sensors

[ahmed]

please help !!! ... im very confused here i wanna buy a new camera and there is the nikon d3000 with the ccd sensor and there is a canon with cmos sensor , yeqah i know that the cmos better than the ccd especially in low light but the ccd in the nikons is bigger than the canons cmos ... so tell me wich one i can buy

thanks for the help ,, i hope soon respond

[Manfred M]

It really does not make a lot of difference in the end (yes Canon crop frame sensors are a bit smaller, but not enough to make any real difference). Even though I am a Nikon shooter, I would not go for the D3000. It is not a particularly well regarded Nikon camera. The D3100 that replaced it is considered to be a lot better.

[Melkus]

As Manfred said it really dose not make a lot of difference both accomplish the same end result, especially with today's technology. CMOS typically has lower power (equates to better battery life), but CCD in the past produced better quality, but used a lot more power. Today, they've probably reached equal standing as far as performance. I also would pick the D3100 over the D3000, I started out with the D3100 and did love it only when I got a great deal on a D7000 did I sell it or I might of still have it.

[kris]

I agree with Manfred. The D3000 is an old entry-level camera. Do not waste your money for this. If you want to by a Nikon get at least the D3100. Same arguments apply for Canon.

The crop factors, 1.5 for Nikon and 1.6 for Canon, do not make a real big difference. This means, for example, that a 100mm lens on Nikon is equivalent to a 150mm lens on a FullFrame camera (35mm), and 160mm on a Canon, while a 50mm to 75mm and 80mm, respectively. If we really want to see some pros/cons we can say that with Nikon you loose less for landscape while with Canon you gain with telephoto.

CCD sensors are still used on medium-size camera because they can produce better quality images. The difference with CMOS is however rapidly decreasing, and last generation CMOS are really good. The real problem with CCD is the noise. This means CCD sensors perform really well only at low ISO, up to 100-200 ISO typically. CMOS sensor are more "robust" and you can push ISO to higher values and still have good results. This is one more reason why I think you should not by and old CCD camera.

Cheers
A.

[ahmed]

Thank u every body this was very help-full i just wanted to tell you im 15 yeras old but i love photography and i hope to get tips from you from time to time .. especially about macro and portrait photography because considering the country that i live in wich is egypt ( that's why my english in not very good ) there is nothing to be photographed except the nile , some flowers and the portraits so i wanna hear from u soon ... thanks

[lorenzobix]

Thank u every body this was very help-full i just wanted to tell you im 15 yeras old but i love photography and i hope to get tips from you from time to time .. especially about macro and portrait photography because considering the country that i live in wich is egypt ( that's why my english in not very good ) there is nothing to be photographed except the nile , some flowers and the portraits so i wanna hear from u soon ... thanks

a good ccd sensor is for example the old nikon pro badies, not the low range old D3000. proof of the low qualitiy of this camera is that only a yera after it's launch in tha market, the upgraded 3100 arrived, and then another year later the 32000. this should make you understand that those kind of cameras are just marketing products for people who want a reflex anyway even if there are a lot of compact and cheaper cameras that do as well or even better than D3000.
to give you better advices we should know how many money you intend to spend for the camera, mostly because you'll have necessarily to buy a lens too. I'd suggest you that, if the budget you have is around the price of a d3000 and a basic zoom lens, to consider also non-dslr cameras, such as compact cameras with big zoom range as the canon g11 or g12 (i do not own one, it's just an example for the kind of cameras you could look for) taht have very good image quality and some dslr skills as manual controls and so on.
On the other hand, if you desire absolutely a dslr camera be extremely careful when it's time to buy: if you spend most of your budget in a body of high quality, leaving a small amount of money for the lens you'll "cut off" part of the potential image quality: lens are very very important, perhaps more than sensora or the same as sensors. fore example a lens like this http://www.dpreview.com/products/nik...3p5-5p6_gii_dx are of coure low price but also very low quality.
A good camera you could buy used is, if it has to be a dslr, this one http://www.dpreview.com/products/nikon/slrs/nikon_d90 wich is of coure a bit "old" but is good quality and you can save money for a good lens, perhaps a prime 35mm or 50mm that are high quality image but not high priced, or if you choose practicality instead of pure quality, a zoom like this http://www.dpreview.com/products/nik..._3p5-5p6g_vrdx or this one http://www.dpreview.com/products/nik..._18-35_3p5-4p5 for example. Always look in the specialized sites for used lenses, new ones are, in my opinion, useless if you can be sure you buy a used well keeped one.