Is it just me or do u guys see it too? Everybody has a DSLR nowadays.

cdifoto wrote in post #9892207
Funny thing about this thread is, we probably are the wankers we're talking about. I could be the douchebag you saw, you could be the douchebag I saw, etc.

Was that you looking over my shoulder to see if I was using the green box?

I see lots of dSLR's downtown. Clearly, mostly Nikon in this city. When you do see an ad from a camera store (not often), it's usually Nikon.

At events, I would say it's Canon in the majority.

dche5390 wrote in post #9891990
I figured since I have one ... I can't really start pointing fingers at others for owning one.

I feel the same way.

I also have a feeling that not as many people are shooting these cameras in green box as everyone here seems to think. Feeling a little threatened, are we?

some stuff i got from the thread...

-what's wrong with a kit lens? do i need a red-trimmed L-lens before people stop pointing at me and call me a noobish wanker? i can take beautiful photos with a kit lens and crap photos with an L lens.
-some people are learning, even if they do shoot in greenspace (so what?) DSLR's aren't an exclusive club anymore. this isn't the 1990s. it's not the space shuttle so don't consider a mastery of the DSLR akin to atmospheric re-entry. it's a willingness to learn, and snobbery won't encourage people.
-a lot of engineers smarter than the lot of us spent a great deal of time making sure that the "idiot green box" photos look damn good so saying that they look worse than p&s means that your 2500 dollar full frame photosensor CAMERA is a POS.
-you don't need to have several grand of gear, computer software, and a contract to wander around with a white lens to be a 'great photographer.'

lighten up.

Cesium wrote in post #9892877
I feel the same way.

I also have a feeling that not as many people are shooting these cameras in green box as everyone here seems to think. Feeling a little threatened, are we?

We - the elitist camera forum posters - must always defend our high seat! For if we should let our compassion and reason lose us this seat of power then we would forever lose our one and only bargening chip. The chip that lets us convince family/significant others etc.... that yes we really do need that new fancy toy in the window!

dontcallmeash wrote in post #9892941
some stuff i got from the thread...

-what's wrong with a kit lens? do i need a red-trimmed L-lens before people stop pointing at me and call me a noobish wanker? i can take beautiful photos with a kit lens and crap photos with an L lens.
-some people are learning, even if they do shoot in greenspace (so what?) DSLR's aren't an exclusive club anymore. this isn't the 1990s. it's not the space shuttle so don't consider a mastery of the DSLR akin to atmospheric re-entry. it's a willingness to learn, and snobbery won't encourage people.
-a lot of engineers smarter than the lot of us spent a great deal of time making sure that the "idiot green box" photos look damn good so saying that they look worse than p&s means that your 2500 dollar full frame photosensor CAMERA is a POS.
-you don't need to have several grand of gear, computer software, and a contract to wander around with a white lens to be a 'great photographer.'

lighten up.

The idea behind the 'critiques' is that an expensive bridge camera can take the same caliber of pictures as somebody using a dSLR with the kit lens on auto. Except that, the bridge camera will generally be smaller and lighter.

It's great to get interested in photography, and there is nothing inherently wrong with purchasing a dSLR and using it on green box with the kit lens, it's just extremely limiting in the results of the final shots. -- Of course, this is a photography forum, so we see things much differently than those who have no interest in photography, and only want nicer pictures than a point and shoot.

i for one, when mentioning parents in green box mode am not saying its wrong for them to want to photograph their kids to the best the can. there is nothing wrong with that. however, when these same parents act like they know it all and start telling me what aperture to shoot at paid weddings and get INFRONT of me for a posed shot of bride and groom with no respect to me or the bride and groom that are paying me i feel like their camera should accidentaly fall andbreak.

its not a matter of feeling threatened, its a matter of respect. i respect parents with cameras as much as i can, but i am the paid photog at the event, so if i need to get posed shots of the bridal party then please, dont tell them to look at you while i am trying to get them to look at my camera. ok, rant done proceed

What's a "kit" lens?

I see lots of DSLR's around here. Luckily I do get to see images from several of them too. Mostly green box users that just want a little better lens than a P&S and less shutter lag. But the number of DSLR shooters is growing.

