Hi All, I have a question about digital cameras I can't seem to find the answer to anywhere. I take pictures of fountains as part of my job. With film cameras, I use (when I can find it), asa 25 speed film. This seems impossible to find these days, so I use 50 speed. The problem is that even with 50 speed, the fountains begin to look weird. They have a "water hanging in the air" look. The 25 speed film is slow enough that water looks much like it does in life. At 100 speed, you see definite water drops, and at 200 and above, you see perfectly formed water drops just hanging in air.

Since this is the opposite of what most people want, I haven't found any literature covering the extreme slow end of cameras. I did play with a Sony once that had settable "asa" values, but the lowest it would go was asa100, the default was 400. Does anyone know of a high quality, big lens digital camera that can do these slow shutter speeds in bright light?

Thanks,

Larry

surely the film speed is pretty irrelavent here, its the shutter speed thats more important. When taking pictures of water slow is usually better. For a fountain which is pretty fast moving I'd suggest something <20th of a second. Obviously you've got to consider camera shake at this speed and slower.

The ISO/ASA rating isn't completely irrelevant here. If it is a bright day then you might need very slow ISO ratings to get the exposure you want and the relatively long shutter speeds.

Even if your camera doesn't go as low down the ISO range as you would like there are ways round it. You can use neutral density filters (which I think are basically sun glasses for your camera) to reduce the amount of light coming into the lens, thus allowing lower shutter speeds.

I'm most familiar with Canon's line of cameras and the minimum there is 100 ASA (even on the $6000 1DS). I'd agree about the neutral density filter. It's exactly what you want.

-Zeke

I have a Canon Powershot G3. It has an internal two-stop neutral density filter that you can select from one of the configuration menus. I mostly use it when I'm trying to do fill-flash work in bright sunlight, but it sounds like exactly what you need. Of course, keep in mind that non-SLR digital camera tend not to let you stop down to f/22 or even f/16. As others here have said, you may need an external neutral density filter as well, depending on how long you want to drag out the exposure.

Thanks. I'm looking at the Olymups slr models just now, I'll be sure to get one that can accept filters. I'd like to get one that accepts normal lenses too.

The only SLR-like digital camera available from Olympus at the moment is the E20, which isn't strictly a true SLR. It doesn't have detactable lenses (though you can get some add on lenses) and uses a prism to split the light between sensor and viewfinder rather than a mirror (meaning the viewfinder tends to be dimmer than a true SLR).

The E20 is also starting to look expensive now that the Canon Digital Rebel (also know as the EOS 300D in Europe) is out at under $1000 if you buy it with it's 18-55mm (28.8-88 at 35mm equivalent) lens.

Olympus do have a true DSLR on the way, the E1. That also looks quite expensive, given that it has a very similar spec to the Canon 10D, but is quite a bit more.

The Canon Digital Rebel is a far better camera than the E20, with much lower noise, a wider range of ISO/ASA settings and the flexibility of removable lenses.

Oh, and in case you don't already know the place to find out info on digital cameras is here:

http://www.dpreview.com/

I got the Canon 10D last Friday and have been having a ball with it. It's a major step up from my A2E. So far I'm just thrilled with it.

-Zeke

It is a great camera. My main problem is that I take so many bloody pictures with it...

When I'm around my newphews and neices I regularly take 300+ photos in a couple of hours. I obviously delete lots of them later

No kidding. I went to a wedding last weekend and came back with about 140 photos. I'm glad I got the 9MB/sec flash card - shooting in bursts is a blast. It's so easy to do when you have 300+ shots remaining and there's no cost to shooting throw-away shots. How did I live without depth of field preview?

-Zeke