DSLR camera any recommendations?

candygurl

Hi all. thanks again for all your great advice. i'm bidding on a nikon d80 with a load of extra kit, on ebay at the moment. if i dont get it for the price i want i'm going to nip in around the 2nd hand shops in town and see what advice and bargains i can pick up. i'll let you know!.

Darth_Marty

The sony a200 is a great camera for the price and the lens with it is good.
I went for the canon eos 1000d and after months of research I am glad I did, its great, cheapish and easy to figure out. That was under £300 too. The alternative I was seriously considering was the Nikon d60 but honestly I would now have to agree with one of the above posts and say the d40 is easily good enough and its the lenses you have to consider.
If I had my time again id probably do that, get a cheaper camera with more lenses.

althas

Hi Candy

I bought a dslr last year (400d) and love it

I would say you could not really go wrong with a canon or nikon. I know there are others (Sony, Pentax etc), but with a DSLR, you have to look at the whole system available, not just the camera body. All the aftermarket lenses, accessories, flash guns (the list is endless, and after a while you WILL start thinking OHHH I could JUST use a blahhblahhyakkatyschmakkaty (that IS a technical term ), and some of the smaller manufacurers will not have them)

The whole difference on the nikon v canon boils down really to one small point. The canon is physically able to take a picture slightly faster than a nikon. So for action shots and such canon is the way to go. Whereas nikon does a slightly higher quality of shot over the canon. I went for a canon on this basis, as I use mine for wildlife, birds (of the feathered variety :rotfl:)

Best thing to do is NOT use the auto setting, never never never, as you are wasting 99% of the cameras potential. Play with it, take the same shot with different setting to see the effects. Its digital so no costs to see the outcome. Just delete and go again

Whatever you get, enjoy it and lets see some of the pics you get

Marty_J

candygurl wrote: »

Hi all. thanks again for all your great advice. i'm bidding on a nikon d80 with a load of extra kit, on ebay at the moment. if i dont get it for the price i want i'm going to nip in around the 2nd hand shops in town and see what advice and bargains i can pick up. i'll let you know!.

Is there anything you need that the D80 does but the D40 doesn't?

You could get yourself a new D40 with comes with a pretty decent 18-55mm lens, buy a 55-200mm Nikon VR lens, and still have money left over.

A used D80 is twice the price of a brand new D40, but it won't take pictures that are twice as good. A D40 and the extra kit you'll be able to buy however, will enable you to capture shots you won't be able to with your D80. The D80 also has a pretty poor flash sync speed of 1/200 vs the D40's 1/500, which is another reason I personally wouldn't consider buying one.

If you really need the features of a D80 such as being able to autofocus with older lenses, or having more autofocus points, then by all means buy one. But don't be fooled into thinking that because the D80 is more expensive and has more mega-pixels then it'll take better photos. If you don't need any of the D80's extra features, then every penny you spend over the cost of a D40 is a penny wasted.

Digital cameras are not an "investment".

MX5huggy

Marty J exactly what I wanted to say. D40 or go for a D90 which is better than the D80/40.

Nikon discovered years ago when the D70 was launched that they could still sell the older D100 for more beacue people belived the D100 was better because it had a higher number.

Marty_J

To be honest, I wouldn't consider spending more on a DX format camera than I spent on a D40 (which I think was £240 with a £30 rebate).

The next step up for me is a £1,800 Nikon D700, which has a full frame FX sensor. The x1.5 crop factor is for me the biggest limitation of the Dxx series of cameras.

In the meantime, I might spend £100 or so on a used Nikon SLR from eBay, the image quality of which can blow away a dSLR that costs 10 times as much.

isofa

If money is no object full frame sensors are the way to go, the sensors element are much larger, and the resolution and sharpness benefits incredibly. I'm currently saving for the new Canon EOS 5D MkII

However the cameras are noticeable bigger than mid-range semi-pro "cropped" sensors, and similarly these semi-pro models are larger than the consumer/entry level ones.

From a Canon perspective:

"Consumer" models such as the 350D are still excellent cameras, arguably just as good (I'd argue better) then the 450D, because they have the additional LCD with all the settings. The 500D is out soon and offers HD recording as with the 5D MkII.
In fact IMO the 350D is still one of the best handling, quick small DSLRs about.

It's like the 40D vs 50D argument, to me the main advantage of the 50D is the high-res screen, the additional pixels over the 40D are a waste of time, they result in more noise, won't benefit many uses, especially due to lens diffraction limits, where resolution just falls away anyway.

I'd rather had less mega-pixels and some top notch lenses - that's where money is better spent, I just hope Canon and Nikon stop releasing cameras with more denser sensors and concentrate on other issues.

candygurl

ok. thats all sound advice. i managed to snag that d80 though, with a really nice 18-155 lens for a locely price of 450, the lens on ebay on it's own is selling for 230, so i'm really pleased.
keep comin with the advice though, cos everyone has something to add that i didnt already know. i know you can keep learning about this stuff all of your life and thats the beauty of it, it's not a 'course' that you take and then you know everything.
..and yes, i will try to not ever ever use the auto anything, and i do know that blahhblahhyakkatyschmakkaty is a term, my boss uses it, or something like it, regurarly... not a lot gets solved when he's around....
ooooo getting a bit excited now.

toymaker

good on you its a fantastic camera!