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Hey all,i'm hoodedreeper aka chris,i'm 16 (17 in 2 days) and i just finished my AS exams at 6th Form. I've been into photography for awhile,but never took it any further. I photograph modified cars and models mainly,but i've been doing some landscape photos aswell.
I currently use a Fuji A405 digi cam,which produces some good quality photos (for a 2.1 megapixel camera). But i'm now looking at getting a Canon 350D.
Does anyone have this SLR camera already,or perhaps knows of past experience with it? I've been told its a good beginners camera,but i cant go too big because i'm only a student with limited funds.
thanks
I have the 350 as do many members...I am really enjoying it
at a quick thought here are of couple of good examples from the people who them Paul aka Sut68
and martinlhe uses the 300
also a good option for a lesser budget is the fuji 9500, some of my PF is with that camera 
hth
Angie x
Hi there Chris,
I know that you have enquired about the Canon 350D, but there is a cheap and, what I believe from my own experience, excellent way to learn more about photography.
Regardless of how you intend to capture your images in the future (ie digital or film) I think that getting hold of a cheap manual slr such as the Pentax K1000, Olympus OM10 etc etc is an excellent way forward. I bought my sister an OM10 for £28.
Yes - you will have to buy film anbd process it, but this is not that expensive especially if you buy on line, and critically, the cost is spread over time.
In my own opinion this is provides a good grounding in photography, although I know that some people argue that a camera such as the 350D would provide just as good if not better grounding. Anyway this is just my opinion based on my own experience.
Matt
I'd also suggest going the film route. Although superficially digital is arguably a better aid to learning, with a good manual film camera you'll really get to grips with the core concepts which underlie photography. If you are forced to manually focus and set your exposure with reference to a crude (by modern standards) metering system, you will get a much better feel for how things like depth-of-field really work and what makes a good exposure. With a digital camera, even with manual options, the temptation would be to let the camera take all the decisions - and this would teach you nothing.
A used manual film SLR and three good prime lenses (not zooms) would set you back around a third of the cost of a 350d and its cruddy kit lens. Remember, most of the people with dSLRs producing superb work on this site cut their photogrpahic teeth with film.
I would say stick with digital for a couple of reasons. Sorry Jools but I need to disagree, as someone who started on film, gave up, and even went back to the darkroom convinced he must be missing something.
1 The instant feedback. It helped me no end. I know you cannot spot truely sharp photo's but it can help you gauge and reflect on what you have done.
2 Levels. I never got to grips with many issues to do with exposure till I got to grips with levels. It just makes film camera metering so basic.
3 Cost. The number of times I have heard respected photographers say there is no substitute for practice. How many rolls of film till you spend more than digital. It costs more up front but you gain after that. Decent film and processing about £9 easily today. Add about a film per week and how much more does a dSLR cost?
4 Recording info. The EXIF data is stored for you. Now I know you can keep note books but having tried it, its hard to keep it all together without the task becoming a bore.
My advice, get a camera that as a minimum supports full manual use and aperture priority. Get at least one lens that allows easy manual focusing. And get out and play.
Hi Chris and welcome!!
Whichever route you go down - film or digital - an important part of learning is to carry out some careful experiments. Try changing the aperture and see how depth of field varies; try different shutter speeds with moving subjects to see how motion blur can ruin a picture .... but sometimes make for a great shot; test out just how long an exposure you can successfully hand-hold without introducing camera shake; understand how your exposure metering is affected by very light or very dark subjects, and so on.
By doing all this you will understand how to achieve the effects you want in your photos.
Some people use digital to follow the scatter-gun approach. "If I take enough pictures at different settings, one is bound to represent the best compromise in terms of camera shake, depth of field, exposure, etc". Better to think of it as providing the means of inexpensively following several well thought-out options - thought out on the basis of your earlier experiments. Don't forget there are always going to be situations where you only get one chance to fire off a shot, so you need to be able to react instinctively, getting it right first time.
So for what it's worth, I'd go for the digital SLR approach, but I'd only ever use the Manual / Aperture Priority / Shutter Priority settings, never the "totally automatic, I'll work it out for you and I'll make the tea as well" settings. While you're learning, you get so much faster feedback. You can take a couple of pics and check them out on the computer then try again until you get it right - all in the space of half an hour.
But if the others have persuaded you to buy a cheap film camera let me give you another piece of advice. Do at least your "exposure settings learning" on slide film. Slide film gives you the results you deserve. Print film doesn't do this. The processing lab machine makes up its own mind about what your pics should be like so you'll never quite know whether pics look wrong (or right!!) because of something the lab did or because of something you did. We've all shot snow scenes that came out muddy but was that because we loused up exposure or because the lab was determined to produce an image that averaged to mid grey? By the same token, if you experiment on digital, shoot RAW not jpegs so that you don't get the result the camera's post-processing software thought you should want!!
Good luck and ENJOY your photography.
John
I'm all for the digital route too, purely for it's instant feed back.
I started with minolta film SLRs and got frustrated shelling out for out of focus/ wrongly exposed pics whilst on the steep learning curve.
Unless you are meticulus about writing down the aperture/shutter speed settings of each shot then learning is slow. I'm not meticulus I'm afraid!
None of this applies to DSLRs of course, you make a mistake, you can immediately adjust, not try to think about what settings you had the camera on threes days ago before you processed the film!
Hi Chris and welcome to EPZ.
In a recent test 99% of people could not tell the difference in standard 6x4 pics taken with a Canon 350D and the top of the range Canon 1Ds Mk II (costing £4500 - body only!)
That may give you an indication of how good the 350D is. 
It is crucial though that you save up some money to get good lenses. The 'kit' lens which comes with the 350D is fine to start with but you may want to upgrade it in due course. It's much more important to upgrade lenses than camera bodies.
Quote: In a recent test 99% of people could not tell the difference in standard 6x4 pics taken with a Canon 350D and the top of the range Canon 1Ds Mk II (costing £4500 - body only!)
Does anyone with a Canon 1DS MK 11 print pics at 6x4? Bit of overkill, I'd have thought.
I think it was to prove a point about camera bodies.
The test results in full were posted on here recently. I see if I can find them.
EDIT: It was Paul Indigo who posted this:
Quote: A photography magazine did a test this month (no names). They made prints and showed them to both laymen and professional photographers to see if the could spot the difference between images made with a Canon 350D and those made with the flagship pro 16.7 MP full frame Canon EOS-1Ds Mark II.
On 6x4 99% couldn't see the difference
On A4 around 80% couldn't see the difference
On A3 66% couldn't see the difference.
Just because I 'cut my teeth' with film doesn't mean I would inflict that torment on a newbie in this day and age. Even with a digicam, let alone a DSLR, provided it comes with manual overides you can do every meaningful experiment with digital as with film and instead of having to make detailed notes with film with digital you have a reasonable result immediately and EXIF to make the notes for you.
So in my book 'starting' with a cheap SLR is very bad advice and working with film is something you might 'go back to' if you wanted to be an antiquarium.
It is rather stupid to denign oneself the advantages of modern developments to create the image ... which is the essence of what we are doing.
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