After seeing the beautiful flower pictures, which brands of digital SLR cameras are you guys using ?

waydeo

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I want some ideas . I love seeing the flower pictures on here and wanted some ideas for a digital SLR style camera and lenses or does everyone use their phone camera ? My wife can make pictures from a Kodak 110 instamatic camera look good (if you know what that is ,it means you're an old Geezer like me ). Myself I need help from digital electronic equipment.
 
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Mellow Mullet

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I used to have a Kodak instamatic, I miss those days, things were much simpler. For my pictures, I use a Sony SLR, it is the Alpha body and I have had it for 10 years now. Regular 33 - 85 lens and a Macro lens that I play around with. I like Sony products and if you have a old lMinolta camera, the lenses will work.

John
 
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As a photographer who works for uncle Sam with access to the highest quality gear around, as long as you have a newish cell phone, maybe S10 and or iphone, maybe 2020+, I think you'll be just fine with that. Focus on your ambient lighting, time of day, background, and even set your phone to shoot in HDR...if at that point you're not getting great results and want an SLR I'd buy one used. Camera gear, like so many electronics always get phased out year after year. Hell, a nikon D700 in great shape might even be overkill for you, but I thought it was awesome years ago. A good photographer should be able to make beautiful photos with any camera that lands in their hands. It's applying the technique and artistic eye that makes the magic.
 
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As a photographer who works for uncle Sam with access to the highest quality gear around, as long as you have a newish cell phone, maybe S10 and or iphone, maybe 2020+, I think you'll be just fine with that. Focus on your ambient lighting, time of day, background, and even set your phone to shoot in HDR...if at that point you're not getting great results and want an SLR I'd buy one used. Camera gear, like so many electronics always get phased out year after year. Hell, a nikon D700 in great shape might even be overkill for you, but I thought it was awesome years ago. A good photographer should be able to make beautiful photos with any camera that lands in their hands. It's applying the technique and artistic eye that makes the magic.
Additionally, phones have special lenses you can buy, but I've never delved into that world..
 

Deep Sea Diver

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I just use my iPhone for flower photos. That said I also use the edit function at times.

Yet timing, ficus and framing are 95 of any short.

Underwater… that’s while different story!

Cheers
DSD sends
 

LuZiKui

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I use my phone as well. Mainly just laziness and not wanting to have to download pictures to my computer to post them.

If you do end up going down the DSLR road I'll second the recommendation to buy used. My first DSLR was a Canon so I've stayed with them. You can't go wrong with any of the Canon Rebel T series of cameras (T8 is the newest but any of the others will do the trick t7/t6/t5 etc.) The key with DSLRs (much like SLRs) are the lenses. Save money on the body and invest in nicer lenses which will make a bigger impact on the quality of your pictures.

And like anything else in life, the key is to pick a camera brand and be a dick about it!
 

Paradox

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I use my phone too.
It's amazing how good the cameras are on them now and I always have it with me.
 

Carol 83

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I use my phone as well and it's not even a great one.
 

Dragon60

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A few years back I got a 16 year old Nikon Coolpix S7c off of ebay for 11 bucks and a little shipping. It uses a micro sd card (with adapter sleeve) that I can put in one of my tablets to edit and save. Most of my pics have been from this camera. I've moved a couple times and lost track of it both times and had to use either my phone or tablet but they don't seem to be as sharp or clear as the Nikon. Fortunately I recently found it again!
 

Lorax7

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Pretty much any picture of a tree that I’ve ever posted on BNut was taken with my iPhone’s camera. It’s just a matter of convenience and that my tree photos tend more toward “photo as documentation” than “photo as art”. The phone is always in my pocket and there are no additional steps between taking a photo and uploading it to the web.

I have a Canon DSLR as well as an old 35 mm Minolta SLR film camera, but I don’t tend to use them for snapshots. The DSLR gets used when I’m focused on taking really high quality, artistic photos, especially if I want lots of bokeh. The old 35 mm camera only gets used when I’m looking to take gritty lo-fi artsy shots where film grain is a feature, often on some sort of wacky film stock (Redbird, Lomochrome, etc.) that does funky things to the color palette. Even with the “good” cameras, I’ve never bothered to invest in any high-end glass. The lenses that I have are basic kit lenses. It turns out that’s enough to take your photography surprisingly far. I don’t have a need for a bunch of fast f/1.4, f/1.8, or f/2.8 primes, telephotos, macros, etc. at this point in my life.

