Beginning low-light dSLR

[mightee]

Which is better for the newbie who's going to take a lot of photos in low light (with stock f/3.5 lenses): the Nikon D60 or the Olympus E410 and its magical TruePic III feature?

 

[Village Idiot]

Which is better for the newbie who's going to take a lot of photos in low light (with stock f/3.5 lenses): the Nikon D60 or the Olympus E410 and its magical TruePic III feature?

Neither. The D40/40x/60 use a CCD sensor which isn’t as good as a CMOS sensor for handling noise. The Olympus cameras use a small 2.0x crop sensor which is just as bad as, if not worse than a D40.

Nikon D90 and D300 use CMOS
Canon, pretty much all their cameras in the past 3-4 years use CMOS. 20d, 30d, 40d, 50d, 300d, 350d, 400d, 450d, 1000d, t1i, 5D, 5D MKII, and the pro cameras.

You’re not going to have a usable high iso, which is a must for when you’re photographing animate objects, with the first two cameras you asked about.

 

[dcclark]

Your best bet is really to grab the fastest lens you can: light-collecting ability is far more important than high ISOs, if you want to manage to get good quality low-light lenses. I think that a D90 plus an f/1.4 50mm would probably serve fairly well. Is there a reason you have to go with only a camera, not a new lens?

 

[Big Mike]

Just get a fast lens to go with whatever camera you get.

 

[EhJsNe]

a 50mm f/1.8 is a good MUCH cheaper option than a new boddy.

But if you were to go with one of the bodies you mentioned, Id go with the D60, or even better the d40. (Same camera, faster flash sync, which is something youd want to use in low light, just with a few less pixels and its cheaper)
You might want to go with the D90 for low light performance.