Move from Maxxum 5000i 35mm to digital

Hello - I have a monolith - a venerable 35mm Maxxum 5000i, which is excellent, and was passed down to me through the family.

I have recently cultivated a strong interest in photography, and am considering the move - say over the next six months - to a digital SLR. I need a lot of help, since I am a beginner to photography in general, and digital in particular. I don't want to rush into buying anything until I fully understand all the essentials.

My goals are:

• intermediate-level photography, purely for pleasure - no professional or competitive aspirations.
• want to thoroughly learn the basics of 35mm techniques, which i can then apply to digital.
• hopefully be able to use the two excellent 35mm maxxum lenses i have.
• understand the cross-over issues (FLMs, lens compatibility, and the like) between 35mm and digital SLR.

Thank you all very much for any guidance.

Vikram.

Vikram,

Welcome. You have a lot of exciting learning ahead of you.

What lenses do you have? The most important things to know are:

1. The digital camera has a 33% crop factor, so your 50mm lens will perform like a 75mm lens.

2. Film has more range for brights and darks, but cannot be changed mid-roll. Digital has ISO capability (100-800 and more), so you can adjust shot-to-shot, but have to watch out for under and over exposed areas.

2. Film costs money....digital is essentially free, and can be previewed.

Greg

vikramgdmello said:

Hello - I have a monolith - a venerable 35mm Maxxum 5000i, which is
excellent, and was passed down to me through the family.

Click to expand...

Wow, a 5000i... My first camera was the 7000i. Great to see someone with such a camera.

vikramgdmello said:

I have recently cultivated a strong interest in photography, and am
considering the move - say over the next six months - to a digital
SLR. I need a lot of help, since I am a beginner to photography in
general, and digital in particular. I don't want to rush into
buying anything until I fully understand all the essentials.

Click to expand...

Good starting goals. Don't rush and systematically research things and you will avoid spending lots of money un-necessarily. Most of all ignore the marketing hype and get real-world advice when you can. There is plenty available on this board (and others) as your questions get more specific.

vikramgdmello said:

My goals are:

• intermediate-level photography, purely for pleasure - no

professional or competitive aspirations.

Click to expand...

sounds wonderful. Actually sounds a lot like where I am now.

vikramgdmello said:

• want to thoroughly learn the basics of 35mm techniques, which i

can then apply to digital.

Click to expand...

A digital SLR acts almost identically to a 35mm SLR (like your 5000i). The whole crop-factor was brought up by another poster but is a more complex answer than what I'll get into here. But the idea of Depth-of-field (DOF), shutter speed and aperture is the same from digital to 35mm. Many (most?) of us posting on these boards started shooting film and switched to digital relatively recently.

vikramgdmello said:

• hopefully be able to use the two excellent 35mm maxxum lenses i

have.

Click to expand...

Your maxxum lenses will work on the KM-5D and 7D, as well as the new Sony alpha 100. It is widely expected that any future model by sony will also work with all maxxum lenses. Which ones do you have, btw?

vikramgdmello said:

• understand the cross-over issues (FLMs, lens compatibility, and

the like) between 35mm and digital SLR.

Click to expand...

vikramgdmello said:

Thank you all very much for any guidance.

Vikram.

Click to expand...

I'll offer a couple of pieces of advice:

Right now the 5D and 7D cameras are extremely cheap (for a DSLR) because they are no longer being made. There are better cameras out there, but for a lot more money. The sony alpha 100 will take your maxxum lenses and is a great camera as well. Check out the sony DSLR forum and the alpha 100 review posted on this website.

also, I know you want to keep using your "two excellent maxxum lenses" but don't rule out the possibility of selling those if going to another system (canon, nikon, pentax etc) makes more sense for you.

as you develop more specific questions fire away
welcome to photography, the greatest waste of money in the world!

thanks for the encouraging advice, noreo.

the maxxum lenses i have are:

