Choosing The Right Gear

Right, so once the decision to buy a decent camera was made things got complicated. I mean, there are hundreds of DSLRs available, and finding anything definitive about the relative merits of each was a nightmare.

Ahh, but “what about asking the ‘togs you work with at CackBlabbath ?” you may ask. Well therein lies a problem, namely that those guys are seriously talented photographers who could get decent results with pretty much any camera. Well, that and they use some seriously top end kit. Anyway the Nikon users are zealous about their Nikons, and the Canon guys are just as evangelical about their Canons.

The first decision I had to make was the budget. DSLRs range from £300 to £lots, not including the lenses. And it’s the lenses, more than the camera body, that dictates the quality of the final output. As I was intending getting serious about photography I wanted to get something decent.

But seriously, good lenses are stupidly f’kin expensive.

Right, so first let’s look at my criteria…

1) Good low light performance : One of the main uses for the camera will be taking photos at gigs. This means low noise at high ISO is a must, as is high sensitivity.

2)Weather Protected : Outdoor gigs can be wet, and muddy. Some degree of waterproof-ness is required.

3)Movie Mode : I shoot videos at gigs which get published on the CackBlabbath YouTube page. The different Fiji Finepix cameras I have had have all managed this pretty well.

4)External Mic Input : So I can video record band interviews with better sound quality than the on-camera mic can typically manage.

5)Low Shutter Lag : I was pretty pissed off missing photos because the camera took a second to think about things after I pressed the shutter.

6)Be from a Camera manufacturer : By that I mean a company with camera pedigree, as opposed to an electronics company who also make cameras.

A Google search turned up the really rather excellent snapsort.com, a site which has loads of camera comparisons. Needing somewhere to start I decided that the baseline would be the Nikon D7000. A great SLR that came highly recommended.

Looking at the specification it ticked all the boxes, but it was at the absolute top end of what I was prepared to pay while the next one down the range, the D5100 didn’t offer all the features I wanted.

So, that was the starting point. The first comparison to the equivalent Canon, the EOS 60D. And that’s another thing, comparisons between different manufacturers camera ranges, and even models from the same manufacturers range, is a bit tricky.

The EOS60D gets mixed reviews. On the Snapsort comparison it is comprehensively beaten by the D7000. OK it’s a bit cheaper but the image quality, dynamic range and sensitivity are all inferior. There are a number of sites which compare these two, and they pretty much all come down on the side of the Nikon.

Oh, and the the Canon isn’t weather protected either, but it does have a flip out LCD though, YAY !!!!

There is a third contender though, one that I first read about in a three way comparison with the Nikon and Canon. The Pentax K5 got some cracking reviews and, like the D7000, ticked all of the requisite boxes.

The first thing you notice looking at photos of the Pentax is that it, to me, looks more like a “traditional” SLR, not as curvey. The Snapsort comparison of the Pentax and the Nikon was much closer than with the Canon, with the Pentax scoring additional points with me for its image stabilisation and lower shutter lag (both of which could be useful considering a business idea I was working on).

It was a good bit cheaper too.

So the competition had come down to the Nikon D7000 Vs the Pentax K5. Now this is not a decision you can make based on internet reviews, you have to get hands-on with the gear and see what feels right to you. Jessops in Manchester had both in stock so I drove across to have a play with them.

Hands on there was no comparison, in the end it was that easy. The Nikon just didn’t feel right whereas the Pentax felt much better and seemed more balanced and the controls seemed a bit more intelligently laid out.

It was weird after weeks of Internet comparisons that it only took about 10 minutes to make my mind up once I got my hands on both cameras. I bought the Pentax in a kit with two lenses, one was an 18-55mm and the other was a 50-200mm. Given the investment in the camera I also bought a LowePro camera backpack to keep it in. The Fastpack 200, if you’re interested.

When I bought the camera I also wanted to get a battery grip as I never like being reliant on a bespoke rechargeable battery as power to charge it up isn’t easy to find in the middle of a field. The battery grip lets you use 6 AA batteries to power the camera.

Rather than the £200 official one I got a Meike knock-off copy on eBay for £38. Although it’s not made anything like as well as the Pentax one (which has a metal chassis and is weatherproof) I can live with that fact given the much lower price. It certainly doesn’t look too out of place fitted to the camera.

Well, it looks fine to me