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DSLR Suggestions

Superman

Superman

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Joined
29 Jan 2008
Messages
1,802
Location
Cheltenham
Hello all,

It's been a while since I've been on Ukaps website & forum!

Things have changed a bit since I was doing planted tanks but thought I'd turn to my trusted people of Ukaps for some advice!

I've never had a DSLR camera and am planning on getting one to take snaps of our first baby & throughout his early years. I used to have a bridge camera and got used to all of the manual settings so I expect I'll be doing that again with the DSLR (rather than using auto all of the time).

I have heard from some people at work that the stock lens can be a bit useless, so I could do with suggestions on what sort of camera & lens I should be looking for.

I don't really have a budget (as yet) but don't want to spend mega bucks so something on the inside of £500?

So I'll be using it indoors and outside but mostly family sort of pics.

Any suggestions and advice would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,
Clark
 
I have a Canon 1100D and I can't fault it. It is a perfect entry- level DSLR. The 50mm 1.8 lens is a fantastic piece of kit, and about £55 from China.
 
Hi mate.
Not sure why people have said the standard kit lense is poop, if for what your needing one for then theyll be perfect.
I own 2 but the entry level nikon d3200 is brilliant and the standard 18-55 mm lense that comes with it takes some brilliant shots.

You can always add to it as time goes on

Sent from my D6503 using Tapatalk 2
 
I have the d3200 with kit lense and I don't have any real issues. I can see were extra lenses would be useful but I can get around this most of the time. I asked the same question a few months ago and I'll give you the best advice I was given then. Most of the entry level cameras are basically the same and far outstripe the quality of the best cameras five years ago or the film cameras of a dacade ago. Just go into a Camera Shop and spend a couple of hours holding and playing around with the different models in your price range. Getting a camera that feels right to you is better then any of the specs. After buying play around with the kit lense a bit and see what are the limitations, determine how many times you face those limitations (no point of buying a £500 lense because once every so often you want to take a picture of a birds nest) then if you decide it's worth it buy a specfic lense for those situtatations.
 
G5? Slightly smaller sensor than DSLR but still fantastic picture quality and not as big as dslr so more likely to take on a day out. I bought mine for exactly same reason.
 
It all depends on how serious you want to get with your photography. Kit lenses can be a mixed bag with regards to soft images, newer camera bodies with higher pixel counts will accentuate this dramatically. There is also a large second hand market for pro glass and there are some nice gems to be had, I can recommend Grays of Westminster as a good starting point for this.
 
HI,very difficult to make a option Canon, Nikon, Sony, whatever...
But it can be easy, here is a tip:
- can you see the brand of the camera when you look at a image (here in the forum)? You can't?
It's because they are all very good, so my advice is go to a shop and try which brand feels more comfortable for your hands.
What we can see is when there are very good lenses and that makes a huge difference!

But whit a basic kit (18-55mm) and you will cover most of 85% of the situations. (travel, kids,etc)
Mid range and pro cameras take more shoots per second, better construction and more options (but they are also bigger, heavier and more complex to deal with)
With time you can be addicted to the camera and buy better and extra lenses. (a macro, telephoto, etc).
You'll know when that time comes!
One more tip to save some coins:
- Choosing the previous model (and not the last one) saves a lot of money (20 to 40%) sometimes the quality is very similar.
cheers
tiago
 
Kit lenses are not junk.

Generally, expensive/premium lenses have their use when you need larger aperture.
And that's pretty much about it. They are nice to have. They may make job easier.
And people can brag about having them. But most people don't "need" them.

In most situations where you can take pictures using a kit lens without too much hassle,
the resulting images will look as good as those taken using a premium lens.
 
Thanks to everyone for their input.

I went to a local independent camera shop today and he suggested the Canon 1200D or the 100D. The also showed me the Nikon D3300.

I'm reading up into the 100D and D3300 as I wasn't sure which one to pick at the same price point. I liked the 100D's weight/feel and the touch screen but the Nikon seemed slightly more professional looking with higher number of pixels.
 
Nothing you can do with a touch screen that you can't do with a button. But your nose can certainly do lots of things with a touchscreen when your concentrating through the viewfinder, unless you use it like a point and shoot. If you use a screen protector to protect the back glass with the Canon it might render the touchscreen useless. The Nikon 3300 on the other hand is 24Mpx and has no anti-aliasing filter over the sensor which like my D800E provides maximum sharpness but at the cost of an increased risk of moire in certain subjects eg. bird feather details (low-pass filters intentionally blur the image before it reaches the sensor to reduce the effects of moire), not really a problem to be honest as you can work around it (very very rarely see it on my images). If you put cheap glass on this body it will show every flaw, but as I said above you can get old manual AI and AI-s (Nikkor) lenses for a fair price that are every bit as good optically as their modern equivalents. To put this into perspective I chose to take an old manual 20mm f/3.5 made in 1979 (better at handling flare than the f/2.8 version when shooting into the sun) away on holiday with me than cart around my 14-24 f/2.8, apart from saving my back from the weight it has hyper focal markings allowing me to set the f-stop and dial the distance on the lens barrel and not worry about the hit and miss of autofocus in poor light or getting a landscape focal distance right first time. Old lenses won't meter on the 3300 but you will get focus confirmation, the lack of a meter means you have to ballpark the settings manually, chimp, then adjust, no biggie as the more you do it the better you get at understanding the cameras capability for gathering light (I have to do this with old Olympus glass on my e-510). If you chose the right glass to begin with they will last a lifetime, certainly a lot longer than the body will before you upgrade.

:)
 
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