Nikon DSLR for 11 y.o.?

beercan

beercan

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Hi all,

After taking to my D7000, my daughter has asked for a DSLR for Christmas (budget £150-£200).

I'm thinking of a D5100 which seems to have similar image quality but with less bells and whistles. The problem is the D7000 is very heavy for her.
Is there something much lighter?

I know I could pick something up cheaper like a D80/D90 but I wonder what's better to go for... Any suggestions please?

How about a D3100?

Many thanks!
 
A D90 is about the same size as the D7000 and not much lighter, I would get her he D3100. Let her use that for a year and if she still has the interest, upgrade her to a D7200 or so. The D3XXX range are nice and neat and they have simple controls and auto modes for beginners.
 
Thanks. Sounds like a good idea. I'll have a look at options for a D3100 as the easy modes may be better.
 
The d3xxx series are about as small and light as you can get for a DSLR and are great starter cameras.
 
My 5 year old grandson has claimed my d300 with grip and tbh he knows what he wants to capture even though it's heavy.
I can't really answer the question but i'd agree that for a younger person the d3*** series would be hard to beat.
 
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In fact, it's a question we've been asking ourselves for christmas, would he like a 'compact' camera or is he just following me liking a large dslr ?
 
She has a Fuji super zoom "compact" currently and it takes so long to zoom and/or focus, the shot is gone before she can get it. It's completely frustrating her. Partly because she knows what a DSLR can do!
 
I got my 10 year old son a D3100 plus kit lens. Two years later and he is still using it. He enjoys it but doesn't use it as much as he thought he would be. Glad I didn't pay more for a better camera
 
I bought my daughter a D3100 2nd hand for her GCSE course; she used it all the way through her A-Level course too.
More pertinently, for one of her assignments she got my o/h's then five year old grand-daughter to 'help' and I found the tear-away tot taking half her submission pics with it!
Gives you an idea how point-and-press friendly and easy to use the D3xxx range are, yet still have the capability & quality to cope with demands of academic exercises.
They are some of the more compact and more hand-manageable DSLR's about too; and curiousely for the diddy-handed, both daughter and O/H found the D3100 more comfortable to handle and more stable than a bridge camera....
For £200, which was my budget for daughter's Christmas pressie / O-level camera, I managed to bag a camera from 2nd hand dealer; a 35mm pime, off private trades, here, and 'just' breaking the budget by a tenner I think, a sturdy Silk tripod like my own, that she was familiar with..And that was what almost 4 years ago, when the D3100 was still available new n some outlets.
You should be able to do a bit better now, or D3200, which I can also reccomend, and should be similarly cheap 2nd hand.
I wouldn't try buy 'more' for a beginner and certainly not a child..
 
My eldest just turned 11 yesterday she has had a few of the lower end nikon bodies, all of them were fine and did the job of teaching her the basics. She currently has a Nikon D3300, image quality surprised me it's actually rather good. I would imagine any of the D3XXX series would be a good enough option. If you have the budget pick her up a 35mm f/1.8G my daughter loves hers and pretty much uses nothing else although she has a kit lens, a 50mm and a 70-300.
 
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Bought my 9 yo (now 10) a d200 last Christmas. Lots more features than D3xxx D5xxx and only cost £120 from mpb. Stuck a couple of cheap lenses with it and he is very happy. He actually uses some of my lenses now!
 
For youngsters I'd suggest mirrorless for arguably better video and again arguably because mirrorless is the future so better they learn on it than on a DSLR and then maybe have to adapt to mirrorless in the future.
 
Does it have to be a Nikon? My 9 year old seems to have taken to my Canon 100D...it's easily light enough for him to hold
 
Ideally it would be a Nikon so she can share my lenses (aka gives me an excuse to by new ones).
 
That's one reason but personally I'd rather go with what's better for her in the longer run.
 
Can you recommend a mirrorless around the price point I'm looking at then please? (c. £200) I don't have a great deal of m'less knowledge but a quick Google suggests they've only recently caught up with DSLR spec and seem to be much more than my budget...
 
