What is the best dSLR camera out there right now?

[jhonmartinvish]

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[12sndsgood]

kind of a broad questions. should have asked, what is the best dslr in your budget range and then gone on to tell us what type of photography you wanted to do. diffrent model of cameras are better at diffrent things. there are a lot of good cameras to choose from. also, is that budget for everything, or is that what your wanting to spend on the camera body alone and you have more set aside for lenses and acces? have you been out to any of your local stores to play with any cameras yet?

 

[SCraig]

Ambiguous answers for an ambiguous question. There is no single "Best" camera. The "Best" at low-light, for example, is not necessarily the best at sharpness or dynamic range or anything else. Regardless, $2000 won't get the best one out there, not even the best body without any lenses, no matter how "Best" is defined. It will get you a good one, in fact it will get you a great one, but it won't get the best.

How do you tell a good one from an OK one? Read a lot. Read reviews, ask questions, learn the trade. Start on this forum. There are a lot of highly experienced people who will help, but you're going to have to narrow things down a bit.

 

[Overread19 7]

As said you'll have to put some criteria on the table. An overall budget is one thing, but a DSLR setup is much more than just the camera. In some areas of interests certain DSLR types are better than others (or more favoured at least); whilst in other areas you'll want to put far more budget into lighting setups; and over all that you've also got to consider the lenses you are going to use which will directly affect the image quality you have to work with far more than the camera body.

So give us some idea of what areas of photography interest you; or at least what kinds of subjects you hope to work with. From there with your budget we can give some meaningful answer which should help you get a setup which will meet your demands the best.

 

[2WheelPhoto]

According to bestbuy, their "kit" is the best. Nikon nor Canon matters, just get the kit

 

[bhop]

depends..

 

[sapper6fd]

The best DSLR Camera is the one you have with you. Unless you left one at home, in whcih case the one at home is the best DSLR.

If your a little more specific about what you want to shoot, then we can be a bit more specific.

 

[KmH]

[h=2]What is the best dSLR camera out there right now?[/h]

In what format? Though a $2000 upper limit doesn't get you into the 'best DSLR out there right now' ball park.
Medum format DSLRs are generally consider the 'best' and cost upwards of $60,000.

Many DSLR owners have more money invested in a selection of lenses than they have invested in their DSLR camera body(s).

Any Nikon, Canon, Pentax, Olympus, Sigma, or Sony DSLR that fits your budget will be a good quality camera that is as user friendly as any DSLR camera gets.

 

[Solarflare]

Well, AFAIK the best DSLR for under 2000$ is right now the Nikon D7000, at least if you want to buy new. Either way it has any feature a professional would demand from a camera. Thanks to being APS-C format, it can use the smaller and cheaper Nikon DX lenses. There soon will be a 2k$ FX Nikon camera, the D600, since it was just announced and will be just 100$ above the 2k$ barrier, initially. You always still need lenses, though, and FX lenses are more expensive than DX lenses, albeit there is also a lot more lenses to choose from and you can use even very old lenses, from eBay or elsewhere. Some of these lenses will even still be manual focus.

I dont know what the equivalent from Canon would be, but its probably also quite good. Canon and Nikon offer an extreme number of lenses, including a large number of older lenses you can get from eBay and elsewhere.

Pentax is a special company. Very old, and has nice features in their cameras like weather sealing, sensor based image stabilization etc. All in all not fully competitive to Canikon, but not too bad. Mind everything not Canikon has less lenses offered and these lenses might be expensive and inferior quality, too.

Sony is still quite young in the camera market and frankly all over the place. Not really fully competitive to Canikon either, though. And I think they have given up on DSLRs, they build mirrorless now. They just released a 3k$ mirrorless, the A99. Its a bit hard to explain to newbies why Sony isnt very successful with really high quality cameras. Basically they focus on making cameras good looking in magazines, instead of making cameras that are fun and practical to make photographs with. Sony is compatible with Minolta stuff and they recently bought Zeiss and since then get a lot of new Zeiss lenses, which are of excellent quality.

Panasonic has to be mentioned as well. They also do DSLRs. They are inferior in quality though. But do great video (just like Sony, Pentax and Olympus).

I am not aware that Olympus actually builds real DSLRs anymore. Back in the old days of film, they certainly did. And some time ago they had FourThirds, which are DSLRs with an even smaller sensor than APS-C. Because of lack of demand, these cameras no longer exist. There are also Micro Fourthirds now, which are the same sensor size, only mirrorless. There apparently isnt too much demand for these either now. Probably mostly because APS-C sensors are cheap as dirt as well now.

Sigma builds Foveron X3 stuff. First problem is, it has like zip low ISO tolerance. ISO 400 and higher will quickly give you quite awful image quality. Even some compact cameras are more tolerant. Also, these cameras kind of suck completely in every other aspect but just the picture quality itself. So no good autofocus or good build quality or anything like that. In short, great for landscapes, but dont try action (sports, children). The current DSLR is just at the 2k$ limit right now. It started at 10k$ a year ago. I dont know the lens quality, but I know everyone agrees the compact version DP1M and DP2M have awesome, perfect lenses. The DP1M has an 24mm equivalent and the DP2M a 45mm equivalent. Both cameras and the DSLR, of which the name escapes me right now, have the same APS-C sized 15.4 Megapixel Foveon X3 chip. This is full, real resolution, not emulated like with all other digital cameras (except the 3ccd ones in some video cameras).

Fujifilm had some years ago DSLRs, but they are actually compatible with Nikon lenses. They have now started their own brand of mirrorless APS-C cameras like the X-Pro1 or the new X-E1. There are only very few lenses to choose from so far.