• 50mm f1.7
• 70-210mm f4.5-5.6

wrt the crop factor, yes i do understand what it entails - i've been reading about that. if i do end up going with a KM or Sony and keeping my two lenses, what if i just buy an additional wide-angle? since my 50mm will not be as "wide" on a DSLR body - effectively becoming a 75mm, i figured i could invest in one more lens so i then have a wide-angle, a normal and a tele. is that how i should be thinking? i dunno, this is all very new to me, since, as i mentioned, i am new not just to DSLRs in particular, but to photography as a serious hobby in general.

also, when i now buy a "digital lens", is the focal length the actual focal length? so if i want, say, a 28-50mm wide-angle lens (that is a good choice, right?) i would shop for a 28-50mm digital zoom lens?

thanks a lot for any pointers,

vikram.

Lenses are sold in 35 mm equivalents, so for a digital you need to be looking at what used to be considered the ultra-wide territory of 35mm such as 18mm- whatever zoom.

I'm an even older camera user contemplating the jump, I never made it past my manual focus minolta's and the mamiya 645 I have. My favorite camera, my x-700 died and my home surgury failed to save its life. I'm looking now to jump over to digital slr's in some way.

If you can live with 28mm (42 equivalent), there are plenty of options for zoom lenses. But for about the same price, you can get a kit lens 18-70mm. Lightweight and good with the on-camera flash with its ADI capability.

Don't pay much more than $80 in the US. People are trying to sell them for over $100, but they didn't cost that much when packaged as a kit.

Greg

Gregory King said:

But for about the same price, you can get
a kit lens 18-70mm. Lightweight and good with the on-camera flash
with its ADI capability.

Click to expand...

The kit lens is great The range is really nice on the digital cameras as well.

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The other thing is that you learn so much faster on a digital camera than film. The preview screen shows you something right away and as soon as you can get it to a computer you get to see exactly what the image looks like. The feedback loop of taking the picture and seeing the result is so much shorter than film. Also you can see exactly what settings you took the shot with at the touch of a button.

The hard part about digital (at least for me) is to stop and slow down; pay attention to what you are shooting.

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vikramgdmello said:

the maxxum lenses i have are:

• 50mm f1.7
• 70-210mm f4.5-5.6

Click to expand...

vikramgdmello said:

also, when i now buy a "digital lens", is the focal length the
actual focal length? so if i want, say, a 28-50mm wide-angle lens
(that is a good choice, right?) i would shop for a 28-50mm digital
zoom lens?

Click to expand...

No. As another poster pointed out, the focal length has not changed. In actuality, a 50mm lens is a 50mm lens, whether it's put on a D-SLR or a 35mm film SLR. The "crop" is the amount of the image around the edges that is cut off relative to a 35mm film equivalent. It is NOT a multiplication of the focal length, and the practice of advertising it as a 'multiplication factor' has led to enormous confusion in the photographic community.

THe kit lens is a good place to start, particularly since you can get them for

A "DIGITAL LENS" is one that has coatings on its internal glass elements to reduce the amount of chromatic abration (CA), which can be problematic for digital sensors. Some digital lenses (like the kit lens) are designs with a smaller image circle. Since the d-slr has a smaller sensor than 35mm film, the image circle necessary to cover the sensor is lens, hence the smaller lens/image circle . Just know that these lenses are not 'backwards compatible' (i.e. they will work on the d-slr but if placed on your film body you will notice severe 'vignetting', or darkness around the corners of the frame. "Di" lenses are digital lenses that have extra contact points (8 instead of 5) which supply the camera with focusing information to help flash pictures come out better.)

You should know that a great lens made 10 years ago is still a great lens. Likewise, a cheap lens made last week cannot compete with a great, older lens.

nereo, that was EXTREMELY helpful, thanks.

50 1.7 and 70-210 is not a big investment ( 150$ eBay value combined).
You are pretty much free to go to any other system - Pentax, Nikon, C.

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K M 5 D,
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