I've not got much idea what goes for what price so if you're interested in getting her a morrorless camera maybe you could check some used sellers web sites... Ffordes, London Camera Exchange etc... You may be able to pick something up with a kit lens or even a prime or there's an outside chance that she may be interested in adapting old or CCTV lenses.

On spec the only thing that interests me is image quality and even from day one with MFT I think that at all but the higher ISO's the image quality was there... I had a Panasonic G1 for years and at lower ISO's it rivaled my 5D.

PS.
Just checked Ffordes and they have a GH2 for £179 but adding a lens will blow your budget.
 
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beercan said:
Can you recommend a mirrorless around the price point I'm looking at then please? (c. £200) I don't have a great deal of m'less knowledge but a quick Google suggests they've only recently caught up with DSLR spec and seem to be much more than my budget...
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You're going to really struggle to get a used mirrorless system with viewfinder for that price, and even if you could you'd be looking at an early one in which case you're going to find the AF system lacking. Something like a used EM5 or A6000 is going to be over budget, and that's before you've even bought a lens.

I've no doubt mirrorless is the future, but I personally still prefer DSLR (I own both) and for £200 you're not going to beat DSLR imo.
 
I bought my son a d3100 2 years ago - he's 14 now and having had a weekend with the d500, he thinks his camera is a toy and wants an upgrade. That said, it served him well and I started out with one 6 years old - they're still great cameras imo.

Maybe the d3100 will go to no2 son and no1 will get an upgrade ..
 
Obviously there are lighter bodies, but having a D90/D7000 gives faster control when needed (2 scroll wheels) which she will find useful, as opposed to having to sometimes delve into menu's.
Also, if /when she's using bigger lenses, the weight of the body itself will be less of an issue. @ 11 yrs old I reckon she'll easily get used to the weight anyway, with practise. :cool:
 
Cagey75 said:
A D90 is about the same size as the D7000 and not much lighter, I would get her he D3100. Let her use that for a year and if she still has the interest, upgrade her to a D7200 or so. The D3XXX range are nice and neat and they have simple controls and auto modes for beginners.
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:agree:
 
Thanks for the replies everyone. We popped into Jessops today so she could get a feel for a few and found the D3400 fitted her well. So I'm going to go for a D3100 as there's plenty of choice out there.

Now lens wise, I have a Nikon AF-S 18-105mm f/3.5-5.6 G ED VR and a Tamron SP 70-300mm f/4-5.6 Di VC USD. She'll have access to these when I'm not using them. However she needs her own walkabout lens (with VR).

So I'm toying with the idea of an 18-55 AF-S VR II kit lens (£72). Although, personally I like the extra length the 18-105 gives me, so I'm debating these: 18-140 f/3.5-5.6 G ED VR DX (£229) or an 18-200 f/3.5-5.6 G IF-ED DX VR (£239).
Is image quality going to be worth the extra money?
Or do I just get another 18-105mm (£129)?

Any other inspiration please?

(prices are MPB).
 
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beercan said:
Thanks for the replies everyone. We popped into Jessops today so she could get a feel for a few and found the D3400 fitted her well. So I'm going to go for a D3100 as there's plenty of choice out there.

Now lens wise, I have a Nikon AF-S 18-105mm f/3.5-5.6 G ED VR and a Tamron SP 70-300mm f/4-5.6 Di VC USD. She'll have access to these when I'm not using them. However she needs her own walkabout lens (with VR).

So I'm toying with the idea of an 18-55 AF-S VR II kit lens (£72). Although, personally I like the extra length the 18-105 gives me, so I'm debating these: 18-140 f/3.5-5.6 G ED VR DX (£229) or an 18-200 f/3.5-5.6 G IF-ED DX VR (£239).
Is image quality going to be worth the extra money?
Or do I just get another 18-105mm (£129)?

Any other inspiration please?

(prices are MPB).
Click to expand...
On a d3xxx all those lenses are about on par sharpness wise (the 18-200 is a smidge less) so it's about price vs convenience of focal length imo.
 
Thanks; I'll go for the 18-55 then, as she'll have access to my 70-300.
 
