Moving with the Times

[Garry Chapman]

Hi everyone,
Yet nother AoS member, these hobbies do tend to overlap.
I currently only have two 'point and shoot' cameras having used Olympus OM4 /OM1 previous to that.
I want to get started with a basic digital SLR and a couple of lenses to begin with. What would you guys recommend? I will eventually have upto £1000, but that will be further down the track.
All suggestions rude or otherwise accepted!!!!

 

[Hamish Gill]

i would look at the Nikon range of slr's possibly even second hand... a lot of the current lower range have superfluous (to most) features like video or articulated screens... useful on occation, but you have to pay for it. something like a nikon d60, or even a d40 should be able to be picked up cheaply. stick a nice tamron 17-50 2.8 on it and you have a very good combo...
add to that a nikon 35mm 1.8 prime and a nikon 70-300 vr and your set!

 

[Larry Bolch]

When doing your budgeting, consider that things like lenses and tripods are pretty much "forever", as in one time purchases. I shoot with a Nikon D700 and all the great lenses I bought in the late 1970s work beautifully on it. Camera bodies are digital devices, and tend to be replaced by far more capable bodies for the same price every few years. Buying used digital bodies presents you with two considerations. One, you are buying into old technology, and two, since it is now obsolete, it can be had dirt cheap. Lenses hold their value very well, cameras depreciate drastically.

This is not planned obsolescence like cars from the middle of the past century. It is not a case of the designer moving bits of chrome about and applying a "new and improved" sticker. Today's entry-level camera may well have better specifications and be capable of exceeding the image quality of a top-of-the-line professional camera of just a couple of years back. For this reason, the camera body depreciates rapidly.

It is a matter of weighing your needs, wants, level of enthusiasm, etc. against your budget.

 

[Hamish Gill]

An interesting point regarding backwards compality with old lenses... The d200 and fuji f5 that should both be relativly inexpensive s/h are both compatible with mf lenses as far back as nikons ai series... That gives you many options for older lenses.
The d90, d80 d70 and d50 are compatible with older af nikons ... A second hand d80 would be a nice inexpensive option and give you older af lens options...