Manual Focus?

Can someone tell what the cheapest digital camera would be that has a manual focus? I'm looking for a camera that can take upclose shots of detailed atifacts, without being blury.

You probably need a dslr with a macro lens. Sigma SD9's are pretty cheap and you can shoot M42 lenses with an adapter but the output is raw files and you have to process the files on your computer.

The canon 10D or 300D are okay and will take m42 lenses too. Also they spit out jpegs.

Also a D70 is a good one, but nikon lenses are expensive. Jpegs too.

Rickyssss said:

Can someone tell what the cheapest digital camera would be that has
a manual focus? I'm looking for a camera that can take upclose
shots of detailed atifacts, without being blury.

Click to expand...

--
http://www.troyammons.com
http://www.pbase.com/tammons
http://www.troyammons.deviantart.com

You don't need a digital SLR and you certainly don't need to use adapted M42 lenses to achieve manual focus. All Autofocus SLR lenses have manual focus ability.

Have a look at the reviews for some current digital point-and-shoot and prosumer cameras here. You'll find most offer some sort of manual focus option and you'll find one that's in your budget.

Cheers,

--
Michael King

Who cares how you get the shot; just photograph it and photograph it well

http://www.photo.net/photodb/member-photos?include=all&user_id=816617
http://www.mk.fpic.co.uk/

Rickyssss said:

Can someone tell what the cheapest digital camera would be that has
a manual focus? I'm looking for a camera that can take upclose
shots of detailed atifacts, without being blury.

Click to expand...

Sounds to me like you need macro focus, not manual focus. Most digital cameras have a macro mode that will get you very close...

How close do you need to be? How big is the subject? What are the lighting conditions?

Lorne.

This is the sort of thing that I'm looking to capture. Very close (like a couple of inches away):

In that case I would say you need a Dslr, a couple of good lenses with extension tubes or better yet bellows. 2" is pretty tight. Bellows are much more versitile. You can also use a close up adapter lens, but I dont care for them that much.

Its not really the distance away so much as the magnification factor you want.

A 1:1 macro lens on a 35mm camera will focus close enough to produce a lifesize capture at the negative size. IE if you photo a 18cm mark it will be 18cm long if you measure it on the negative. That would fill roughly half the length of a 35mm neg. With a DSLR crop factor it would fill more of the frame by the amount of the crop.

Find AdamT on the Canon or Sigma forum. I think he photographs electronic Eq.

Here is a macro photo with m42 extension tubes and a $80 m42 85mm lens.

http://www.pbase.com/image/27421873

Its probably 2-4" from a soap bubble. From top to bottom thats about an inch. Its probably around 2:1 or 2x.

Here is a link to another setup that is about 6x mag which would be too much for you. You might be able to use 2 stacked 50mm lenses face to face.

http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/read.asp?forum=1027&message=7990815

The first photo is the corner of a stamp.

Here is a link that explains slr macro photography a little better.

http://www.edbergphoto.com/pages/Tip-macro-tools.html

Rickyssss said:

This is the sort of thing that I'm looking to capture. Very close
(like a couple of inches away):

Click to expand...

--
http://www.troyammons.com
http://www.pbase.com/tammons
http://www.troyammons.deviantart.com

Rickyssss said:

This is the sort of thing that I'm looking to capture. Very close
(like a couple of inches away):

Click to expand...

As Michael mentioned previously, you certainly don't need a DSLR for this type of closeup photography. In fact you'd likely get better results with a quality digicam do to it's increased depth of field over that of a DSLR.

Still when taking macro photographs, The apparent depth of field will be your biggest obstacle to focus. At these magnifications even under the best of circumstances the plane of sharpest focus will be very narrow. The more depth that the subject has the more of it that will appear to be out of focus relative to the plane of sharpest focus.

--
Tom Young
http://www.pbase.com/tyoung/
[email protected]