My photographs suck ass. I'm thinking about upgrading from my Samsung Galaxy S10 "smart" phone to a real camera. Maybe a DSLR that can use my old SLR lenses from before digital was invented. The only photography threads I found on here are very old. Any suggestions?
Hey Mara, I might be able to help. You are correct that you might be able to make a DSLR work with some of your older lenses. If one of the lenses is a dedicated macro lens, even better. The main issue is whether there are adapters available to attach your lenses to an available DSLR body. If you can get the lens attached, you should be able to take good pics, although perhaps only with manual exposure and focus control.
However, a couple details are in order. First, if you are interested in serious macros (ie. those that show clear trichomes all nicely sharp and in focus) you absolutely need a tripod. Hand holding at the magnifications involved does not work consistently (or more likely at all in my experience) regardless of the camera used. Second, for serious macro work, you need a macro rail so that you can move whatever camera you use back and forth toward or away from the object being photo'ed (a huge juicy nug, I assume). You don't need anything fancy on either count, any old tripod from a thrift store will likely do, and a simple macro rail can be had for not much money on line. I think the one I use cost about $25.
With a tripod and rail, you can get the best out of whatever camera/lens you use whether you have a DSLR or a phone camera.
As for the camera, unless the lens you have is a dedicated macro lens, it will not allow you to focus close enough for macros unless you add extension tubes or a bellows. Either works, but adds yet more complexity. Also, controlling exposure with them can require manual adjustment, which can be a hassle.
There is yet another issue if your intent is macro shots. At the magnifications involved regardless of the camera used, depth of field is shallow. Any single exposure will show a single plane in focus, and all else will be varying levels of blur. There is bugger all that can be done other than keeping your fstop high, but even that will not fix the problem at high magnification. In order to get the macro shots that I do, I use focus stacking, which involves taking a series of shots, each with a slight change in focus, and then using software to stack them into a single image by using the portions of each that are in focus. The camera I use takes the series automatically, but the same can be accomplished manually given more patience and time.
Going full macro with focus stacking is quite a rabbit hole that you may not be interested in. If that is the case, I think you might want to think more about a phone upgrade than fighting with a full DSLR setup. The new phone cameras are quite the rigs. In fact, I am thinking seriously about buying a macro lens for my iphone 14 pro, and if it works as well as I expect, I may sell all my other stuff. Even the macro function of the phone without an auxiliary lens is very impressive, but not to show details of each trichome hair. Here are a couple examples from my Iphone 14 pro:
These were all hand held, nothing special about adjustments. With an auxiliary macro lens worth about $150US, I think I can get equally clear photos of far higher magnification, but again, not hand held, and focusing would be far, far easier with a macro rail and a phone mount to put the phone on the rail. I am not at home right now, so I don't have access to stuff not on my laptop, but there are some of my stacked macros online here somewhere. I'll have look to see what I can find.
Good luck with it, shoot me questions if I might be able to help.
i jus stepped outside to check out the full harvest moon, and yup, it'z up there, in a nice cloudless sky, BUT, there'z a big dark spot right across the top of it....my phone don't take good nite picz at all, so don't have picz, but is anybody else seein this-?? this is fuckin weird 
ppp
.......but man, i was def trippin for a min there 
