Home Forums Gear Photography Lookin to buy a new camera

Been lookin to buy a new camera ,I have the Nikon D40 in my sights ,But before I pull the trigger on it, I was wondering what else is available in that price range ,I am pretty much camera illiterate ,I would like some thing user freindly but takes good photos ,My daughters are in basketball so rapid fire pictures are a big bonus as are action pictures ,They are usually moving fast and my Canon A570is just dont quite fill the bill ,Any help or recomendations would be appreciated ,,Thanks Skeeter

going to tell yah, even having a camera that costs more than what you are looking for(a Canon 40D), if you want REALLY good indoor action shots, if your gym is lit anything like ours look at dumping serious money into a serious lens that will gather light, shutter speed means lil if your lens isnt gathering enough light to take a decent picture....with the Nikon D40 or Canon rebel or Olympus or whoever else makes a DSLR in about that price range the lenses make a much bigger difference than the camera.......i would stick with either the Nikon you mention or the comparable Canon due to the much larger selection of lenses.....

I went through the same process of deciding between Nikon and Canon a couple months ago. In the end I went with Canon for several reasons but the most important were that Canon has a larger variety of lenses and they are typically less expensive than the comparable Nikon lenses.

You could get a Rebel XTI for less money than a D-40 and have a 10mp camera vs a 6mp D-40. The Canon 85mm f/1.8 lens is comparatively inexpensive and has very fast autofocus, a lot of people use this for portraits and indoor sports shooting.

I've done quite a bit of reading about the different camera's since and I think a rough general consensus between Nikon and Canon would be that Nikons body's are slightly nicer and Canon lenses are less expensive, and of equal or better quality. Nikon's flash system is better than Canon's.

With DSLR's people seem to think that lenses are a more important issure since you will probably end up using the lenses you buy through a couple different bodies.

But in the end both will take great pictures. I'm having a great time with mine and even sold a couple guns to buy different lenses. Good luck with your choice.......................DJ

I went through this as well last year and went with Canon because of the lens selection they offer...the lenses they offered seemed to fit my style of shooting. Bodies come and go and the companies leap frog each other with who's body is better but the lenses are what is important.

The D40 is a great camera, but any of them will do a grand job of taking pictures. One problem with cameras, is they have so much "gee whiz" items added,it is confusing. (can you say competition?) Canon has about 60% of the market, Nikon ~30,and everybody else is scrambling for the left over 10%.

They put features in the cameras that even the pros don't know how to use, or even knew that they needed them.

Us duffers are recipients of this instant fog factor!

The D40 with its 18-55mm "kit" lens is a marvelous camera, and will do anything you may reasonably wish.

One hint: Don't get overwhelmed with all the features. Full auto works just fine, till you learn more. Read the manual. The default programs are there for people like us. Use them.

Pick a couple of programs you think will be useful, learn them, and as you need to, learn the others.

As for lenses: for a one size fits all, the Nikon 2 lens kits offered with the D40 will cover most of what you will wish to do. Beautiful optics! Otherwise, let me suggest a look at the Tamron f/2.8 28-75 (I think) zoom lens. A bit expensive, but no more so than a factory lens. One neat feature of digital cameras is you can increase the sensitivity to make up for "slow" lenses.

Go to KenRockwell.com, and read his tutorial on the D40. It will answer some of your questions, and he does Canon, too.

Good luck. Photography is a magical pastime!

+2 on the Canon 85 1.8 as a great indoor sports lens for the ducats!

rb

The 28-75 is the old film lens. If you want a Tamron then you will want to look at the digital version (17-50 f2.8). It's a stellar lens at that price point. It's actually less than the Canon 17-85 IS and the BQ and IQ is better.

He may have meant this one:

http://www.tamron.com/lenses/prod/2875mm.asp

The 17-50 is a significantly better choice for most wanting a standard walk around lens. Unfortunatly the 28-75 is not getting good reviews.
When choosing Tamron remember that you can always have issues as they reverse engineer instead of licensing.
Here is a link to the 28-75 service updates. If you pull up the "Nikon" page you will see that the 28-75 will not AF with the D40.

http://www.tamron.com/about/updates.asp

the Tamron 17-50 has my vote too. I've had very good results with it in both the Canon and Sony/Minolta mount(s).

that one +/- a 70-200 f4 might be the ticket for the $$ we're talking about....

We have the Tamron 178-50 marketed under the Promaster label. sdame exact lens almost 2/3 of the price and a lifetime warranty. We can stick it on a canon XS body for you so it will focus just fine. Give you a great body and it would be 699.99 for the body, lens, extra battery, case, 2 pack of 2 gig sd cards and a UV filter.
As always we would not reccomend anything we did not feel was a great product and this Tamron/Promaster lens is the real deal!!
Call me if I can help

I just got the Olympus E520 on the reccommendation from the guys at Cameraland. However based on my money and other factors involved, I got it a Circuit City. It was 30% off so I picked it up for $450.
So far its a great camera and from what Joel told me, Olympus makes the largest selection of digital specific lenses.

What sold me was looking on cameralabs.com

Best antidust sensor
live view
face detection
Image stabilization in body not lense so all lenses are IS.
AF in the body not in the lense like some.

And because the Joel told me that was the one to get and mentioned the above also.

Cameraland has never swayed me in the wrong direction and don't think they did this time either.
Circuit city will get my business until they are closed, solely because of the prices. After that, hands down Cameraland has my business. They have great customer service, Great prices, and have always treated me well.
Great bunch of people with a wealth of knowledge.

