What Digital SLR for under £1000?

[Nonsuch]

My son is slavering over my Nikon D3000 and wants me to upgrade so I can pass it on to him.
Any recommendations ? The Cannon EOS range or another Nikon spring to mind.

Thanks for any recos.

 

[resnikov]

Nikon D7000 ?

 

[Lasse]

The Nikon D7000 should be really good. Nice big body, 100% viewfinder, great image quality, ... If I had £1000 that I can miss, I'd go for that one. + you can keep on using your lenses without adapter
If my hands were a bit smaller, I'd consider the Canon 550D or 600D. It's smaller, lighter and also has great image quality and HD video.
Basically all recent Canon and Nikon dslrs appear to have great image quality and some nice features. The way it feels in your hand and the size of the viewfinder are the most important differences imo.

 

[Nonsuch]

The Nikon looks nice. Should I get the 18-105 lens as well?
Cheers guys

 

[Minotaur]

PC Pro, my gadjet bible rate the Nikon D3100. It is their A List one. They think it slightly better than the Canon. From reading the review I do get the feeling that the price has had an effect because they do not like some of the lack of features.

If you are going for your first DSLR, which brand would you go for? Canon seemed to be the choice, but Nikon etc seem to be gaining ground. One of the big problems for me is that my SLR choices, do not seem to translate to DSLR. What I really want is the Practica MTL5 of the digital world.

 

[robin wood]

I reckon lens makes more difference than body. All modern Canon or Nikon DSLR are limited by lens quality rather than anything else. Spend money on lenses. I have 40d which is very nice with canon 85mm 1.8, sigma 30mm 1.4 and sigma 10-20mm for the wide stuff. It depends what you want to photograph really. Reasonable £300 primes give sublime pics comparable to L series zooms if you don't mind taking a step of 3 forwards or back to compose your pic.

 

[mrcairney]

Robin speaks the truth.

I have the relatively old workhorse the Canon 350D body, but some of my lenses cost more than 3 times what I paid for the body.

I would suggest with that budget you go for a full frame body (Nikon or Canon, they are both excellent) and maybe 2 or 3 very good quality lenses based on what the subject will be.

Perhaps a 50mm (or a nifty fifty as they are known) at the 'portrait' end of the scale. Then perhaps a 24mm - 105mm to cover the rest.

 

[robin wood]

I still use my ancient 300d as a back up camera and the 300d with a good lens will way outperform high end camera with a cheap lens. Expensive cameras don't give better quality they give better handling, how it feels in the hand, how quickly you can flick through the menus and how many gadgets and widgets it has (will you use them all?) Good quality glass gives good pictures.

 

[mikeybear]

Just bought a EOS 600D as I also have a 600 and a few lens including a 100-300 which has just become a 160-480 with the 1.6 mag factor of the digital body. about to go to Africa so I want the long lens.
First impressions very good , apart from the auto focus in video mode which seems very slow and always defocuses ie blury image before it locks in.
BTW by class 10 SD cards and don't pay high street rip off prices ie about £40 for 16GB you an get them around £20.

Cheers

MB

 

[rik_uk3]

This is something I really want to get into, maybe a night school photography course? Anybody done one? I would invest in a good digital DSLR if I knew what I was doing.

Optics etc, my old Fuji A340 3.2 takes better shots than my daughters 8mp camera, presumably Fuji used better optics?

 

[drewdunnrespect]

hiya rik

now if you want to get in to this sort of thing the best piece of advice i can give you is go to your local camera shop and look at nikons and cannons also pentax and panasonic. now in my opinion the nikons are best the reason for this is i had a play with all the above makes with in my price range but the nikon just felt right.
now what i mean by this is when i picked up the others they felf fiddily and not that easy to take pictures but the nikon d3000 felt right and so i went with it and havent looked back.
Now you really need to do the same also do you want to be able to do video as well because some of the cameras do video as well personally i didnt cos i belive if you want a video cam by a video cam but thats just me

allso in regards caurses i one am teaching myself photography and am also going on a caurse in january with the local colledge so i will let you know how that goes when i have started it

drew

 

[rik_uk3]

I'll have a look at my local college and see whats on offer. Since retiring I'm getting really bored so I might look at doing something like an 'A' level for fun and to get me out of the house. I've tried to find voluntary work but there is none about that would suit me. Just got back from an overnighter and am sat in front of this bloody thing again...I feel a stiff G&T calling me and I'll watch a film.

