Just thinking of a few Christmas ideas and was thinking about a photography type hamper for my wife.

She likes taking photo’s in general with our compact, so I wondered if I could pick up an older DSLR to maybe kick start a hobby for her. Don’t want to spend too much to start with, so can you get an older camera for not much money???

a good cheap body is a canon 300d. a quick look on ebay would suggest yes, but I’m not sure if they come with the kit lens (folk will be on here shortly to tell you they’re useless, but they’re better than what you have).

an alternative would be a bridge camera (canon IS or similar), and some money on a photo course at your local college. I found the course got me taking photos a lot more than the kit did.

ps. I’m not a canon fanboy, I just know their stuff best

That’s what I was thinking, evening course, some sort of book and starter camera

You could pick up an old Olympus for around £100, I’ve even seen E-1’s the top of the range cameras going for less than £80.

I’d pick one of the smaller cameras though and I’d even look at something like a micro four thirds camera like a Panasonic G1 for around that price. But of course you will have to buy a lens separately.

The other place to look at is somewhere like London Camera Exchange, they do some good deals on second hand equipment.

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Panasonic-DMC-G10K-Digital-Camera-Black-/120804965299

this is a good price

The cheapest I’ve seen were refurbs from stores.ebay.com/olympusmarket. Supply is very patchy though.

+1 for the Canon eos300d.They go for between £100 and £200 depending on what extras they have.For example

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Canon-EOS-300D-Digital-Rebel-6-5-MP-Digital-SLR-Camera-Silver-lens-/270846208871?pt=UK_CamerasPhoto_DigitalCameras_DigitalCameras_JN&hash=item3f0fb12b67
The wife has one and it was good enough for a double page spread in BBC Nature Magazine. It’s “only” a 6.5 mega pixel camera but it’s all about how you use those pixels.

My first Dslr was a Nikon D40 and I would recommend it very highly. Haven’t checked but they must be close to that price second hand by now.

I would be interested in this too. I’ve been thinking about a DSLR for a while and have a tight budget but my concern over secondhand route would be the reliability of the camera and any warranty available.

Is the secondhand camera market full of nightmares or are they generally all good (apart from the obvious spares or repairs ones)?

sorry for the slight hijack

I’d say it’s worth spending as much as you can on the body – not suggesting you should lay out loads, but a proper bottom of the price range one could well have had a hard life, and camera bodies do have a limited lifespan. Something like a 300d, Nikon D40 / 60 / 70, equivalent Sony Alpha or whatever would be grand, but you don’t want one that’s at the end of its life.

That said, my D60 has been constantly abused for 4 years of mud, sand, dust and rain and shows no sign of needing replaced.

much like a 2nd hand car, a second hand camera is a bit of a gamble. I believe some cameras have shot ‘counters’ on them so you could see how much its been used..

Even so, my dad got a 450d shortly after I got mine. Mine has been to approximately 30 countries, mostly thrown in the bottom of a bag, its been through dust storms, bashed around, got wet, had hundreds of lens changes in grotty locations etc etc. It still works fine (although the rear screen is scratched and the flash is a little ‘sticky’). My dad may have taken a similar number of shots, but his cameras had the lens swapped about 5 times, and its been kept warm and dry, and only in the UK, at all times.

If my 450d has stood up to the beating i’ve given it, i’d be confident in buying a random example 2nd hand

I got a 300d body for under £90 about 20 months ago. Think mine may have been to a load of countries, chucked in a bag etc too! Kit lenses are super cheap on ebay.

Works fine mostly, occasional corrupted photos though, usually the first shot with flash, and then needs a turn off and on to get it working again! This happens maybe 1 in 30 shots with the flash.

Reviewing shots is slow and screen is tiny compared to newer cameras.

Overall I’m happy with the price/performance. Good way to dip a toe in the water and if you are able to shop around you’ll get a perfect camera body for the same cash.

People up there are saying spend money on Cameras, for me it’s the other way round, Lenses, Lenses, Lenses. The camera bodies are now cheap and cheerful but the lenses can be the expensive side of our hobby, I’m an Olympus 4/3 user and some of my middle of the road lenses even when buying them second hand were over £400.

But some of the kit lenses are good and are available relatively cheaply.

Although I recently sold a Mk1 1992 Canon 50mm f1.8 lens on ebay and it sold for 1.5 times the price of the same lens in Mk2 is available for on EBay!

Most cameras do have a shutter count in their software, all Olympus ones do and even the lowly cameras have around a 50,000 operations shutter life. I bought an E3 which was a little battered but has only done 14,000 operations it’s now done another 10,000 in the 12 months I’ve owned it.

I these situations I’m always tempted to say “Panasonic LX3” yes the lenses aren’t interchangeable, yes the sensor isn’t quite as big, but it has a lens better than most kit lenses, full manual control so you can learn how things really work, and you can use a flash. Plus it fits in a pocket.

Just an option…

Try these guys:

MPB Photogrpahic

Bought my Canon 400D from them. It was virtually as new and I paid just under £200 for it (body only). Top quality service.

What pepper said

a good body and naff glass is fairly pointless

an ok body and good glass, means you are getting the best from that body

the lenses stay the same within a given system, new ones come out but the old ones don’t become obsolete

bodies however change and are replacable.. they also see bigger reductions than lenses

think carefully about the system you want to invest in and remember its not only Canon and Nikon that make cameras

Will a brand new £100 compact camera not pretty much kick the ar$e of a £100 second hand DSLR or is it pretty much missing the point of getting into the DSLR market and learning how to use it?