Kique

Have been switching back and forth between Canon and Nikon since 1956 and still can't decide which is better. Along the way I've had a few Hassleblads and Leicas thrown in also just to make it interesting. Finally a few years back settled down on Nikon's and currently use some D1x's (3 of them). I don't think you can go wrong with the Nikon as I believe overall they build the better camera,but it all basically boils down to personal preference and they both have their own personalities. I would suggest you try to find a place that has both and see which just naturally feels better to you as to be the perfect tool they are just like the perfect rifle,the features and fit have to be for you alone. While I believe the manufacturers lense's naturally work better on their cameras and neither Nikon nor Canon can be faulted on lense quality I also own and use both Tamron and Sigma lenses and find the build quality and optical quality of their top lenses to easily be the equal for considerably less money. Both Sigma and Tamron produce lenses sold under other labels which are also even less expensive and equally as good. The faster the lense the better the autofocus performs is somewhat of a rule of thumb but also the faster the lense the more costly it is. For low light and sports you need the lense speed for focusing as you can get very good strobes today that do a factastic job especially the ones that are fully integrated with the camera systems electronics. The Nikon D40 is a good start as I'm sure the equivalent Canon would be I just don't have much current experience with Canon. In any case whatever you get get adequate memory for it as you will have a tendency to enjoy the freedom from processing Digital gives you and take MANY more pictures.

You might want to look at the Panasonic FZ 30 or FZ 50 has worked well for me. but the Cannon my son has is pretty hard to beat but of coarse its more money
manitou

yooper, a lot of good advice has been posted in the this thread. And if you think that fire arms have there fans boys, man wait until you read the forums on cameras.

One thing to to take into account is that you are marrying into a family, first the body, then the lens line up. Nikon glass can be high, but canon just took a price increase well. Fast glass is not cheap. I would go to a few local stores and handle them if you can. I went through this last year and went for with nikon (canon's lens line up was hard to pass up, and I still catch myself second guessing myself!)

Do not get caught up in the mega pixel, war, if you are never going to print large, and I mean large (see http://www.kenrockwell.com/tech/mpmyth.htm then look for an affordable body that suits you.

The one thing that tipped me to nikon (and the lens thing still stings) was the nikon functionality visa vi auto ISO ( http://luminous-landscape.com/reviews/cameras/nikon-d3-d300.shtml.

This may seem like a small point, but it tipped the scales for me.

lastly I would suggest that you if go canon, look for a good deal on a used 40D, and skip the rebel line. (I can forward an email sent to me by a pro canon shooter as to why they lock out some auto focus functions at apertures above f 5.6). Or save a little money and get the canon 50dif you go the canon route.

The nikon D90 is, by all accounts a great camera ( on par with the canon D50)

I would suggest that you read, read, read and handle things before you buy. Camera bodies fall like rocks in price on the used market, good, fast glass, holds it value better.

lastly, you might find these sights of some use:
http://www.dpreview.com/
http://www.fredmiranda.com/#

http://www.naturescapes.net/phpBB3/index.php

Unless you plan to take pro quality photos and print posters I would aim a little lower. My first thought would be the Casio EX-FH20 or F1. These are crazy fast shooting cameras designed for sports. I believe they shoot around 40 fps. You can then choose the best one out of the group. If I remember the F1 may even be better and cheaper.

"The EX-FH20's 20x zoom makes it the ideal camera for sports and outdoor photography. In addition to beautiful still images, the EX-FH20 is capable of capturing slow-motion video at up to 1,000 fps."

It can be found for under $400 and yer done.

One more suggestion might be the Panasonic LX3. It has a really fast F2 lens and is wide angle. Great for less than ideal lighting and no flash required. The wide angle helps capture more of the court. The camera will fit in your pocket and takes near DSLR quality photos.

frames per second mean squat if your lens isnt pulling in enough light to run a fast shutter speed.....shooting daylight soccer and baseball games is a whole different animal than shooting in a gym with crappy light.....most the time with my Canon 40D im running less than max FPS cause i need the shutter to stay open long enough to gather enough light that the shot isnt to dark.....isnt to hard to get decent basketball shots so long as your close to the action and dont have to extend your zoom.....near impossible to stop the action in volleyball though.....

I decided it was time for an upgrade and last week I went with Nikons d90...WOW, impressive camera.The 18-105mm kit lens with VR does an excellent all around job. Cannon does have the larger market in lenses but Nikon manages to keep the pros happy. I also grabbed the 50mm f/1.4 which does a remarkable job. Sigma offers some great lenses that are beating both Cannon and Nikon in reviews.

I only wish I can afford a fast 80-400mm tele. I'll prob grab the 70-300mm soon.

+2 on the Olympus E520. My first digital camera was an Olympus. The second one was a Minolta. Both had their good points. The Olympus E520 was a little pricey but I'm here to tell you that you absolutely can not go wrong with it. Here is the very first picture I took with it (no editing done). Enjoy:



I had just purchased camera on the way to Florence (SC) to visit the outlaws (wife's parents). We passed a little town out in the middle of nowhere named Cheraw. I don't know why but this old wardbird (C47) was parked at the little airport. I went to the control shed/building and asked for permission to take some pictures. The guy said I had 15 minutes.

Back to the camera. You'll love the Olympus - go get it.