Free course with Irish bought cameras, are they any good?

Del2005

As the title says. I'm looking to buy a new DSLR soon and from a quick look at Irish camare shops they all seem to give a free €150 course. Are these courses any good? I'd like to buy in Ireland, but not afraid to go North or interweb, and if the course is any good it would help make up for price difference. I want to spend my money here, but don't want pay extra for something that's not good value. I'm a total NOOB on cameras so would proberly be looking to do a course at some time.

I had a look throught the FAQ and did a search but couldn't find any info.

Phototoxin

TBH you'd save over 150 and could probably get a lens for the price of the €150 esp if buying with a camera. There's probably nothing you wouldnt get from it that you wouldnt get from a good book or even the internet.

Del2005

Phototoxin wrote: »

TBH you'd save over 150 and could probably get a lens for the price of the €150 esp if buying with a camera. There's probably nothing you wouldnt get from it that you wouldnt get from a good book or even the internet.

I was sort of thinking that myself, was just trying to find a reason to buy here. Thanks

CabanSail

One day for €150 seems a bit over-priced.

At DCC we have a 10 week Beginners Photography Course for €100.

Sleepy

DCC?

Fajitas!

Dublin Camera Club!

Sleepy

Any details of the course available on-line?

Complete n00b so it sounds like it could be useful. Not sure that I'd be able to attend any time soon (9 week old baby) but maybe in Spring.

AnCatDubh

I'd think the €150 stated would be a rrp rather than cost of delivery. Don't mock a bit of training though. Yes books, the forum here, the webby inter thingy, flickr, pix.ie, and all those nice other resources will be good, but if you are a complete newbie then a days instruction will accelerate your ability to press the button. You won't be a master craftsman after one day ( there are some around here - but they mostly are old grey and wrinkly :rolleyes: ) but you might be far more deeply satisified with your personal investment.

If memory serves me, Dave at digital beginners (also a boards user), does some of the canon training and I think in general it is well received and as suggested above a 10 week session at the Dublin Camera Club is also a great starting point.

Reading will undoubtedly get you there (how fast can you read a foreign language text book and understand it) but if you read the thread on "what i learned from boards.ie" you will see a recurring theme of 'the forum is great but I've learned so much from the meet ups'.

Depends also if you have time to do the 10 week thing or would you be better with the 1 day. If its an option for you then i'd opt for some well grounded initial training to understand the camera, photographic concepts, and some basics of composition etc...

Declaration: All of the above advice of my post is coming from someone that never sat in a training class for photography - as yet anyway so it can be done the other way too (but some might say that perhaps i should go back to a training classroom :rolleyes: )

Good luck with it.

CabanSail

Sleepy wrote: »

Any details of the course available on-line?

Complete n00b so it sounds like it could be useful. Not sure that I'd be able to attend any time soon (9 week old baby) but maybe in Spring.

The details of the next course should be up on the Club Website tomorrow.

robinph

I did one of the "free" Canon courses and it was good, I'd not have paid to do the course otherwise though and would have just tried to bumble along trying to figure out things myself and getting it all wrong no doubt. Of course I still don't really have a clue what I'm doing with the camera, but it was still usefull to do.

If you think that you'd spend that €150 difference on a better course then do that, I think it was a good motivation to get me to turn up to do any type of course which I would not have bothered with otherwise though.

Del2005

Thanks for all the replies. I'll have to think about what to do. Get the camera and a decent lens or know how to use it:D