Opinions on these parts together...

[BrandonS]

I hate just asking people what I should buy. I know people will just suggest what they have for the most part. So I've been lurking the forums here and reading reviews of different products online and comparing them to what I'm expecting in my purchase. 3 weeks ago I came into this looking at just megapixels. I've since learned that the numbers on the lenses actually matter and what they mean.

I decided early on that I was going to go with the Nikon body over the the Canon. I'm not sure why, but reading reviews I just seemed to lean towards them. I was going to go with a D40x, but have since decided against it because of the viewfinder (has the grid in the D80) and the exposure bracketing offered on the D80. Also the whole deal with limited lenses for the D40x and the expansion of fingertip availability of manual adjustments on the D80.

I was going to also go with a kit lense with the biggest zoom I could find, but have since discovered through you all that a F/3.5 is marginally slow for a lense of that price and it seems lenses with smaller ranges get better results as the optics are of higher quality (when in the same price range). So I was searching lenses and since most of my photography with my cheap P&S was snapshots of the wife and I at places, my car, my fish tank, and things relatively close to go with a wide angle lense with a faster speed.

In any case enough of the rambling on. What I have in my shopping cart awaiting pay day is:
Nikon D80 (body only)
Tamron 17-50mm f/2.8 XR Di lense
Hoya 67mm Circular Polarizer (isn't multi-coated, but that's too much for me)

Any opinions, mostly on the lense and what lense might fit me better. Thanks.

 

[evo5gsr]

Looks good to me. Seems like you know what you're doing. You can always go for a 50mm if you want something faster.

 

[Saint-Brown]

it does sound good, Happy shooting

 

[JimmyO]

I have a d40x and will have to agree that it has its weaknesses. And if the d80 was in my price range i would of got it. But for the money i dont think you can beat the d40x.

But it sounds like you know what your talking about, and you know what you want, so your pretty much set