Hi everyone. I'm shopping for a DSLR camera. I've found myself in more situations than I like where I wish I had a high quality camera to capture a moment. I would like to find a camera that covers as many of my needs as possible. I will be shooting just about everything... family photos, portraits, indoor sports, outdoor sports, sunrise/sunsets, boating, and nature. I also find that I enjoy candid shooting at weddings. I am assuming I will need multiple lenses, which I am okay with. I just want to make sure I am buying a camera that I can use for years to come. I hope to find a good deal on Black Friday so I have 10 days to figure out what I want. Please share your recommendations! And bear with me... newbie here!
Thank you so much!
Tristan
Ok, generallly I recommend you set a budget first and work within that, but since you mentioned in a follow up posting your not considering budget yet, for what its worth:
There are a lot of different DSLR's to chose from, generally I recommend you stick with either Nikon or Canon to start with - nothing against Sony, Pentax, etc - they make some fine cameras. However the strength of the used equipment market for Sony/Pentax is generally not as strong so generally speaking I think your better off looking at Canon or Nikon to start with.
As to Canon vrs Nikon, I chose Nikon because of the two when you compare cameras in the same class Nikon will almost always give you the better image quality. Canon's advantage generally lies in larger buffers and slightly higher frame per second shooting speed, but the differences there are normally not a huge difference. So of the two I found Nikon a better fit, since the vast majority of what I use a DSLR for is still images and image quality was the most important factor for me personally. That having been said a lot of people use Canon, love Canon and prefer Canon, but since I'm a Nikon guy I'm going to speak about Nikon. I'm sure folks who shoot Canon will weigh in as well to give you more information on their choice.
Since your looking for a entry level setup I'd recommend you look at the 3x, 5x and 7x series. While Nikon does make a lot of full frame offerings the full frames are generally more expensive and given the types of shooting you said were of interest I think you'll get the best return on your investment by staying with DX rather than FX, at least for now.
The 3x series, D3100/D3200 are very nice for entry level photographers, but I generally recommend them for folks that are going to be only taking pictures infrequently. They have a wonderful guide mode that will ask you some questions and do most of the setup for you, allowing you to concentrate on pointing the camera and clicking the shutter and letting the camera make most of the choices for you as far as settings. You can still do the manual mode if you wish, but really the biggest advantage to the 3x series is this guide mode so if your going to be getting "serious" about your photography odds are good after the initial learning phase you'll probably want to use manual mode and the guide mode feature probably won't get used much after that.
The 5x series, D5100/D5200 is a very good place to start for entry level - they are fairly inexpensive and allow you to have more budget to spend on lenses as opposed to the camera body, which in the long run is generally better - a really advanced body with a poor lens is not going to give you anywhere near as good of results as a less advanced body with a really good lens. The 5x series features an articulating screen, which can be very handy for lining up shots at odd angles. The 5x is a good all around camera with excellent image quality and good low light performance. I use a D5100 myself.
The 7x series, D7000/7100 are a little more advanced than the 5x series. Here you get weather sealing which is nice if your shooting outdoors in bad conditions (just make sure your lenses are weather sealed as well), two SD card slots, and a built in autofocus motor. The autofocus motor built into the body allows you to use the older, non AF-S lenses so if you keep an eye on
ebay sometimes you can pick up some really great lenses pretty cheap, assuming you don't mind going used. The 7x series also has a lot of the controls you need tied to buttons on the exterior of the camera, so you can more quickly and easily adjust things like ISO or shutter speed without having to call up a menu system, which can be an advantage particularly in sports shooting. The 7x series does not have the articulating screen and will be more expensive than the 5x series.
Given what you've said so far I'd recommend you look at the 7x and 5x series to start with, I chose the D5100 because for me it was a great balance between price an performance, but if you have the budget a 7x series would be an excellent choice as well.
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