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Parker0485

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Hey guys, just signed up to hopefully recieve some friendly advice :)

After thinking about it for a while I've decided to take up photography, the first step is to obviously to buy a decent camera and this is where I'm struggling.

Could I please have some advice and recommendations on a beginners camera? I think my budget will probably max out at around £350-£400.

Secondly any recommendations for a starters book? Something that will teach me the basics.

Thanks for any advice, appreciate it :)
 
well your going to get everyone jumping in saying canon this or nikon that.
but whatever you choose... if i could choose again, i would have gone secondhand.

I bought a sony a200 new with kit lens, and tbh id like to upgrade already and so i will be losing money when it comes to selling.

I recomend a field guide from amazon with whatever camwera you buy.
but this is just advice from a novice :)
 
i would look at buying a 2nd hand 500d, (or a 450d with loads of extras) ;)

as they are good V for Money :)
 
First off, welcome to TP :wave:

I think evilonion's spot on.

Second-hand seems a bit perilous when you're spending that much money, but it's an excellent investment - good camera kit has VERY low depreciation. What I'd recommend if starting out is to get a Canon or Nikon (they have the best kit, and it's worth going for one of those two makes if you can afford it due to the options it gives you on kit), then get as high quality "walkabout" lens as you can afford. By walkabout, I'm talking about something like a Sigma 17-70 or even just the Canon 18-55IS - both of which are eminently adequate lenses with a good enough range and image quality.

So long as you have gone with Nikon or Canon, you will not be held back then by the body - I have an old 350d body (worth ~200-300 I guess), which, at it's most extreme, is then mounted with a £1100 Canon L lens. The image quality is incredible.

The lens will always be the limiting factor so it's worth investing more there, as long as you have a body that leaves your options open.

The other thing to consider if you're still unsure is just a bridge camera - these have most of the features of the pro DSLR's but without the faff and worry of lenses - as a beginner this will last you at least 2-3 years until you start to be limited by it.

Hope that helps :)
 
I'm going to go against the grain here....

First thing you need to do is pop along to your local camera shop and try out the different models availaable and see what feels "right" - there's no point in buying something just because it has millions on pixels or some fancy feature if you can't get to grips with it - it'll just end up lying in a drawer gathering dust.

Secondly, once you've chosen your camera (with a bit of advice from TP, naturally) buy a NEW one, with a guarantee. There's nothing that'll put you off a new hobby quicker than the gear falling to bits on you or breaking after a couple of weeks.

Sure you can save a bit of money buying used, but at that end of the market it could be as little as £20-30 if you don't do your homework first, so have a look at what's available new, go and try the ones that are within your budget, then check camerapricebuster.com to find out what the best price is for your chosen model.

Then buy it and go out and start taking some pictures :)
 
Hi Parker!

Welcome to the world of photography and this forum. First you will need to decide which brand to go for, as most likely you will be sticking to this brand for a long time as you build up your equipment.

The main 2 contenders are Canon and Nikon, both have their pros and cons and both have a large range of lenses available. There are also others like Sony, Olympus etc who's ranges aren't as extensive. Usually people go for Canon or Nikon.

If you decide on Canon, they offer a few entry-level bodies that may suit you and your budget, in order of ascending price and quality:

1000D - around £380 new with IS kit lens
450D - around £480 new with IS kit lens
550D - around £650 new with IS kit lens

The 1000D is the most basic but is still a very good quality camera, I actually bought one as my first SLR and thoroughly enjoyed it. I did however get it at a very good price with the "IS" kit lens (which they don't come with anymore), but I grew out of it quite quickly. The 450D is a step up from that, but not vastly more expensive and comes with the "IS" (image stabalisation) kit lens which is a decent package. The 550D is a relatively new model and has the latest technology as well as video recording capabilities, if this is of any interest to you. This will be above your specified budget though.

I suggest you read up online on all three of these and decide which one suits you best, if you decide to go for a Canon.

As for Nikon, I'm not completely clued up on the range but from my limited understanding, they offer the D40, D60, D3000 and D5000.....the D90 is out of your budget. Out of these, many have said the D5000 is great and you could get one with the VR kit lens for just under £500. The D3000 also has some good reviews because of the price, around £350 with VR kit lens.