I think thats all companies that offer consumer DSLRs - or no longer do so.

 

[gryffinwings]

Well, AFAIK the best DSLR for under 2000$ is right now the Nikon D7000, at least if you want to buy new. Either way it has any feature a professional would demand from a camera. Thanks to being APS-C format, it can use the smaller and cheaper Nikon DX lenses. There soon will be a 2k$ FX Nikon camera, the D600, since it was just announced and will be just 100$ above the 2k$ barrier, initially. You always still need lenses, though, and FX lenses are more expensive than DX lenses, albeit there is also a lot more lenses to choose from and you can use even very old lenses, from eBay or elsewhere. Some of these lenses will even still be manual focus.

I dont know what the equivalent from Canon would be, but its probably also quite good. Canon and Nikon offer an extreme number of lenses, including a large number of older lenses you can get from eBay and elsewhere.

Pentax is a special company. Very old, and has nice features in their cameras like weather sealing, sensor based image stabilization etc. All in all not fully competitive to Canikon, but not too bad. Mind everything not Canikon has less lenses offered and these lenses might be expensive and inferior quality, too.

Sony is still quite young in the camera market and frankly all over the place. Not really fully competitive to Canikon either, though. And I think they have given up on DSLRs, they build mirrorless now. They just released a 3k$ mirrorless, the A99. Its a bit hard to explain to newbies why Sony isnt very successful with really high quality cameras. Basically they focus on making cameras good looking in magazines, instead of making cameras that are fun and practical to make photographs with. Sony is compatible with Minolta stuff and they recently bought Zeiss and since then get a lot of new Zeiss lenses, which are of excellent quality.

Panasonic has to be mentioned as well. They also do DSLRs. They are inferior in quality though. But do great video (just like Sony, Pentax and Olympus).

I am not aware that Olympus actually builds real DSLRs anymore. Back in the old days of film, they certainly did. And some time ago they had FourThirds, which are DSLRs with an even smaller sensor than APS-C. Because of lack of demand, these cameras no longer exist. There are also Micro Fourthirds now, which are the same sensor size, only mirrorless. There apparently isnt too much demand for these either now. Probably mostly because APS-C sensors are cheap as dirt as well now.

Sigma builds Foveron X3 stuff. First problem is, it has like zip low ISO tolerance. ISO 400 and higher will quickly give you quite awful image quality. Even some compact cameras are more tolerant. Also, these cameras kind of suck completely in every other aspect but just the picture quality itself. So no good autofocus or good build quality or anything like that. In short, great for landscapes, but dont try action (sports, children). The current DSLR is just at the 2k$ limit right now. It started at 10k$ a year ago. I dont know the lens quality, but I know everyone agrees the compact version DP1M and DP2M have awesome, perfect lenses. The DP1M has an 24mm equivalent and the DP2M a 45mm equivalent. Both cameras and the DSLR, of which the name escapes me right now, have the same APS-C sized 15.4 Megapixel Foveon X3 chip. This is full, real resolution, not emulated like with all other digital cameras (except the 3ccd ones in some video cameras).

Fujifilm had some years ago DSLRs, but they are actually compatible with Nikon lenses. They have now started their own brand of mirrorless APS-C cameras like the X-Pro1 or the new X-E1. There are only very few lenses to choose from so far.

I think thats all companies that offer consumer DSLRs - or no longer do so.

I agree, for the money, the Nikon D7000 is probably the best camera you can get, but then it all depends on what kind of photography that you do.

 

[sovietdoc]

So 7D is worse than D7000?

 

[2WheelPhoto]

So 7D is worse than D7000?

Depends on who you ask.

 

[Derrel]

Nikon D7000 is an okay choice for many people. It has great technical image quality for an APS-C sensor camera, and has the advantages of the NIkon system behind it, meaning truly excellent metering, flash metering, and lenses. Canon's 60D has been impressive to *me* in terms of features it has, MP count, files, price, heck of a camera the 60D. I personally do not like the Nikon D7000's viewfinder system, but then I am really,really,really picky about that. The Canon 60D has a better finder image, and a cool articulated screen, auto-horizon, exposure simulation, 10x live view focusing magnification, and is priced fairly. I dunno...SOny also has some new cameras, like the A57...

If you're new, I'd say pick one, go with it.

 

[skieur]

Sony is still quite young in the camera market and frankly all over the place. Not really fully competitive to Canikon either, though. And I think they have given up on DSLRs, they build mirrorless now. They just released a 3k$ mirrorless, the A99. Its a bit hard to explain to newbies why Sony isnt very successful with really high quality cameras. Basically they focus on making cameras good looking in magazines, instead of making cameras that are fun and practical to make photographs with. Sony is compatible with Minolta stuff and they recently bought Zeiss and since then get a lot of new Zeiss lenses, which are of excellent quality.
.

Not so. Sony has been in video cameras since the advent of the first colour video cameras and in still cameras since the Mavica which came out shortly after the original Canon Xap Shot and before Nikon. The A99 is NOT mirrorless by the way but SLT. Only the NEX cameras from Sony are mirrorless. Sony by the way is in third place after Nikon and Canon, and stealing market from both along the way, so, it is rather silly to suggest that Sony isn't very successful.

skieur

 

[mjhoward]

I personally do not like the Nikon D7000's viewfinder system, but then I am really,really,really picky about that. The Canon 60D has a better finder image, and a cool articulated screen, auto-horizon, exposure simulation, 10x live view focusing magnification, and is priced fairly.

but the real question is, does your preference of it's viewfinder system trump the dedicated (unchanging) aperture and shutterspeed dials of the Nikon bodies?