Best camera for photos/youtube

[Paiige]

Auto everything mode:
Right now, flash off, I turn on the camera and point it at the screen in an unlit room and I get, (subject is too dark) warning at the bottom. I take the lens cap off. Duhhhh. Now it reads (Extend the lens). Duhhh. One more time and I get
1/100, F 3.5, ISO-A 12800, 3.5 K
AF-1, Q Normal, ADL on, Flash Off, memory available, battery charge level and the sink is full of dirty dishes.
and point it at the floor, Too Dark. Along with a whole series of icons I have yet to figure out.
Meanwhile the viewfinder+ is wide open except for a whole mess of tiny bars, some of which blink red telling me which ones are being used for the auto focus. There is a selector wheel where I can scroll through the various little framing bars to tell it which ones to use for the auto focus.

I'm curious what your camera shows. It was the other contender when we went shopping for a camera.
This one, this display and explanation, would no doubt drive experts up the walls but is exactly what I need to get a grip on all these obscure settings.

One several fronts the reviews were dead on. The battery in this puppy lasts until the next ice age, the color rendition and speed is phenomenal, the function for taking shots of fast moving objects works flawlessly, and it does make jaggy lines across the image when focusing very far away under poor light.
I especially like the high speed capture. It grabs multiple shots in a pseudo video mode so I can choose the best of the lot later. Now maybe I can get shots of the fast moving critters around here. We've got all sorts of birds, from storks to raptors, that by the time I get the camera up they are on the wing and I'm out of luck.

Another bonus I never knew. It has a battery inside charged by the main battery. The inner battery stores various presets as well as mundane like time and date, so we won't have to reset everything when we charge the main battery.

My favorite feature so far is that it tells me when the lens cap is on and I'm being stupid.
No red bars for me.
Battery doesn't last as long as I'd like but I also adjusted the auto-off feature on my screen to stay lit because it was going dark to save power after like 5 seconds and that doesn't work with tarantulas.
Reviews were spot on for this camera too - the SL1 is smaller and I have tiny hands. A larger one wouldn't be as comfortable and this one fits in my hand perfectly. Takes great quality photos with the pretty decent kit lens. As I'm using it, I'm finding that I'm going to need an external light source (built in flash doesn't cut it, though it is a good flash) and I have my next few lenses planned out.

Upon start (in dimly lit room);
shutter speed
iso 12800
f5.6
AWB setting/options
stabilizer off (my doing)
autocorrect
evaluative metering
image size

 

[The Snark]

You can bring the settings up any time, right? And they change as you move what you are aiming at?
The big battery bitch seems the same. The more you use the LCD the faster the charge goes down.
I looked at the dual color corrected add on flash. About the same price as a 5 year old Honda Accord. Looked at the to die for telephoto lens. About the same price as a full dress Harley Davidson. GACK!

 

[Paiige]

You can bring the settings up any time, right? And they change as you move what you are aiming at?
The big battery bitch seems the same. The more you use the LCD the faster the charge goes down.
I looked at the dual color corrected add on flash. About the same price as a 5 year old Honda Accord. Looked at the to die for telephoto lens. About the same price as a full dress Harley Davidson. GACK!

Settings do not change as I look at things, no. Maybe there's a mode that I'm not aware of - will do more fiddling.
The macro lens I want is more expensive than it would be to do a full turbo setup on my Civic and the wheels I want combined.

 

[The Snark]

Try watching the settings while in auto mode.
A few things that bother me about the D3400. Nose print on the LCD. Can't avoid mashing your nose against it while looking through the view finder. The movie mode only works with the LCD. Viewfinder is shut off. Lens cap is not on a tether. With the Fuji it was. Just remove and let it go and it dangles. I'm so used to that I'm constantly dropping the cap.
Bigger piss off is this remembers the settings, Push the button down part way and it does it's thing. When going to take the next picture that requires different settings in auto mode you have to be very careful to push the button down halfway and pause for a moment or it will used the previous settings.

 

[Paiige]

I would love it if the cap had a tether...

 

[The Snark]

I would love it if the cap had a tether...

Since it has no eyelet I'm going to get creative with some kind of thin black cord and hot glue. Attach the other end to the strap clip.

Nikon really douched up the microphone in this thing. No extrenal plug for one. So you are stuck with the one they give you. High gain, broad frequency response one-size-fits-all type. And as any sound engineer in this solar system will tell you, there aint no such animal and it will be a series of unhappy compromises.
So you get near studio quality videos with sound that sometimes sounds like it is coming out of a cheap plastic boom box. Worse, the microphone is right next to the video record button on-off. So hover your hand near that button and it is easy to shade the sounds it picks up.

I took a half hour video of a kids party last night. About half of the video had my finger lying over the top of the mic and sounds a muddy garble.


On a positive note, they weren't blowing hot air about battery life. Shot nearly an hour of video and over 200 still shots along with all sorts of fiddling and testing the camera and the battery still shows full charge.

One fascinating feature. It has night vision that actually works. The camera switches to monochrome mode but acquired all the features of a large yard, trees bushes and a building, with the sole source of light coming from an 8 watt light bulb 20 feet off to my left.

 

[Paiige]

Nikon really douched up the microphone in this thing. No extrenal plug for one. So you are stuck with the one they give you. High gain, broad frequency response one-size-fits-all type. And as any sound engineer in this solar system will tell you, there aint no such animal and it will be a series of unhappy compromises.
So you get near studio quality videos with sound that sometimes sounds like it is coming out of a cheap plastic boom box. Worse, the microphone is right next to the video record button on-off. So hover your hand near that button and it is easy to shade the sounds it picks up.

I took a half hour video of a kids party last night. About half of the video had my finger lying over the top of the mic and sounds a muddy garble.

Haven't tried shooting video yet, I need to get a bigger memory card. But I do have an external plug for a mic. Not sure if I'll ever use it, I would send it to you if I could

 

[The Snark]

Freaking moronic. The microphone holes are right where you naturally lay your finger. The Fuji had a directional mic on the other side pointing forwards and had FAR better sound.

 

[The Snark]

The Nikon is certainly living up to it's battery life claim. Have gone photobug crazy the last 3 days taking over 500 shots. The battery still reads fully charged.

 

[Ratmosphere]

Well, here she is! Been trying to take macro shots of my slings but the picture comes out grainy every time. Definitely need to practice with it.

 

[Ratmosphere]

Read the manual and it says for crisp, immaculate images using the close up setting, you really need a macro lens. I guess I'll have to pick that up next!

 

[The Snark]

Read the manual and it says for crisp, immaculate images using the close up setting, you really need a macro lens. I guess I'll have to pick that up next!

I discovered this. Was experimenting with it last night taking pictures of the moon. These cutting edge light acquisition technologies can work wonders. But there is a sweet spot. When you force the camera to work outside of that sweet spot, outside it's comfort zone, it does it's best but it compromises. Yes, the camera was able to take shots without a tripod in extremely low light, but the end result was no better than a cheap 35mm film camera. You need to feed that light handling super wizz computer system the right food and that means the right lens for the job as well as following the tried and true methods of setting everything manually yourself if you expect to the those immaculate perfect shots under extreme conditions, be it low light or extreme close up with a very limited depth of field.