I got my daughter the AFS35, prime... its standard angle of view, its quick, its sharp and gives very bright view finder, and denies the faff deciding on the zooms ettng or bemoaning lack of enough of it! She was also doing academic exercises for school, so the text-book tool.
Quirk though is that coming from fixed lens camera phones so many 'take' to a prime, and daughter was no exception... it would be worth a lot of ponderation.

18-55... is default... has bee my most used lens for the last five years, and having collected lenses for widgetal to match range I have for film, I am embarrassed and a little peeved that the 'better than free' 18-55 that came with the electric-picture-maker, is actually my most used lens by far... and I have struggled to find anything much 'better' to replace it with!

I'd stick with for your daughter... its enouh to be getting on with until you discover how often you are fighting over your spare lenses.

VR...... Shortly after I got daughter her DSLR, the O/H decided she anted to trade up from a bridge as she felt left out! And for fun we had a shutter-speed limbo. My conclusion was that VR is probably a wast of time! The 'claims' it lets you hand hold three or four stops slower than without did NOT get borne out by the results of our limbo.... a steady hand of old and practiced technique,I was getting down into the 1/4 second range hand holding wihout VR... I could't get it any lower with. Daughter was remarkably 'good; for a newb, and she was hand holding down to around 1/8th, and VR again made little difference.... O/H on the other hand was gettng blurr at anything under 1/30th.... with or wthout VR..... also worth noting that she was more inclined to use pre-view screen composition rather than view-finder.....
I would not be at ALL bothered by whether a lens had VR or not.. I would be more concerned to 'teach' daughter better hand holding, and using the optical viewfinder, rather than hand-holding at arms length.
Took my Daughter to do some of her GCSE course assignments with a couple of my old M42 primes for film camera on an adapter, no auto-focus on the, let alone vibration reduction! She was taking snaps of leaves and stuff, in the woods as it dropped to twilight; was rather aghast when I checked her settings she was hand holding down to 1/30th with a 135 lens! But incredibly she was getting sharp shots!.
 
Teflon-Mike said:
I got my daughter the AFS35, prime... its standard angle of view, its quick, its sharp and gives very bright view finder, and denies the faff deciding on the zooms ettng or bemoaning lack of enough of it! She was also doing academic exercises for school, so the text-book tool.
Quirk though is that coming from fixed lens camera phones so many 'take' to a prime, and daughter was no exception... it would be worth a lot of ponderation.

18-55... is default... has bee my most used lens for the last five years, and having collected lenses for widgetal to match range I have for film, I am embarrassed and a little peeved that the 'better than free' 18-55 that came with the electric-picture-maker, is actually my most used lens by far... and I have struggled to find anything much 'better' to replace it with!

I'd stick with for your daughter... its enouh to be getting on with until you discover how often you are fighting over your spare lenses.

VR...... Shortly after I got daughter her DSLR, the O/H decided she anted to trade up from a bridge as she felt left out! And for fun we had a shutter-speed limbo. My conclusion was that VR is probably a wast of time! The 'claims' it lets you hand hold three or four stops slower than without did NOT get borne out by the results of our limbo.... a steady hand of old and practiced technique,I was getting down into the 1/4 second range hand holding wihout VR... I could't get it any lower with. Daughter was remarkably 'good; for a newb, and she was hand holding down to around 1/8th, and VR again made little difference.... O/H on the other hand was gettng blurr at anything under 1/30th.... with or wthout VR..... also worth noting that she was more inclined to use pre-view screen composition rather than view-finder.....
I would not be at ALL bothered by whether a lens had VR or not.. I would be more concerned to 'teach' daughter better hand holding, and using the optical viewfinder, rather than hand-holding at arms length.
Took my Daughter to do some of her GCSE course assignments with a couple of my old M42 primes for film camera on an adapter, no auto-focus on the, let alone vibration reduction! She was taking snaps of leaves and stuff, in the woods as it dropped to twilight; was rather aghast when I checked her settings she was hand holding down to 1/30th with a 135 lens! But incredibly she was getting sharp shots!.
Click to expand...
I have different experiences with VR, I find it helps noticeably with camera shake. I don't profess to having the steadiest hands though.
 
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