calling all photographers

[speedplay]

Jenn wants to get me a digital SLR for my birthday ( I've got a feeling she may be feeling guilty)
Its going to be my first outing into the world of photography that isnt a point and shoot (but I am a quick learner)

She has said that the maximum is budget is £400 and its going to be staying with me for a fair while as I want something to learn and grow with.

Any ideas guys?

[Jabba]

The best Canon or Nikon you can get for the money :thumbsup:

You might get more camera for your money with other brands though, e.g Olympus.

[maviczap]

(but I am a quick learner)

Says who :p

[speedplay]

Says who :p

Jenn, it only took 3 attempts till I got the right hole...;)

[fizzwheel]

The best Canon or Nikon you can get for the money :thumbsup:

Agreed

Personally I'd go into Jessops or somewhere have a look at as many cameras as you can, have a hold of them and see what the controls feels like etc etc.

Dpreview.com is quite handy as they have pics taken on each camera so you can compare like for like, but the site is a little heavy going.

With that sort of budget you may well find you can get a kit / starter pack. i.e Camera bag, couple of lenses, memory card etc etc.

Dont skimp on the memory card either, get a decent sized and speed one. Again ask in Jessops or whatever camera shop you go into and they'll help you with this one. Remember also that it isnt all about Megapixels, its about the lens on the front of the camera to.

This is the kind of thing I'd be looking at given your budget

http://www.jessops.com/online.store/products/76461/show.html

Plenty of scope to grow into the camera and you can always upgrade / add lenses at a later date.

IMHO.

[SV-net]

If you get a Canon body with the EOS system you can get some really good deals on the lenses, in fact all of the old 35mm EOS bodies share the lens fittings. There are plenty of 35mm Canon EOS bodies old and cheap now so you could buy a kit and just use the accessories on your new SLR! I upgraded from a film to digital and kept all my lenses, filters etc because they were all the same. I dont know if the Nikon is the same in this respect.

[philbut]

Yep, you can generally get more lenses etc second hand with Canon as they are by far the most popular, followed by Nikon. I have an Olympus E500 which uses zuko lenses. It is a very good camera, but most people just go for the canon brand as they believe they are better. I think unless you are a pro ANY DSLR for £400 is gonna be better than you ever will be (a bit like a modern sports bike) so think about what accesories you might want for it and try and get them thrown in. i'd say if you don't want to keep on spending maybe try and get a package with two lenses (standard and 40-150 or similar), as unless you go down the telephoto route (you a bird watcher?) this should be enough for most people.

EDIT - like this:
http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/Olympus-E-520-ZUIKO-Digital-ED-14-42mm-ED-40-150mm_W0QQitemZ130326438221QQcmdZViewItemQQptZUK_C amerasPhoto_DigitalCameras_DigitalCameras_JN?hash= item1e580fa14d

[Filipe M.]

The best Canon or Nikon you can get for the money :thumbsup:

You might get more camera for your money with other brands though, e.g Olympus.

Agreed

Personally I'd go into Jessops or somewhere have a look at as many cameras as you can, have a hold of them and see what the controls feels like etc etc.

Dpreview.com is quite handy as they have pics taken on each camera so you can compare like for like, but the site is a little heavy going.

With that sort of budget you may well find you can get a kit / starter pack. i.e Camera bag, couple of lenses, memory card etc etc.

Dont skimp on the memory card either, get a decent sized and speed one. Again ask in Jessops or whatever camera shop you go into and they'll help you with this one. Remember also that it isnt all about Megapixels, its about the lens on the front of the camera to.

This is the kind of thing I'd be looking at given your budget

http://www.jessops.com/online.store/products/76461/show.html

Plenty of scope to grow into the camera and you can always upgrade / add lenses at a later date.

IMHO.

Good advice here. ;)
Fizz, I've read some bad reviews on the D3000 (some people stating the image quality wasn't as good as the D60 and previous cameras with the same sensor), but I guess those were pre-production cameras and to be honest I haven't looked since. Anyway, might be worth looking into a few more reviews. I'd try and make the jump to the D5000, but I understand that might be slighty out of the £400 budget. The sensor is worth every extra penny though (and it's not because of the megapixel count, it's the inherent quality).

As for dpreview, it used to be my reference website until I read some things I didn't really like and made their reviews sound more like another sales plot than anything else. :( The review of the new Canon 7D is one of them, it comes out very well in their review, yet they missed a shedload of obvious failures that are plaguing users everywhere. A quick google search will find some.

Everybody knows I'm a Nikon fan (and I smell of wee, according to Jambo), and the truth is they've served me well. They have their flaws, and I'll be the first to point them out when they're deserved, but they have a lot of merit to them. And the same with Canon and pratically every other DSLR in the market right now. A bit like cars, there isn't a really bad one in the market, just some are better at some things than others. Canon and Nikon will give you the largest range of accessories should you want to upgrade in the future, the other ones might give you more bang for the buck but limit your options in the future. As they've said before me, go into a shop, pick a few up and see how they feel in your hands, because it'll change even within the same manufacturer: I love the D300, get along well with the D90, and can't get to grips - pun intended - with the D5000. :roll:

As for lenses go, that amount of money will get you the usual 18-55 kit lens, which while not being excellent, will do just nicely thank you very much (check out my Porsche picture in the December photo competition for proof of what you can do with one). From then on, it's only a matter of money and deciding which way you want to go from there...