I do see some P&S and the pocket cameras too. I got a laugh the other day. I was shooting a game using my MkIII and a 300f2.8. I was hand holding. There was a guy there with a little pocket "Coolpix" on a monopod. I think that camera weighs about 10 ounces. I must be stronger than I think!!!

verty wrote in post #9891445
yeah i totally agree. it kinda bugs me cause i know alot of people who have dSLRs and dont take it out of auto mode. i have seen a dramatic jump in the amount of people with dSLRs in the past year, i was at an event ealier this year and i swear i was totally gobsmacked by the amount of dSLRs, i just couldnt believe it. That was another reason why i decided to get a 5D and only stick to L series lenses, usually means you are serious business or really into the photography, it seperates you from the thousands of people who have jumped on the dSLR bandwagon shooting in auto mode!

There's plenty of amateurs with dlsr now a days using kit lens. The way you can tell that they're still an amateur is when the built in flash pops up when they're taking pictures of their kid(s) or families.

I for one think it's nice that a lot of people are getting in dslr's and expressing their own creativity. For me it doesn't matter if a person has a Rebel or 1DMkIV, if they shoot in Auto or Manual, as long as they are capturing images that they believe are seizing the moment, more props to them.

And what's wrong with P&S's? I'm bringing my Sony Cybershot on vacation with me and taking it out on nights when I don't want to lug around a dslr and I know I'll be consuming alcohol all night.

Most people in my area are using camera phones.

Tons of dSLR users in the area, tons of tripods. I can't complain though.


I was out taking pictures in DC this weekend, had another canon shooter come up to me and start a conversation

Tarzanman wrote in post #9892035
A lot of it has to do with the ubiquity of cell phone and ultra-compact cameras. Many of these folks now take a ton of photo wherever they go and inevitably start running into the limitations of their ultra-compact camera..... or they compare their photos to the ones I took at the same event and they start to consider an upgrade.

The more the merrier, say I

^this...

Also, I question whether or not the gap between SLR ownership in the past and DSLR ownership in the present is as considerable as can be perceived or argued.

I had a film SLR years ago that didn't see the light of day very often for the simple facts that film wasn't cheap (relatively speaking), getting film developed took a lot more work/energy, and, at least in the beginning, there was a bit of gamble in "getting the shot" inherent to working with film. I remembering shelling out my hard earned money to buy film, shoot something important to me, and develop/print the film only to find out that for whatever reason some or all of the roll didn't turn out.

Maybe a good percent of people "back in the day" went out and bought SLRs and nice lenses only to grow disenchanted by the whole process and "retire" their kits to the top shelf of the hallway closet. Maybe the relative cost of the whole process, coupled with the instant gratification and verification of "getting the shot", and the advent of getting digital images "developed" (pp & printing) at home makes DSLRs that much appealing and thus more desirable to utilize frequently.

Again, maybe the gap in camera ownership isn't as considerable as we may think when compared to the last 10-20 years. Maybe people are just using their kits most often (and consequently you're seeing them in public more often) because technology in general has made photography much more accessible.

/begin short rant

On a side note and not intending to hijack this thread but maybe with DSLR ubiquity "the man" will stop hassling photographers with big cameras/lens just because we sometimes shoot buses, trains, bridges, refineries, etc. Do they really think the terrorists and/or criminals can't get the photos they need covertly.

/end short rant

Interesting thread.....I never noticed or even thought about SLRs as being something special...I have no way of knowing how long people who are surprised that they are popular have been using SLR cameras.


But they are not only something that has been around and popular for a long time, there have been entry level SLRs for a very long time as well.

As for the post above, I agree, it was expensive to have film processed...I used an SLR for a very long time, but hardly ever used color film...I used black and white and developed it myself....I did take slides, they were cheaper, but a pain to view....I don't think I even have a single slike in my posession..I have tons of black and white prints (wish I had kept the negatives) and I have a stack of albums of color prints, but while it seems like a lot of pictures, most were taken after I became a father which was almost 20 years after I started using an SLR.

