looking for a good camera for $600 maximum

fisburken

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Im new to photography, cameras and all this, and are looking for a good camera for a beginner, have $600 to spend on all the equipment. I am planning on taking nature photos and maybe some macro pictures. Im either buying a canon or nikon, but have no idea whats good and what I need, help me please :)
 
Film? Digital?

Compact? Bridge? DSLR? Mirrorless?

Crop sensor? Full frame?


Your question is far too ambiguous to answer. It's akin to asking "What's the best car I can buy for $$12,000? I plan on driving on the highway and in the city."
 
Nikon D5300 with its kit lens 18-55mm VR is a good start close to your price range.
If still too expensive the Nikon D3300 with its 18-55mm VR kit lens will be excellent too.
 
Id get a used d300 and the best lens I could afford with the remainder, personally. I understand why youd want a new body with warranties, but you can get more for your money used.
 
"What should I buy?", and, "How do I learn?", are the two most common questions on a forum such as this. Being the most common, they are also the most answered. And, though there are dozens of potential cameras to select from, the actual recommendations stay with a few in your price range.

Check the archives for more information from earlier posts which will be relevant to your needs/wants; DSLR vs Bridge Camera for my needs Photography Forum
 
There are really two parts to what you want.

You're not shooting action photography (sports, wildlife, etc.) so you don't necessarily need a camera with an advanced auto-focus system and extremely fast continues burst rate. That means you're in luck in that you don't need to spend more than $1000 on just the camera body alone -- all entry level bodies will be sufficient for your needs.

But the second part is the lens. Macro photography (close-up images) are more about the lens optics than the camera body. There are some zoom lenses that have a "macro" range -- typically you zoom to a long focal length but use a very close focusing distance. These lenses will let you get images at 1:4 scale or perhaps 1:3 scale. But a true "macro" lens will let you get down to 1:1 scale (which means the size of the object captured on the sensor is as large as the object is in real life. A US penny has a diameter of about 19mm. The sensor in an APS-C DSLR (all DSLR cameras from Nikon, Canon, Sony, Pentax, etc. in a $600 price range will have APS-C size sensors.) will measure roughly 15mm x 23mm. (give or take a few fractions depending on who makes the sensor.) That means a 1:1 scale image of a penny would just barely fit in the wide direction (with about 2mm to spare on each side of the penny) but the penny would not fit in the vertical direction (having a couple of millimeters cropped off the top and bottom of the penny. So that's pretty close.

"dedicated" macro lenses are probably around $400 and up and they provide fantastic detail resolving capability at very close focusing distances.

But there are far less expensive ways to get close-up shots.

You can use:

Close-up diopters: This looks like a filter -- it's just a thin piece of optical glass that threads onto the filter-threads on the front of the camera lens. It's sort of like a person wearing reading glasses in that it lets you achieve focus at much closer distances than would otherwise be possible. They are one of the cheapest ways to do close-up photography. The downside is they work a bit like a magnifying loupe... you'll notice excellent optical quality in the center of the image, but the quality will slightly degrade as you get out toward the edges and corners of the frame. This is because it's just a single element of glass and, like a prism, the glass starts to disperse the wavelengths of light into a rainbow spectrum (hold a magnifying loupe over a sheet of black & white newsprint and you'll notice the lets toward the edges of the loupe have red and blue fringes even though you know the print is "black and white" ink. That's the color spectrum separating from dispersion.

Canon makes a couple of high-end close-up filters (naturally they're a bit more expensive -- but still cheaper than real macro lens) which has 2 elements instead of 1. The second element is configured as an achromatic doublet. It's job is to reverse the effects of light dispersion to correct the image quality out near the edges of the frame.

Extension tubes: This is another fairly low-cost method to achieve close-focusing. This option is a little more expensive than the close-up diopters mentioned above, but still rather cheap and affordable. The "extension tube" is exactly what it's name says... it's a hollow tube which mounts between the camera body and camera lens. It's sole purposes is to position the lens farther away from the camera body than it would normally be. By doing this, the entire focus range of the lens is shifted much much closer (it also has the side effect of enlarging the image). These come in different lengths (e.g. 12mm long... 25mm long, etc.) and while you can buy a Nikon brand for a Nikon camera or a Canon brand for a Canon camera, you can also get them from 3rd parties (the Kenko brand is fairly popular).

Reversing adapters: This is cheap, but it has a downside. This device "threads" onto the filter threads on the front of the camera lens... but provides the bayonet type mount needed to attach to your camera body. It literally allows you to connect your lens so that the lens is facing backwards. The downside, however, is that since these lenses are electronically controlled, there is now no communication between lens and camera body. This is not a particularly popular option for obvious reason.

There are more alternatives... I've only listed the cheapest options. The first two (close-up diopters and extension tubes) are the most popular.

This would allow you to get into close-up / macro photography without breaking the bank. If you find you're really into it, you may want to buy a true macro lens later.

BTW, when shooting extreme close-ups, you will (a) always want to manually focus the lens and (b) you WILL want a tripod. The zone of focus (depth-of-field or DoF) will be extremely narrow when shooting close-up shots. This means that once you focus your subject, you cannot let your body move by so much as a millimeter closer or farther from the subject (which is impossible to control in a hand-held shot). A tripod will make life so much easier.

And lastly... avoid "bundles". Canon or Nikon offer camera bodies in a "body only" package (which also includes a battery, charger, USB cable to connect the camera to your computer), a neck-strap, and some software and documentation. OR... a kit package that typically includes everything in the "body only" package plus just one lens to get you started. They never include a memory card.

But there are vendors that will create "bundles" which typically includes a lot of junk-grade accessories (accessories that are so bad that they actually create problems. Really bad filters... really cheap junky tripods that break easily... they often offer additional "lenses" that aren't really lenses (they are screw-on focal-length reducers or focal length multipliers which they try to pass off as "wide angle" lenses or "telephoto lenses" (never attach any "lens" to the end of your lens.) They build these bundles to pump-up the perception of value. I would stay away from such bundles.

If you buy the camera from a dedicated local camera store (not a big-box store that happens to sell cameras) then you can usually rely on them for post-sales help (because the sales people are often quite knowledgeable about photography and the cameras they sell.) These stores are not very common. In my entire city, I only know of about 3 such stores that are reputable. If you buy a camera from a big-box store, the clerk at the photo counter knows how to operate the sales register and they probably don't know anything about the camera other than what they can read on the side of the box.

B&H Photo and Adorama in NYC do online sales and are reputable. They sometimes have "bundles" but their bundles are a bit more realistic (they might throw in a low-cost camera bag worth about $10-15... or maybe they throw in a memory card or a spare battery -- things that might actually be useful.)
 
I agree, it's good to start with something like the Canon T5i 650D and 18-55IS refurbished etc. from B&H or Adorama. Or maybe look at the mirrorless camera options from Sony
 
Film? Digital?

Compact? Bridge? DSLR? Mirrorless?

Crop sensor? Full frame?


Your question is far too ambiguous to answer. It's akin to asking "What's the best car I can buy for $$12,000? I plan on driving on the highway and in the city."
Used Mazda3
 
You should be able to find a D3300, or D5300 used around that price. You can also look into getting Sony A6000 too.
 

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