 

[mikeybear]

Hi drew & rik

One advantage of a digital camera is that you can take lots of photos and try alot of different settings and you can see the results quickly. This is how I learnt, lots of trial and error. nowdays I normally get it right fairly quickly.

Cheers

MikeyBear

 

[Lasse]

The Nikon looks nice. Should I get the 18-105 lens as well?
Cheers guys

You already have the D3000 with one or more lenses, right?
If the 18-105 is a kitlens, it could be a bargain to include it.
I'd personally rather buy the body + a 30mm prime lens to start with (from Sigma fe). I like primes, mainly because of the shallow depth of field that can be had with low f-values, but also because lots of primes give very good image quality for the price. Really depends on the type of photography you do.

This is one of my shots with an old canon dslr and a prime with f/1.8:

Most zoom lenses don't have f-values low enough to get the depth of field as shallow.

 

[Johnnyboy1971]

I've been using Canon for about ten years but recently swapped to Nikon, for no other reason than like Drew said the feel of them. Now I'm not saying my D3100 is better than my EOS 350d for image quality but the size if the Canons screen was a limiting factor.

I don't use kit lenses but pay good money for good lenses, canon I use sigma and the Nikon I now have a Nikkor 18-200 VR.

It's been said that a good lens on a cheap camera will be better than a cheap lens on a top end camera.

 

[Minotaur]

I've been using Canon for about ten years but recently swapped to Nikon, for no other reason than like Drew said the feel of them. Now I'm not saying my D3100 is better than my EOS 350d for image quality but the size if the Canons screen was a limiting factor.

I don't use kit lenses but pay good money for good lenses, canon I use sigma and the Nikon I now have a Nikkor 18-200 VR.

It's been said that a good lens on a cheap camera will be better than a cheap lens on a top end camera.

That was the thing with a Practica, cheap camera but the lenses you could get for it.

I look the look of the Canons if for no other reason than a lot of professionals seem to use them, and there is a lot of kit out there.

 

[Welshwizard]

My wife bought me the new Nikon 3100 for Christmas 2010 and I,m really pleased with it , had Nikon film slr,s before that and lenses are same mount but autofocus will not work so I had been thinking of a Sigma tele. not sure how how many of the functions I will get.

 

[cave_dweller]

Wifey bought a D90 recently, and it's a cracking tool for the money. At under £600 for the body, you get a fair chunk of change to spend on glass - which is a much harder question, IMO...

 

[Puddock]

Wifey bought a D90 recently, and it's a cracking tool for the money. At under £600 for the body, you get a fair chunk of change to spend on glass - which Is a much harder question, IMO...

The above is very sound advice - the D90 is a superb camera and only £525 at the moment (www.camerapricebuster.co.uk) will autofocus with a vast majority of Nikon lenses.

You could then pickup a Nikon 50mm f1.8 (£70) from the bay and you have a pretty good starter for ten coming in at £600

I would then look at picking up something to cover the lower end (18-50mm) for landscapes or (70-300mm) for portraits or wildlife - you have to make a choice here as either of the aforementioned will cost you around £400 - £500.

 

[malente]

Wifey bought a D90 recently, and it's a cracking tool for the money. At under £600 for the body, you get a fair chunk of change to spend on glass - which is a much harder question, IMO...

+1

I have one too, cracking camera! Lenses are far far far (let me repeat: far) more important.

Have a look at Ken Rockwells (kenrockwell.com) site if you go for a Nikon. He is the authority on Nikon. Many tips there and recommendations for lenses.

Good luck

Mike




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