As you can tell by my blogs and vlogs I am a complete "newbie" when it comes to photography and videography. I don't even reach the amateur level yet...I am a pure newbie. They say there are four levels of knowledge when it comes to any given subject matter:
- You don't know what you don't know.
- You know what you don't know.
- You know what you know.
- You don't know what you know.
I am definitely in the first group. I don't know what I don't know. A former colleague of mine is quite a good amateur photographer and he told me when I first bought my DSLR camera to just get out there and take photos (and video) and you will start to learn what works and what doesn't work. "Over time you will get better," he said. I believe he is right and I have been following that philosophy for the past few months. I feel now that I need another kick start in knowledge and have enrolled in a basic photography class at Fleming College in January. As part of this series of blogs, I will be writing about what I have learned about my camera and photography/videography in general from that 6-week course.
My DSLR Camera
I purchased a Canon EOS Rebel SL2 DSLR camera with an 18mm-55mm "kit lens" from Costco last summer. I settled on this camera because I did some research about shooting vlogs with DSLR cameras. One of the tips that were hammered again and again was that you need to have a camera with good (and quite) autofocus. The autofocus capability of the camera seemed even more important than the resolution of the video you were taking. My further research revealed that Canon's had very good autofocus and also very quiet autofocus. That narrowed my focus down to Canons.
The Canon EOS Rebel SL2 DSLR camera is an entry-level 24 megapixel DSLR camera. There were a few reasons in addition to the autofocus feature that helped me decide on this model. The camera had the autofocus feature I wanted, it was one of the lightest DSLR cameras on the market, it came with a lens and it was priced around $650 CDN - which fit my budget. A couple of bonus features I found that have benefited me after the fact are this camera is Canon app is decent for remote control of the camera when shooting video by yourself, the menus seem easy to use (even if I don't completely understand all the settings yet) and it is compatible with EF and EF-S lenses. One downside it only shoots video at 1080p vs 4k. Obviously, 4k is a better resolution, but on the bright side 1080p is a decent resolution and takes up less space then 4k. I was willing to sacrifice 4k for autofocus and price point.
What are EF and EF-S lenses you ask? Good question. It meant to me I could mount lenses with "white squares" and "red circles" on them. That made it easy when buying a new lens I could just look to see if they were EF or EF-S lenses or if they had the white square or red circle on the lens. I knew any of the lenses that fit those criteria would fit my camera body. That is a newbie answer to the question. The real answer is the camera fits both EF lens are similar to the old 35mm film days and are design to cover full-frame and APS-C sensors. These are lens mount at the "red circle" point on the mounting ring on the camera body. EF-S lens is a full-frame lens designed solely to use on cameras that have the APS-C sensor. These lenses mount to the white square mounting ring on the camera body.
I know this camera requires the lenses to have autofocus and/or a stabilizer built into the lens - meaning that it isn't built into the camera body. I have read that some think that is better because the lens is where you want to control the autofocus and most of the shakiness happens. As a newbie, I am not sure if that is try, but the stabilizer and autofocus work well so I have no complaints.
Lenses
As I mentioned my camera came with an 18mm-55mm kit lens. Don't ask me why it is called a kit lens because I am not sure. Again, the body coming with a lens was one of the reasons I chose this camera. After having the camera for a few weeks I bought a 50mm EF lens. I had done some research and a lot of people recommend the "nifty fifty" as a good general photography lens to have in your camera bag. I did discover that I could get a nice "bloom" (the blurry background effect in some pictures) with the 50mm lens. It also does a decent job for video.
A couple of months later I bought a 55mm-250mm EF-S lens from amazon. This was a refurbished lens and was fairly inexpensive. I bought because I thought I might use it to take shots at football games, but haven't used it too much as of yet.
The last lens I got as Christmas present was 24mm EF-S lens. I just got this lens and have just started playing with it. As I continue with this series and pick up knowledge from the photography course I am enrolled in I am hoping to gain knowledge as to what lens to use in different circumstances. I have also covered other accessories like a shotgun mic, tripods, camera bag, Peak camera clip, etc that I have purchased to round out my kit in my blog entitled "Equipment Check: My Vlogging Equipment".
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Disclaimer: All the opinions are my own and are not the views of any suppliers or manufacturers.