimmer than this. If I were doing this for real I'd go shoot it again, but in this case Pi has headed for the hills, or at least a nice warm computer upon which to curl up...

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It's also worth pointing out some other differences here. The f/1.8 lens is often a purchase because of the bokeh - or the ability to blur the background. But compare #3, at f/1.8, with #2, which is at f/5.3, which is not the conventional idea of "lifts and separates subject from background" - but there it is, almost exactly the same background as #3. It is not rendered as clutter, and if anything #2 is probably rendered slightly "smoother" than #3, although they are both nice.

Finally, compare #2 and #1, which are from the same lens and at fairly similar apertures and focal lengths. Yet the backgrounds are quite different. #1 is due to having some interesting proportion of the light provided by the flash. The flash isn't trying to light the background, and in fact does not - which is why it's pretty dark, even though the shooting environment is identical to #2. (They were shot about a minute apart.) #2, by contrast, is exposed for the ambient light, which is roughly equal between subject and background, and in fact they are so rendered. Both are valid artistic choices.

The colors are also quite different, largely due to the relatively inaccurate auto white balance of the D100, and the fact that #1 was shot with flash. (And I was too lazy to go correct the white balance in post.) These two lenses render colors in about the same way.

I'm guessing that most readers would definitely not have guessed the 55-200 to yield the visibly sharper result, nor would many have expected the background rendering similarity between #3 and #2.

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Brian... a bicoastal Nikonian and Team Member

My gallery is online. Comments and critique welcomed any time!

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By the way... the flash unit was an SB-600. It was near maximum power for #3, a consequence of the bounce flash. I seriously doubt that an SB-400 could do this shot the way I did. To light the subject I couldn't do bounce, I'd have to do direct flash - and then there would be harsh flash shadows. With the bounce, I doubt that anyone would have guessed that flash was in use except for those who could recognize the combination of dual catchlights and a notably dark background.

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Brian... a bicoastal Nikonian and Team Member

My gallery is online. Comments and critique welcomed any time!