Looking to get a good digital SLR camera

Suppose this is really for oss.. But if anyone else knows about camera's then please add your comments too...

Looking to get an affordable digital SLR camera before I fly out to Pinas next year. Now, because I am saving up for other things the last thing I am going to be doing is spending £600 or more on a camera. I was thinking £200, but after a quick scout around the web I am thinking £300 is more likely.

After all, need a good camera to shoot the wedding shots:wave:

Any thoughts on what to buy or what to stay away from?

Have you thought about second hand on ebay with a bit of good advice from a friend?

There are really only two choices Nikon or Canon, Pentax and Sony make good cameras too but I know less about them.

I'll post a decent long reply later on, gotta do some work just now

Sure oss I had a look around Ebay, though not much time spent there. Some sellers are simply looking to flog their stuff for the same price as it is to buy brand new

So far, I like the Sony Alpha 390 but I think with Sony they produce cheap cameras but their lenses are more pricey than Nikon and the likes.. Anyway, get to work...

I have been after a Sony W370 for a while now, and Tesco keeps upping and downing the offers all the flaming time.

I check it out at £129, and when I got the dosh, the bugger has gone up to £173....

Happened twice already.... Peeing me off.... Right and proper....

Ok, the gizmo has 14 megapixels, and all the features you would expect from a dearer camera.
Obviously no interchangeable lenses, but the zoom is quite adequate, and it is fully automatic, so even a technophobe like me can use it without any fears...

Sean's looking for a step up in image quality compared to compacts, he's got a reasonable compact currently I think, sadly no amount of digital darkroom work will make up for a tiny cramped sensor with too many megapixels and vast amounts of noise reduction.

Sadly the DSLR market is going the same way megapixel, megapixel, megapixel when no one is printing at the sizes that would benefit from the resolution, for the record 8 Megapixel is way more than most people need for the biggest prints they will ever create, I mean the likes of 10 inch by 15 inch prints.

The problem is that he's not going to get a DSLR new for less than 300 quid with lens

The three choices are

Sony Alpha A290 Digital SLR Camera plus 18-55mm

Canon EOS 1000D with 18-55mm DC (non IS) K

Pentax K-x Black Digital SLR with 18-55mm Lens

I have no experience of the Sony or Pentax cameras but I have been an extensive user of Canon digital cameras in the past so I would naturally be biased towards them.

However it is important to understand that 'all' of the Digital SLR's you can buy have fantastic image capturing ability even these cheap ones. When you choose a Canon or Nikon or Pentax you are actually choosing a range of lenses not choosing a camera.

Once you have a couple of decent lenses that's it you are pretty much tied into that brand of camera from then on, camera bodies are cheap, lenses aren't, at least good ones aren't and the lens will have a far greater influence on your photos than the camera body ever will.

However at this end of the market the kit lenses are all going to be much of a muchness, the Canon 18-55mm DC is the non image stabilised (IS) version and is not as good as the later one which has IS however it is adequate as a kit lens. Review of the later version.

The Sony lens is a bit of an unknown I can't find any reviews that I would trust.

Pentax seems ok but not as good as the Canon Review here.

Remember fewer megapixels are usually better unless you are extremely rich and can afford the top end tech. Lenses are for life if you have a good one, camera bodies can be replaced every few years.

Last point is that for a little over 300 quid you can get an extremely good previous generation Canon or Nikon camera maybe even with the later 18-55 or earlier 17-85 zoom, better build quality (mag alloy body) than the new bottom end plastic camera too.

It's a tricky decision, at the end of the day any of these three camera would be extremely good for a beginner.

I've deliberately left out the questions I would usually ask which would be what type of pictures are you going to take what kind of subjects are you interested in Photography as a hobby or will the camera just be a tool because I think I know what Sean wants to take, portraits, family and landscape any of these cameras will be excellent for that.

P.S. I left Nikon off the list because the cheapest I could find was 400 quid minus the lens

Right now I am thinking of getting the slr sooner rather than later. My uses would be for the wedding but also taking shots from mixed martial art training and fights. So I am also thinking I need to get something better than the current crop of cameras I've been using, where an hours shooting is wasted because all the pictures are blurred..

And I was thinking I could use the camera for a lot more until next years wedding and honeymoon snaps. So, I would get used to the camera and developing my skills in photography

Right now though, I need a kit that will last a year or more. I doubt I will be buying more lenses for the time being and from what I saw of Sony and Nikon on YouTube - I liked

Well for the mixed marital arts you may often be in low light so the more modern camera's with good low light performance should be considered, the Nikon's are better in that respect but the Nikon will cost a lot more, you should budget 600 quid if you want the low end Nikon, the Sony range are not renowned for low light performance whereas the Nikon's and Canon's are pretty good these days with Nikon leading by a little bit.

The reason is you wan't the camera as sensitive as possible to allow you to get a fast shutter speed, the problem is that cheap zooms don't let in a lot of light so you are hampered two ways by having to use high ISO to overcome the small aperture of the lens and to overcome the need for fast shutter speed to freeze the action.

What specific camera's were you thinking about Sean?

