Great site.
I’ll repeat my request to the mods to set up a sticky with links to camera review sites.
Threads like this pop up all the time and a little foreknowledge will help any OP.
Your link led me to the D7000. I think there is a new champion on my wish list.
Oh, yeah, I would definitely go D7000 over D90.
$1,400 vs. $1,100 doesn’t seem like a great deal of difference, and you get the 1080 video and longer recording time with the D7000. Sounds like a winner to me.
Really, because when he says:
I think the point is that $500 isn’t a really low budget.
I was trying to make a point about the skill mattering more than the equipment, but I completely muddled things up when I said what I did about the budget. As budgets for DSLRs go, 500 is, indeed, on the low end of the budget, since some people spend thousands on them. In actual fact, 500 dollars for a camera and a lens is a low budget.
But even if someone came here saying that they had a six thousand dollar budget, I would still tell them the same thing. Low light performance is definitely an issue (it’s just one I rarely ever consider since I do almost all my photography on pretty days or with a speedlight.) Aside from that, though, all DSLRs will take professional level pictures in the right hands. The same way a great fisherman can catch a trophy bass on a 10 dollar kids’ rod with a picture of Batman on it, and a talentless rube can spend thousands of dollars on gear and catch nothing but malaria.
‘The only person who could miss with this gun is the sucker with the bread to buy it.’
Yes, but you have to consider lenses as well. You aren’t getting landscapes or bird shots with a 50mm lens. In reality, a complete basic kit for photography, and by that I mean wide angle lens, fast prime, a long zoom, and a flash is going to run you $700-800 at least. And that’s assuming you go with a used body and the cheapest lenses.
We aren’t talking about the difference between a cheapie kit lens and an L-series. We are talking about basic tools to take pictures.
Well, body only, at B&H, the price difference is $1200 for the D7000 and $800 for the D90.
Amazon.
And that’s a conservative estimate. However, you don’t need to go wide to get great landscapes. You can do it with a 50mm, depending on the situation. I have landscapes taken with a 200mm lens–they don’t have to be taken with a 24mm or whatever. It depends on the situation.
But this is somewhat debatable. A used D40 with the 18-55 kit lens will certainly produce publishable images in the right hands, and that focal length is the most useful one (in my opinion) on a DX (crop) sensor. I do think that provides the hobbyist with the basic tools necessary for photos. For most beginners, I think that combo will work well, unless they really need to push the telephoto end of the lens or need wide apertures (the latter being more of a concern for me than the former.) It is nice to have a lens at f/2.8 or faster in the bag, not only for the low-light capabilities, but for the shallow depth of field. You add a cheapie 50mm f/1.8 on top of that, and you’ve got a pretty good kit that will handle a lot of situations.
I admit, at this point it’s a bit splitting hairs and defining what one means by “basic tools.” I wouldn’t want to be stuck with just a D40 and a kit lens, but I think for a lot of people that would be more than enough. When I started my photo career, I just had one body and an 85mm f/1.8 a cheapie Sigma 24mm f/2.8, and that was enough to take some great pictures, some of my favorites from my career (although that combo did run more than a grand, even in the film days.)
I assume you’re looking at kits with a lens, then.
Yes. Considering that Nikkor lenses can cost multiples of the kit price, it’s best to get a kit to start with.
I’m making a pin hole to put on my Nikon.
How are you doing this? With a lens cap?
Body cap, actually. Gonna take some trial and error. (Or one could Google it all, I guess.)
A T-mount might work, too. I’ll try that next.
:smack: That’s what I meant.
I have (just) got a Canon 1000D (Rebel XS) with the kit 18-55 lens- they’re going cheaper since the 1100D came out. Still have to pick up a cheap FFL. But that wasn’t my question:
I also have an old microscope - anyone have any experience whatsoever with using microscope objectives (glued in a lens cap, I think, usually) for macro?
Just the body cap would give a nice wide-angle pinhole camera. If you have extension tubes, you could add them between the body and the body cap to give a narrower angle.
Good idea, I’ve got some old (30 yrs!) ext tubes in T-mount for some preset lens I used to have. I thought I would try that after the body cap.