I was lucky ...my dad was a photographer, so I learned on his Leica and other rangefinder cameras. He got a Nikon F when they first came out (I believe they were shown and sold at the 1964 World's Fair in NYC in 1964), By then I was 18 and allowed to use his stuff without supervision. It was very soon after that it seemed to me that everyone had an SLR. Many had Nikons, but there were less expensive cameras like Pentax and a few others that escape my memory.

But to bring the concept of the entry level SLR to those old enough to remember...it was in the mid 1970s that Olympus came out with their pro body OM cameras..the OM1 and the OM2...and very soon after, they came out with the entry level OM10. They had a HUGE TV campaign that featured Cheryl Teigs (a top model of that time)..endorsing the OM10.

While I can't remember what was as heavily advertised between then and 15 or so years later, I clearly remember a young Andre Agassi doing a zillion TV commercials for the entry level Canon Rebel (film) SLR.

Now we see Ashton Kutcher all over the TV endorsing all kinds of Nikon cameras...including (it seems) pretty much everything up to and even includeing the D300s and maybe even the D700? (not sure)..Have never seen a camera like the Nikon D3 or a Canon 1D or Nikon F advertised on TV....Pros don't get influenced by TV commercials, but obviously there's a huge market for SLR cameras and has been for at least 40 years or more...and that market is for the average amatuer/hobbyist.

Maybe there was a "down time" over the past decade or so because digital cameras were so appealing and dSLRs were very expensive..so people (like me)..stopped using my SLR film cameras ..at least to a great degree, and went out and bought point and shoot digital cameras...having instant results was a very big deal.(and a very far cry from the Polaroid instant type camera...which were also SLR cameras (whether they looked it or not..and were heavily advertised on TV by James Garner and Marriet Hartley....More SLRs being marketed to the typical consumer)

Buying a 3 or 4 megapixel dSLR (many of which were almost "experimental"...they were in many cases "hybrid" cameras that were not built as digital cameras from the ground up was not an appealing option, .at least not for people like me .....not for the price and quality (IMO).

Now that has changed and prices have plummeted...I paid over $300 for my S400 Elf in 2003 (plus some insane amount just for a 256mb CF card..maybe $100?)..a spare battery was another $40...so that little camera cost me over $400...and only had a 3x optical lens. IQ was decent, but only for relatively small prints (maybe 8x10 max)...whileany of of my film cameras (several SLRs and a point and shoot zoom camera I got for my wife) could and did produce great images cropped to be dry mounted on 20" x 30" foam core. (with plenty of resolution to spare).

So in my case...which is surely not unique; I started using SLR cameras in the mid 1960s, then after about 35 years pretty much left it home in favor of a little digital camera that could fit in a pocket..and didn't buy a dSLR until last spring....when I could pick up a 40D for a small fraction of the price of a dSLR from a few years earlier that could never hold a candle evem to s basic film SLR....and cost probably 10x what the 40D cost me when I bought it last April.... (In fact I actually had bought and returned an XTi maybe a year and a half earlier...it was over $1100 with the "upgrade" kit lens which was the 28-135 IS. It was actually a nice camera and I always (and still) think the 28-136 IS is an under-rated lens...Even so, $1100 (plus tax) just seemed like an awful lot of money for an entry level camera with a plastic body (something I had never ever seen on any SLR before)

...and I could also see the writing on the wall..I didn't know much about dSLRs, but that camera had an auto dust removal system, live view, etc...while most of the more expensive bodies (both Canon and Nikon) didn't...the rapid evelution reminded me of buying a computer. I waited a year or 18 months or whatever it was, and got the 40D for less than the XTi cost me the day I bought and returned it.

I'm definitely NOT a guy that is concerned with equipment...I just had a feeling that the XTi was a good hint that the then current 30D was about to be replaced...The Nikon D80 which was about the same price as the XTi didn't have some features I wanted, and I knew very little about any other brands (still don't).

So I think it all perception. If someone seems to believe that SLRs are now, for the first time being used by non-pros, they either were not paying attention, or are too young to remember Cheryl Teigs or Andre Agassi witha long ponytail. Or the big campaign that Polaroid had for their SX70.- which at the time it came out may have been the most high-tech consumer item in existance.? (just a guess). Not a guess at all that it was an SLR. I have one in my collection...sonar auto focus, collapsible bellows, sort of a blend of the past and the future at the time.

Peace,
D.