[Closed] recommend me a DSLR

budget? I'm slowly plodding towards the Nikon D90 as I fear buying less of a shooter would leave me upgrading in 12mths where as the D90 looks like it'd have a good 3yrs work in it for my wants & needs.

Sony A200? £240 at Jessops for a starter kit and a slew of older Minolta lenses which can be snapped up cheap off the 'bay.

Sony A200 is always rated well, and it won best entry level dslr for what its worth.

Can get it for around £200.

well up to £300 but less if poss

I assume you want it for biking use? I was in the same position a year ago and after some advice I settled on a cheap used old Canon 300D for £150 with a lens. A year on I'm only starting to find it's 'limits' and most of that is down to my lack of practise. SLR's are a very good used buy and the majority are not abused, used little and the improvements over the years at that price level make little difference. Biggest difference is pixel count, which doesn't really matter.

Also if it's really cheap you won't fuss so much at carrying it poor conditions or crashing with it in your bag.

This is what I've snapped using my 5yr old camera at novice level http://www.flickr.com/photos/dcsolomons/sets/

not exclusively biking stuff, just finding the limits of my compact and want to progress

Sony A200. Have a look at [url= http://www.dyxum.com ]dyxum.com[/url] for all things Sony.

Another vote for the Sony A200

a slew of older Minolta lenses which can be snapped up cheap off the 'bay.

Not so cheap anymore i'm afraid

The Olympus E420 (small) and E520 (slightly bigger with in body IS) are pretty good cameras for the money. The Olys tend to have more 'manual' functions in the basic models which means it takes a while to find the limits.

You could also try the new Panasonic G1 which looks really quite good and is still pretty compact.

Take a look at [url= http://www.dpreview.com ] DPReview [/url] for some reviews and tips.

I love my Canon 450d, and finally settled on spending a bit more money to get something that should last me a few years. It is my first DSLR and I have taken some good pics with it. They might be little out of your price range, but I believe the 1000d is cheaper.

I can't tempt you back over to film? you can buy films for a quid and get them developed in 7 days? 😛

Tijuana Taxi - Member

a slew of older Minolta lenses which can be snapped up cheap off the 'bay.

Not so cheap anymore i'm afraid

I Guess not. I held off selling my old Minolta lenses and am now so glad!

Go and try a few. It's amazing how different they can feel in your hand. They change the models so frequently these days that you can always find bargain 'old' models that will get you started. A DSLR from 3 years ago will outperform your compact.

I believe there is a cashback offer on Sonys on [url= http://www.parkcameras.com/c/96/Sony+Digital+SLRs.html ]here[/url]

There are plenty of cheap Minolta lenses around, it's just the 'star' ones, which may be slightly better than the 'other' lenses attract a quite incredible premium. Plenty of good cheap stuff still around though.

Missus got a Canon 1000d and rates it very highly. 2 other friends (both photographers) have used it as well and rated it. Light and small compared to the Sony equiv. Has lots of the same guts as the 350d but is a lot cheaper (well it was here anyway). I think some places they are called rebels or something. Anyway, rated v highly.

[url] http://www.singletrackworld.com/forum/topic/sony-cashback-offer [/url]

what's the name of the discount online camera place (in southport i think)

found it [url] http://www.bestcameras.co.uk/shop/index.html [/url]

try some out as suggested, i got a d40 cos it was cheap (gone up to 250 now) and used friends d50, d80, d300 and liked them all. only downside is autofocus requires newer lenses to work

If you decide a Canon 1000D is for you, Tescos have got 'em for £283, not bad considering recent price rises by some of the manufacturers.

[url] http://direct.tesco.com/q/R.205-0667.aspx [/url]

Hi RD

I nearly bought a SLR recently - wanted to advice my photography skills a bit...

But in the end, the weight, size etc put me off.

In the end I went for a Panasonic DMC-FZ28 with an 18x zoom and manual controls if i want it...

Pretty pleased with it so far - fits nicely inside a Crumpler Bens Pizza Small bag too 🙂

review [url= http://www.cameras.co.uk/reviews/panasonic-dmc-fz28.cfm ]here[/url]

For DSLR performance at a smaller size (bit not smaller price) the new Panasonic G1 has a lot going for it.

http://www.dpreview.com/news/0901/09011901panasonicg1review.asp

Here's what you need! Light, and compact.

[img] [/img]

SimonFBarnes could only dream of such a lens, that would enable him to get those extreme close-ups of ladies' bottoms, had had eluded him for so long...

[img] [/img]

Just bought a Nikon D60 with a VR lense.
Very happy with it.

The Sony A200 was on my list too but decided against buying another sony camera again after my sony N1 compact broke after 18months, just out of warranty and they wanted an arm and a leg to get it repaired.

The canon 1000d, sony a200 and the nikon were on my short list. I had a quick play with them all in jessops and to be fair they're all pretty sweet.

Any recent Canon. Best low light performance at high ISOs which really shows up when shooting in the woods compared to my mates Sony.

my compact is a canon and looking at the range of dslrs on the net the controls/icons/menus seem very similar which would be good and i prefer the sd card mamory to sony's mem stick etc, what does the nikon use?

Best low light performance at high ISOs which really shows up when shooting in the woods compared to my mates Sony.

This is an iso3200 shot as a RAW from an a200 processed with elements 6 and the noise looks OK to me.
[img] [/img]

my compact is a canon and looking at the range of dslrs on the net the controls/icons/menus seem very similar which would be good and i prefer the sd card mamory to sony's mem stick etc, what does the nikon use?

Sony DSLRs do not use memory sticks though, they use standard Compact Flash cards. I don't think many other DSLRs use SD cards either. Too slow I assume.

"i prefer the sd card mamory to sony's mem stick etc"

Sony SLRs use Compact Flash cards.

That photo looks great @ ISO 3200!

I use the supplied 'Image Data Converter SR', do you think that is rubbish?

I've certainly had much more noise in photos taken @ ISO 1600.

I tried the sony converter but didn't like the interface. Don't know about what it's noise reduction algorithms are like, I never got that far.

I now use Raw Therapee up to iso800 but its noise reduction is crap, so over iso800 I swap to elements as there's simply no comparison quality-wise (I don't like the elements raw user interface though!).

It's a bit odd how very different raw converters are. I suspect you get a much bigger difference in end results through the raw converter used rather than the camera.

I regularly shoot iso3200 and for my (not very exacting) needs I'm more than happy.

SimonFBarnes could only dream of such a lens, that would enable him to get those extreme close-ups of ladies' bottoms, had had eluded him for so long...

hardly - I can just go up to them and ask - they usually don't mind :o)