SLR 35mm Camera Guide

Image : http://www.flickr.com

If you're trying to become a professional photographer you might want to ditch the old camera and buy yourself a brand new SLR. Don't worry about choosing the wrong camera because below you'll find a great set of instructions that you'll find very useful while shopping.

SLR stands for single-lens reflex and if you're ready to make the big step toward it a 35mm will help you along the way. This is the best camera format for high-quality images and it's way better than wide-angle lenses, macro lenses or even zoom lenses.

On the other hand, a SLR camera is pretty expensive (almost $5,000) not to mention the rest of its accessories. Why is that? Because it simply offers the best control over the image. The technology behind SLRs uses regular 35mm films: black and white films, infrared films, transparency films and color negative films but you can also find a few models that still use 24mm Advanced Photo System films.

Autofocus vs. Manual Focus

Before buying a SLR you should decide if you want manual or auto focus (AF or MF). If you want AF you should know a few important details about these cameras:

- the electronics can let you down when you need them the most;

- the battery consumption is very high;

- the AF lenses can be pretty difficult to focus by hand especially when you want to switch to manual focus;

- the image provided by AF cameras is not exactly what you'd hoped for and that's mainly because of the limited range of their infrared beams;

- the autofocus is not very silent compared to the manual focus;

- the AF lenses are very often surrounded by plastic components that are not as durable as you may think.

If you use a manual focus you'll see that you'll be the one setting the focus, the shutter and the aperture and for most photographers that's simply great.

A few great manufacturers like Nikon, Pentax and Olympus use few electronics when making a manual focus SLR and this will help you better understand how all this works. Last but not least, a manual camera is considerably cheaper than an autofocus one.

To sum up all the above it's very important for you to know exactly what type of focus you want to use because otherwise you'll be spending a lot of money on a camera that won't be able to make the pictures you want.