buyin DSLR - please help

glitchu1 · Apr 1, 2007

hi, first of let me say sorry for probably the 1,000,000th 'what camera do i get?' thread, but i have gone to a lot of places and talked to people and it just confuses me more, so i thought it try asking. I'm a first time photographer, I'm a student graphic designer at the moment and I'm interested in doing some photography and want something decent because there will probably be times when i need to use photos in designs.

So im looking to get something kind of cheep...originally i was going to go with the EOS 400D, then i heard it had a bad kit lens, but the enthusiast kit cost as much as a Nikon D80 so i thought maybe i should just get that?

now this is the part that REALLY confuses me...(btw i live in Australia so the pricing is in AUD) I'm not sure about lenses, because I'm a student i don't really want to buy more than one lens at the moment, the D80 i can get for $1,890 or so with a "[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]Nikon 18-135mm AF-S[/FONT]", how does that sound? I thought that one sounded pretty good, but then i read people saying it isn't, and to get either the 18 - 200mm or the 18 - 55mm but they don't come with the camera and cost more...so does anyone have any advice to give me? id greatly appreciate it as I'm a rookie and hardly know anything about lenses.

Thanks in advance

gmarquez · Apr 1, 2007

Hi glitchu1,

You will find many helpful people here.

First of all, if you are budget limited, are you sure you want to get a DSLR right now? There are quite a few "point-and-shoot" cameras that take very good pictures, and also have almost the same flexibility as a DSLR. Would that be a viable option?

As far as the D80 and the 18-135, yes there is a lot of debate with the 18-135; however, as an owner of a D80 and an 18-135, I can tell you that I really like my 18-135. It has a good enough range (wide to telephoto) that I can use it as my only lens while traveling (which is good because it *is* my only lens). It producers sharp pictures, seems to focus relatively fast, and it's comparitively well priced (not expensive). It's two main drawbacks are a bit of distortion on the wide end (kind of like a very mild fish-eye), and noticeable "vignetting" on wide shots (mostly with shots of blue skies).

glitchu1 · Apr 1, 2007

Thanks for the reply, do you think maybe i should look at getting the Nikon D40x? It says the camera doesn't have an auto focus on the actual camera unlike the D80, will that be a big problem do you think?