Box brownie...???

I had several of them and a couple of these Kodak Brownie 127's

For the younger members

An old medium format camera.

Well, so far today I have been going towards the Sony Alpha 390, £350 instore at Jessops but £325 on Ebay (including p&p). Mixed Martial arts is not really confined to low light settings, if it is a fight then the cage (where the fights take place) are usually lit up very brightly and in the gym my friends run, the lighting is between quite bright to mid level. But yeah, there are some dark spots in the gym (as the overhead lighting is all over the place).

I also ummed and ahhed at the Nikon D3100 which has £40 cashback making it £399 in real terms. this kit has a VR lens and has the advantage over the Sony range as it also records full HD videos (which would be great for the MMA site I also run).

I have also read in a review that the Sony range use the same fittings as the old Minolta lenses so that collecting some second hand lenses could be quite easy (I know of a good second hand camera shop in Manchester).

But I should also stress it is not just for me to use! Come next year, I will need to pick one of Joys cousins to be the "cameraman" at the wedding, so showing him/her how to use it properly will be something I will need to do... Or I might get one of my friends coming over to do that also. So I will be expecting mixed results from the photo's on that day.

If you can stretch to it the Nikon D3100 would be the one to go for, I missed the 40 quid off deal which is also on at Warehouse Express £398 there a quid difference The VR is worth it when you are starting out, same as Image stabilization, it eliminates camera shake at low shutter speed but can't stop blur due to subject motion, indeed IS or VR is really an essential these days makes such a difference to so many shots!

I did some photography at a Muay Thai boxing event last year in Scotland, I had been asked by my friend to take some shots for his mate and as I had never done anything like that kind of event before I went along and took some shots.

I was a bit disappointed as I really struggled to get a fast enough shutter speed top freeze the action, I don't have the shots to hand just now but I'll try to dig a couple out. I was using a very old camera at the time and ISO 800 was about as high as I could go with both my lenses being limited to f4 maximum aperture there often just wasn't enough light but I still got a few good shots, I was told that they liked mine better than the official photographer and I've been invited back this year, if I go back I might try to do it as a commercial event not done anything like that for over twenty years

Any of these cameras will have a green button Auto option, if you hand the camera to a novice then just set it to Auto and let teach them to press the shutter button, 80% of the shots will be fine and Nikon has the best flash system so even with popup flash you should get good results on auto.

Nikon and Sony are backwards compatible with all their old lenses but many of them are completely manual i.e. no Autofocus plus modern DSLR's are not easy to manually focus as the viewfinders are optimised for clarity not focusing, but yes you're right Sony is Minolta and you should be able to get some good old glass.

If you do acquire a second lens other than the kit zoom you should get a Prime lens i.e. non Zoom and on a 1.5 or 1.6 crop camera like the D3100 you want to get a 35mm f1.8 or wider, then you will see what the camera is really capable of, i.e. jaw dropping clarity The reason I say 35mm is that if you multiply by the crop factor you get the same field of view as an old fashioned standard 50mm lens, the most useful lens you could own

PS Keeps doing that my paragraphs get mixed up, just corrected it

Fuji don't do DSLR's they do all in one thingies Alan i.e. non interchangeable lenses and they don't have an optical viewfinder which is the whole point of a Single Lens Reflex camera.

The purists, like me, call it EVIL (Electronic Viewfinder Interchangable Lens) but the Fuji is actually just EVF (Electronic ViewFinder)

As far as I know they are pretty good but I am not sure, they might have a smaller sensor than APS-C, not sure though

From what I have seen so far, the Nikon is the better model but the video from the Nikon is pretty much cancelled out by the noise of the auto focus whirring and clicking away in the background, with no way of using an external microphone to cancel it out.. So for now, with both cameras on my mind it purely comes down to still shots! I guess the determining factor will be price, already I have destroyed my previous £200 budget and am looking quite seriously into £350+

They both seem to do ok when it comes to low light and I will be playing round with whatever camera I pickup to test it out in all sorts of scenerio's..

One big plus in favour of the Sony model is the tilting LCD screen it has on the back, this would come in very handy to take shots from over the cage wall Though, how often I would use it is debatable - though you never know! The Nikon does not have this, and it gets very good reviews for being there in a budget SLR.. Though, again I think it wil come to my budget, as I don't want to be silly with my money right now (even though I would love too)..

Sean regards the Sony Alpha 390, I would read at least the Pro's and Cons on this review http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/sonydslra390/page5.asp

The bits that would worry me are

Soft JPEGs at all ISO settings
High ISO performance not on the same level as direct competitors
Smallest viewfinder of any APS-C DSLR

Several handling issues as well.

Really the D3100 would be the best option given the pricing is similar.

I won't comment on Video at all as I personally believe that Video has absolutely no place in a Digital SLR

I would tend to agree with you Keith, that's why even though there is a lot of money in it these days (at least in the UK) I would not take up wedding photography again, when I used to do it I was too young to realise the responsibility I had taken on, luckily I had no major disasters back then but even with today's equipment it's all too easy to screw it up.