I’ve got a Nikon D100 body you can have for around £100 if you’re interested?
2 batteries, charger, and 2 1GB Cf cards included.
You’re welcome to make me an offer by email!

Will a brand new £100 compact camera not pretty much kick the ar$e of a £100 second hand DSLR

No.

I agree with PePPer actually. Lots of lenses means you can take lots of different kinds of shot; there’s a lot of possibilities to explore. For me this is what photography is all about.

This seems to be borne out by reading forums – people get really excited about some new lens or other cos of the pictures they’ve taken with it. Body debates seem to be long technical debates about ISO performance and DxOmark.

Will a brand new £100 compact camera not pretty much kick the ar$e of a £100 second hand DSLR

No.

I like tech, which includes cameras but I don’t really understand what an older DSLR gives over a split new compact. Guessing a £100 DSLR is going to be 8mp max and a compact will be double that. For image quality I thought double mp would make a difference. Genuinely interested as it may prompt a purchase!!

I don’t know every compact, so as a generalisation I’d say an older dslr will allow you to buy the correct lens for the job you want to do without making do with a single jack of all trades lens. Secondly the dslr will give you the manual option for creativity and photography including off camera flash work.
You might not get the high level of image quality, my EOS20d doesn’t do too shabby a job, but you will learn how to take pictures and if you’re so concerned about image quality, you should be looking to be spending about 2k north of the 100 GBP in your budget.
Pixels aren’t the be all and end all, there’s a fair bit of marketing at work there.

Guessing a £100 DSLR is going to be 8mp max and a compact will be double that. For image quality I thought double mp would make a difference.

Sensor size, for a start. The bit of the camera that records the image is (usually) considerably larger in a dSLR, irrespective of megapixels.

Compare APS-C and full-frame (entry-level and high end dSLRs respectively) to the 1/1.25″ sensor in a typical compact.

From Wikipedia, with reference to that diagram, “The largest sensor currently equipping a compact camera should be the one (2/3″) on board of Fuji’s X-10 (announced on September 1, 2011).”

“Guessing a £100 DSLR is going to be 8mp max and a compact will be double that. For image quality I thought double mp would make a difference.“

Yeah, it’ll make most aspects of image quality worse, especially when crammed into a tiny sensor.

Small photosites mean high noise and low dynamic range. Small sensors mean limited ability to constrain depth of field.

An old £100 DSLR will poop all over a £100 new compact, and the number of pixels is a useless guide to quality.

For image quality I thought double mp would make a difference

No – people think more megapixels is better, so manufacturers stuff as many as they can into a tiny space, which really degrades the image because they interfere with each other. In a DSLR the sensor is much bigger, which means that the same number of pixels are much more spread out which in turn results in much better image quality.

DSLRs are much more responsive and focus much better too, so they are better to use regardless of MP or image quality.

Someone is selling a Canon for £150 inc lens in the ads section at the moment.

Yes, yes you can, right here!

Ian

Does your wife actually want a new camera? Is this just a typical bloke’s answer – more kit?
I’ve got three cameras: a DSLR, a Panasonic compact I bought for the quality, and an Olympus which is very limited but is waterproof and shockproof. I use the Olympus an awful lot – just carry it everywhere, because I’m not worried about it getting damaged. The DSLR takes technically better pictures, possibly because I take more care and think about the photos more when I’m using it, but ultimately it’s down to me and hence I’d suggest a book or course as being more likely to bear fruit. A course with an arty angle rather than one with a “which f-stop” approach would be better too.
This doesn’t tell you much about second hand prices of kit, though. Sorry.

I would be interested in this too. I’ve been thinking about a DSLR for a while and have a tight budget but my concern over secondhand route would be the reliability of the camera and any warranty available.

6 month warranty on everything from MBP I think.

http://www.mpbphotographic.co.uk/used-equipment/used-digital-slr-cameras/used-canon-digital-slr-cameras/canon-eos-300d-2/

There’s also this in the classifieds – http://singletrackworld.com/forum/topic/fs-canon-dslr-starter-kit

If it’s a ‘try it and see’ sort of thing, a bridge camera will give you all the modes you need, as well as less hassle with lenses.
I’ve had a FZ18 for a while now and am happy with it – you get 18x zoom, and all the modes you’d expect on a dSlr.

The low light performance is nowhere near that of the 60d I got earlier in the year, and there’s plenty of other things I do make use of on the 60d – but in average conditions for what cameras are mostly used for these days (pictures on the internet), it does the fine.
Also, much less hassle to carry around than a dSLR, especially if you end up with a few lenses (ie my camera bag I had at Glastonbury was probably the sort of weight a top-end light weight road bike weighs!)

Be careful with bridge cameras. I have a Canon powershot 1 which cost me about £600 6 years ago. To me, its not a patch on the small Canon compact I bought for £200 last year.

Thanks for all of the comments, lots to think about…

I too had a bridge camera bought years ago for a lot of money (Olympus C5060-Z) and it was fantastic. Much better than smaller compacts I’ve used 🙂

If you are thinking bridge, the one I like best is Olympus XZ-1 based on the fact that it has a big sensor, a sensible number of pixels and a large sensor. And it’s pretty cheap.

I’m not sure I’d go for a bridge camera for over £100 really – as for under £200 you can get a compact with 16x zoom. But if you’re talking a secondhand one for £100, may be the best option – especially as a pre-dSLR ‘try out’.