If I was going to go on a vacation to Yellowstone or something, sure, I’d want to invest in better glass for wildlife photos and wide angle panoramic views. For bonsai, it’s just not necessary. Anytime I want to take my bonsai photography to the next level, all I need to do is buy a proper backdrop and get over my own laziness enough to drag the DSLR out of its case, set up the tripod, slap on the telephoto lens and set it to around 70 to 100 mm focal length, and I’ll get photos that are orders of magnitude better than the bonsai photos I’m taking now.
 

laufman

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As a photographer who works for uncle Sam with access to the highest quality gear around, as long as you have a newish cell phone, maybe S10 and or iphone, maybe 2020+, I think you'll be just fine with that. Focus on your ambient lighting, time of day, background, and even set your phone to shoot in HDR...if at that point you're not getting great results and want an SLR I'd buy one used. Camera gear, like so many electronics always get phased out year after year. Hell, a nikon D700 in great shape might even be overkill for you, but I thought it was awesome years ago. A good photographer should be able to make beautiful photos with any camera that lands in their hands. It's applying the technique and artistic eye that makes the magic.
Dis...

As they say, the best camera, like the best beer, is the one in your hand.

@waydeo he quality of the photos you can get from the iPhone 11 onwards is amazing.

Having loved photography since I was old enough to hold an SLR, it is a passion of mine, and something I'm quite good at. I always used to carry my SLR, or high quality point and shoots with me. I don't need to anymore, and I rarely need to tweak / fix the colours etc from my phone anymore.

When I look to my camera gear, I have some top notch stuff. ie professional level glass. But honestly, things like "light" (as @We're all Mad Here...🎩 says, applying technique) and some post production - especially because I'd been taking photos in RAW format) have made more of a difference to the quality of my photography than anything else. Ok. The latter is a slightly different issue to photographing something like bonsai, because I'm playing around with the creative side. But equally if you get a top end camera and don't know how to use it (eg take a photo in RAW format), you might end up with a photo that looks dull and washed out, when some simple tweaks (clarity, contrast etc), can make it pop like it would have if you had taken it in .jpg format.
 

laufman

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Pretty much any picture of a tree that I’ve ever posted on BNut was taken with my iPhone’s camera. It’s just a matter of convenience and that my tree photos tend more toward “photo as documentation” than “photo as art”. The phone is always in my pocket and there are no additional steps between taking a photo and uploading it to the web.

I have a Canon DSLR as well as an old 35 mm Minolta SLR film camera, but I don’t tend to use them for snapshots. The DSLR gets used when I’m focused on taking really high quality, artistic photos, especially if I want lots of bokeh. The old 35 mm camera only gets used when I’m looking to take gritty lo-fi artsy shots where film grain is a feature, often on some sort of wacky film stock (Redbird, Lomochrome, etc.) that does funky things to the color palette. Even with the “good” cameras, I’ve never bothered to invest in any high-end glass. The lenses that I have are basic kit lenses. It turns out that’s enough to take your photography surprisingly far. I don’t have a need for a bunch of fast f/1.4, f/1.8, or f/2.8 primes, telephotos, macros, etc. at this point in my life.

If I was going to go on a vacation to Yellowstone or something, sure, I’d want to invest in better glass for wildlife photos and wide angle panoramic views. For bonsai, it’s just not necessary. Anytime I want to take my bonsai photography to the next level, all I need to do is buy a proper backdrop and get over my own laziness enough to drag the DSLR out of its case, set up the tripod, slap on the telephoto lens and set it to around 70 to 100 mm focal length, and I’ll get photos that are orders of magnitude better than the bonsai photos I’m taking now.
You don't even need a tripod these days...
 

Lorax7

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You don't even need a tripod these days...
It’s not so much a matter of needing it. But, since I have it and the bonsai are right in the back yard, it’s very low effort to use it. Setting up a proper backdrop is the real hurdle, effort-wise.
 

Katie0317

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I won't go into pro cameras, but the cameras on phones now are very good. The Iphone 13 cameras, (there are 3 I think) are amazing. Above and beyond any phone camera I've seen before. My husband has one and I'm still using an Iphone 10 and the difference is crazy. If you're close to getting a new phone try and get the Iphone13...just for the cameras.
 
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