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  1. #1
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    ? about DSLR and P&S

    i have a 10mp P&S canon.. my moms bf (who is a photographer) is selling his Nikon D40 which is a 6.1MP for like 250 to me.... is it going to be a large difference in the downgrade of MP or will the slr factor in and improve my pictures?

  2. #2
    project forum co-moderator Frog's Avatar
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    Re: ? about DSLR and P&S

    It'll improve. 10mp on the small sensors of p&s tend to make for lots of noise.
    6.1 is plenty in most cases.
    That and you'll be amazed at the loss of shutter lag which is virtually zero in dslr cameras.
    Go for it but keep your p&s too.
    Keep Shooting!

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  3. #3
    Senior Member brmill26's Avatar
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    Re: ? about DSLR and P&S

    The quality of the D40 (and a decent lens) will blow away the best P&S on the market. The overall size of the image may be smaller, 3000x2000 vs. around 3800 x 2500, but the quality of each pixel is so much better.
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  4. #4
    Senior Shooter Greg McCary's Avatar
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    Re: ? about DSLR and P&S

    If you shoot in RAW format and get a good developing program the D40 will take as good a photo as you could hope to get. It will smoke the P&S with what you can do.
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  5. #5
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    Re: ? about DSLR and P&S

    Magic question, what lenses will you have with that camera? Body only, yes, the d40 will potentially blow away your P&S, but you will need some useful lenses for it.

    Don't let the MP count fool you. A good 6mp shot can look better printed out at larger sizes than most any 10mp point and shoots... But a bad photo is still a bad photo, no matter what camera you use... ;)

    Just be prepared to spend some money on lenses... That's all.. ;)

  6. #6
    Member byjamesderuvoDHQ's Avatar
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    Re: ? about DSLR and P&S

    Frog is dead on here. I think it's really easy to fall into the "more MP is better" myth. It isn't. I came across an interesting article today about how more mega pixels is not necessarily a good thing. According to Image Engineering – a company that does testing of digital cameras for photo magazines in Germany – the quality of digital pictures has steadily decreased since the state of the art was six megapixels back in 2004. And because they don’t have a “dog in this hunt,” they put forth a compelling argument for buying new digital cameras with less mega pixels and not more.

    The argument is essentially this: CCD chips on point and shoot cameras a smaller and as such, fitting in more pixels causes them to lose light sensivity. Sure, there’s more data on the chip, but the chip can’t absorb the light data and what it ends up with is a picture that has more noise than image quality. In addition, the more megapixels a camera has, the larger the lens it needs to provide the clarity it deserves and prevent diffraction due to a loss of detail with smaller apertures. But since we’re talking portable point and shoots here, those large lenses simply aren’t being made.

    Finally, with larger mega pixels comes longer saving time due to their requires huge storage capacity, or more compression if not storing images in RAW format. The result is a noisier image and a dissatisfied camera user who thirsts for high quality and speed but fell into the trap of "more must mean better."

    In the end, relying on a smaller MP that can balance all these needs may indeed be a better answer.

    And when you consider that 99.9% of your pictures will probably be snapshots, you won't even notice a difference in quality with MP above that 6.1. But what you will notice is better clarity, color, and less defraction using a serious DSLR lens. I say pull the trigger.

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