Quote: However, for an advanced amateur, cameras of medium range become an obstacle against innovation and perfection.

As for perfection, that’s completely out of question… there is no way to get a perfect shot unless you would invest several 1000$ between body and lenses. But again, that’s not for people like us since we are not making money from photography and we are not rich either! So it does not make sense to buy photo gear for 10,000$ for example even if we managed to get that amount!!!

What do you mean by noise? What I understand by the term “noise” is the spots that show up in the photo when I use high ISO; for example 1250 ISO or 1600 or 3200… But if I shoot at 100 or 200 or 320, etc. I don’t have this problem. Is this the same thing you are referring to? If yes, don’t use high ISO; no matter which camera you use, there will always be noise when you go to higher ISO levels. Of course, new cameras are smarter, but still…

Anyway, to conclude, photography is a really expensive hobby. One might be fooled that buying a DSLR camera such as the Canon 50D for 1500$ would be the end, but this is not the case… Many challenges arise, including but not limited to:

1- Crop factor. Those 1500$ cameras have a 1.6 crop factor which changes the focal length of your lens. To beat this problem, you need to buy a Canon 5DII for example which is above 3000$ for body alone.

2- Glass. The body is only the cheapest part! Any pro lens is above 1000$ (Canon adds the letter L in these lenses name to distinguish them.) Take a look at Amazon and check the prices for yourself.

3- Getting obsolete, since we are talking here about digital equipment, things are getting advanced like computers… My 30D is 8 mega pixel, the last 50D is 14 mega pixels if I am not mistaken.

4- Now, to make things even more complicated, most of the cameras in the market use a very limited sensor. Each pixel on the sensor can only see Red or Green or Blue, then there is a special controller that would recreate the image. So at the end, your sensor is not capturing the colors correctly :]

OK, so you want one of those better sensors that each pixel can read R and G and B at the same time? That’s what Foveon company came up with, but none of the main camera manufacturers adopted their sensor :] One company, Sigma, started making DSLR using the Foveon (supposedly superior) sensor, but the resulting camera SD14 for example is not superior at all! :]

So you see, it is all a f***ed up industry. Personally, I bought a cheap camera lens (Canon 50mm 1.8 F) for less than 100$ and I use it most of the time, in addition to some old manual lenses that I am still learning to focus with them! Too bad, I only dream about some pro lenses but it is crazy to waste a couple of 1000$ for someone like me!

Try to make the best of your camera and remember, it is not the camera, it is you! Push your camera to the limit, take as many photos as you can, take the same shot several times while under exposing, over exposing, wider aperture, narrower aperture, etc. Learn!

I just took a closer look at your camera specs, it is really a well rounded set. By the way, try to rely most on the aperture priority mode; it is very good way to control the DoF without worrying about other details…

3nd Conversation

I only get this blur (which I like) by zooming to the object, as in this photo, or by coming closer to the subject, or by shooting macro. In normal conditions, the Aperture doesn’t affect the image too much.

Now, for regularly shooting, I think it is best to keep it to aperture priority and let your camera worry about the suitable shutter speed. Some cameras would automatically change the ISO and the shutter speed to compensate for your aperture choice… You need to check this. Now, when you get hold of the aperture, you are getting hold of the DoF and hence you can start getting more creative in your shots.

The starting F changes as you change the zoom, this applies to all non-pro zooms (that is “cheap” lenses that are less than 1000$).

Quote: My cam has a range of ~ f2.2 – f8 aperture value (Av)..

F 2.2 and F 8 !!! That’s a vast difference. Actually it is easy to spot the difference between F2.2 and F2.8 ! Try to shoot a close object with a detailed background behind you and do this with different apertures and check the results. But, definitely if you are shooting a landscape, you cannot easily sense a difference between F2.2 and F8 because -practically- everything is far. But the F8 will give you a better sharper image.