Shout if you need more advice, there's a lot of great collective knowledge around the .org, but as usual, at the end of the day, advice and opinions are what they are... and the post count won't really help you decide who knows what they're talking about and who isn't. ;)

Oh, about memory cards, and this is just my opinion (and some pros in the business, but they don't count ;) ), SanDisk or Lexar are the way to go, reliability and speed wise. SanDisk Extreme III (30 MB/s Edition) are considered the top dogs, and if you're shooting burst mode at 4 or 5 frames per second you'll see the difference to a slower card. If you find them too expensive (and they can be considered as such when you compare prices to "normal" cards), Ultra II are also a good bet.

[Scoobs]

Jenn, it only took 3 attempts till I got the right hole...;)

Dpreview.com

Is it only me who saw the funny side of that?

PS good luck with the camera hunt.

[Jabba]

Is it only me who saw the funny side of that?

No, but you're the only one who felt the need to point it out* ;-)




*Unless there's only two of us who noticed it. In which case I'm worried.

[Littlepeahead]

I love Canon and the EOS range can be used as a point and shoot to make it easy, as you gradually learn what the different settings mean before getting more adventurous.

Regardless of what you buy, remember to spend just a few quid on a clear filter for each lens as that way you only scratch the filter which is much cheaper to replace.

Always remember to switch the camera off when you change lenses. It's easy to forget when you are new to camera with chamgeable lenses but the static just loads your sensor up with dust and it's a pain getting it cleaned.

And HAGGLE after Christmas. If you are spending £400 then see if they will give you a 4 or 8 gig card for the price of a cheaper one, or the filters, or a spare battery, or a big discount on a bag. Point out you could probably get things cheaper on line but you have the cash now. It pays to be cheeky, even in Jessops.

Here's what my local camera shop are offering:

http://www.cameraworld.co.uk/ViewProdDetails.asp?prod_code=PON08B000064&Cat_Code=5&Subcat_Code=51&prod_name=Canon%20EOS%20450D%20&%2018-55%20IS

[kwak zzr]

i think i got a good deal online for mine but i did see and handle the camera first off in Curry's, the lense advise is good in the above posts, jessops are very helpful and even fitted the lense to the camera body and let me have a play in the shop :)

[speedplay]

Jenn has been reading this and has added it to her own research:rolleyes:

It seems the main contenders are:-

nikon D3000

or the

cannon EOS1000


Is there much between them?

[TC3]

I love Canon and the EOS range can be used as a point and shoot to make it easy, as you gradually learn what the different settings mean before getting more adventurous.

Regardless of what you buy, remember to spend just a few quid on a clear filter for each lens as that way you only scratch the filter which is much cheaper to replace.

Always remember to switch the camera off when you change lenses. It's easy to forget when you are new to camera with chamgeable lenses but the static just loads your sensor up with dust and it's a pain getting it cleaned.

And HAGGLE after Christmas. If you are spending £400 then see if they will give you a 4 or 8 gig card for the price of a cheaper one, or the filters, or a spare battery, or a big discount on a bag. Point out you could probably get things cheaper on line but you have the cash now. It pays to be cheeky, even in Jessops.

Here's what my local camera shop are offering:

http://www.cameraworld.co.uk/ViewProdDetails.asp?prod_code=PON08B000064&Cat_Code=5&Subcat_Code=51&prod_name=Canon%20EOS%20450D%20&%2018-55%20IS
That is very bad advice. Why would you put a cheap filter in front of a lens? All it will do is reduce image quality and increase the chance of vignetting (dark corners). I personally just attach the lens hood to protect the lens from knocks as well as improve contrast. Never have and never will use a clear filter which can often attract reflections of light as well as affect contrast. I only attach good quality circular polarizer filters when need be or ND filters. If you feel you must use a clear filter look at the slim type from the respectable brands but in all honesty you wont need them. However if you KNOW you will be taking pics somewhere where your lens will be covered in crap then thats a different matter i guess.
I do advice spending a few quid on a good lens pen instead and not to use a cloth to clean lenses

[Filipe M.]

Never have and never will use a clear filter which can often attract reflections of light as well as affect contrast.

Any flat surface you place in front of the lens will cause light to reflect back and forth between the sensor and that surface, which will cause these effects (ghosting, mirroring and contrast degradation). With film, sometimes using a clear UV protection filter would actually improve contrast and colour, but since digital sensors already have UV protection built-in there is no need for that anymore.

This is even more problematic in any situation where you have light sources in your frame, like lamps in night street shooting, and especially if you're using (cheap) uncoated filters, where your light sources will appear mirrored on the opposite side of the photo. To make matters worse, it's not a vertical symmetry line, it's a diagonal one, so any lamps that are on the bottom half of the picture will appear as UFOs in the middle of the sky on the other side.

This said, I tend to use decent clear filters when I'm shooting at the beach to try and stop salty water spray from reaching the lens front element... even with all the care in the world, the spray will always get there.

[Littlepeahead]

When I said a 'cheap' filter I mean in comparison to the cost of replacing the lens (L series Canon lenses in my case), not cheap as in low quality filter. I'm often sat on the ground at the edge of a cricket pitch where dust is a problem, even with a lens hood.

My colleagues occasionally borrow the camera and the one thing I've noticed it that because they are used to their compacts, where you switch off the power and the lens slides back and is protected, they often forget to put my lens covers back on, so the filter helps there too.

[Filipe M.]

When I said a 'cheap' filter I mean in comparison to the cost of replacing the lens (L series Canon lenses in my case), not cheap as in low quality filter. I'm often sat on the ground at the edge of a cricket pitch where dust is a problem, even with a lens hood.

L series... okay, even a multicoated Tiffen will be cheaper to replace than that. :D