Digital Camera Information Needed

[white eagle]

I'm needing some major digital camera information. I'm looking for a digital camera that has rapidfire speed or faster to catch tornados,tornados developing, lightning coming from the clouds to ground or lightning in the clouds. I have been searching the internet for some links but haven't came up with much of anything. So I thought maybe you all may know of some great links that has reviews on digital cameras and their shutter speed or if they have rapidfire.

This is very important to me because I'm going storm chasing some if the weather gets dangerous enough alone with taking photos of animals.

Forgot to add I have one digital camera but it's not fast enough to catch any lighting going on.


Thanks for any help or advice you all may provide for me.

[suzyhomemaker09]

Dh splurged on this type..not all those bells and whistles but the base camera.


http://www.amazon.com/Pentax-Digital...3153902&sr=1-3

[nappint]

You will need a DSLR in order to not have the shutter lag that the regular Digital cameras have.

Look at Nikon and Canon they both have entry level DSLR's that should do what you want them to - keep in mind you will need to look at lenses too - you'll probably want a good zoom for tornado's and such - those can get pretty pricey...I'm not sure what you want to spend but it they're not cheap (but take amazing pics) and there will be a learning curve so be sure you have plenty of time to practice before your "adventure"

ETA: Here's a good review site - I used it to decide on my camera.

http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/

[wayfarin']

You should mention your budget also for the camera also.

It must be a Digital SLR if you want fast shutter speed. If you're wanting entry level try Cannon's Rebel XTi or the new XSi. The first will run you about $600 now for the kit and the XSi is around $900, as well as Nikon's D80 and then moving down in price to the D40.

If shutter speed is all you're after then you have a plethora of worthy choices.

[Reptyle]

Good site for reviews and user commentary:

http://www.digitalcamera-hq.com/digital-cameras/

[CJ]

If you want rapid fire shooting in a digital SLR, you're going to pay a premium. In the Canon line up, only the ID Mark III is going to be fast enough, at 10fps.

The new Xsi is only 3.5fps, which I can guarantee is not fast enough for what you're wanting. I have the 5D, and it's 3fps. Definitely more of a landscape/portrait camera.

On top of fps requirement, you're going to need fastlow light glass as well, which is REALLY expensive.

[Windy in Kansas]

Look to Pentax or Nikon.

[MN Gardener]

I have a Nikon D40 that I love. My brother just got a D300 (I think that is the one) and he loves it.

[texican]

Great recommendations so far.

If you're wanting to catch lightning, your looking more at tripod work and timed exposures. Once lightning flashes, you can't just start snapping away and hope to catch some good shots (you probably know this already). If you're doing nighttime lightning shots, your looking at timed shots with wide open apertures.

What I find amazing is you can take thousands of pics on some of the flash memory cards, and preview all of them, delete the bad ones, and keep on shooting. In the 'bad ol days' of film, I'd take maybe a roll, of a storm rolling through, and even 'knowing' what I was doing, more than half would be worthless.

Outside of the fps, any quality digital camera will work.

With a dslr, with a fast fps, you're probably looking at lower resolution shots... I don't believe many of the dslr's will do fast fps shots in RAW resolution... the images are around ~20mb, which would fill up most memory cards in a hurry. A gig card would hold only 50 shots......

Let us know how the storm chasing works out... always thought I'd like to do that someday... my knees are getting shot, and rock climbing doesn't work too good for this body of mine...

[white eagle]

Thanks for all the help on this. Someone asked what is the price range we are looking at for a new camera well from 700.00 to 1,200.00 dollars. We are still doing research on what type to get due to so many out there to chose from. I have a friend that is a pro at taking photos so contacted her for more ideas on what to get. I didn't get to talk to her today due to she is out of town doing a horse show so hopefully she will get back soon to help me decide what we need. The weather is going to be very active around here very soon.

The digital camera we have on hand right now is a Sony- Cyber-shot 6.0 Mega Pixels
DSC-S600

So we have been fooling with the digial camera all evening long since there had been some big cells of storms rolling through but still not got the correct setting yet. Working on the ISO setting alone with other settings.