I also recommend you look in the "Classifieds" section of this forum, you can get some very good bargains, especially budget cameras because of people upgrading. I bought a used 40D not long ago for £400 that came with some extras (no lens though but the IS kit lens usually sells for around £60) and that is a much better camera than ones from the xxxD range and will last you a lot longer before you will feel like you want to upgrade. However, since you are a beginner a 40D or 50D may be a bit overkill to start off with.
 
Parker0485 said:
Could I please have some advice and recommendations on a beginners camera? I think my budget will probably max out at around £350-£400.

Secondly any recommendations for a starters book? Something that will teach me the basics.
Click to expand...

The advice you will get on cameras is to go into a shop, try a few from the different manufacturers and see how they feel and how you get on with the controls and the menu system. It's good advice.

Any camera from the major manufacturers will take a good photo. There are minor differences between the brands and things to be aware of (e.g. the entry level Sonys do not have a sync port for studio flash, you need to buy a £10 adapter from ebay, some entry level bodies from other manufacturers do not have an AF motor so only work with lenses that have the motor in the lens which will mean some lenses are not compatible, and so on).

I started with a Sony A300 as I had Minolta lenses from my film SLR. For me the choice of manufacturer was made by the kit I already had (Sony use the same lens mount as Minolta so all my lenses fitted). It re-ignited my enthusiasm which had waned in recent years and I ended up buying an A700 a few months later and replacing all my lenses as well.


For the basics of photography with a DSLR, Understanding Exposure (not sure who by, my copy is at home) explains stuff like the relationship between shutter speed, aperture and ISO well.
 
lauy said:
The main 2 contenders are Canon and Nikon, both have their pros and cons and both have a large range of lenses available. There are also others like Sony, Olympus etc who's ranges aren't as extensive. Usually people go for Canon or Nikon.
Click to expand...

There are a large range of lenses available for Sony and some of them are spectacular (if well outside the OPs budget). The only thing missing is tilt shift.
 
You can pick up a 350d for £150 secondhand in good condition and a lends for £100 that would get you started into photography.
Add the field guide to this and in 6 months if you use the camera regularly i would be willing to bet you will want to upgrade to a more advanced camera to meet your needs.

All this is personal opinion of course.
It all depends on how serious you are about photography, if this is just an occasional thing where you want to take the odd nice picture then as graham says, maybe the best option will be to go down to your local jessops and try a few cameras out in your price range.

You can get a 1000d with kit lens for around £350 brand new.
(you will probably want a better flash though) and jessops do one for around £80
 
I went into a camera shop to try out the various models before buying my DSLR - but they all felt equally odd to me :lol:

In the end I decided on the Canon 450D. I based my decision on price, mainly. I could have got an entry level Nikon, or the entry level Canon 1000D cheaper, but the Nikon doesn't autofocus with all lenses, and the 450D had a few additional functions to the 1000D so I decided I'd go for the best camera I could afford in my budget.

I haven't regretted my decision.

As for books, I found Understanding Exposure by Bryan Peterson incredibly helpful...
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Understanding-Exposure-Photographs-Digital-Camera/dp/0817463003/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1271925069&sr=8-1
If that works?
 
Thanks for the great information guys.

I think I'd prefer to go for a brand new one as money is an issue at the moment, so spending £300+ and having having the risk of it breaking with no safety net isn't an option.

Out of the cameras mentioned I'd love the 450D but it's a bit on the pricey side and pushing me way over my budget at £573 on Amazon. The customer pictures look really good though.

Anyway there's 3 cameras on Jessops that look okay and are within budget, they are:

Canon EOS 1000D + 18-55mm Kit
Sony Alpha a330 18-55mm Kit
Nikon D3000 with 18-55mm Lens

All going for roughly under £370.. would all of these be a good place to start? As money is a bit of an issue at the moment I'd like to know what kind of photos I could get with the provided lens on these cameras? I'd mainly want to take photos out and about on walks, such as trees, flowers, birds etc..

Would one of these be fine for the absolute beginner? I've only ever had a bog standard digi camera.
 
The three camera you mention are all good beginners kit. Get yourself into Jessops and see which feels best out of the three. pick them up, look at the buttons layout, the menus. Hopefully you may find a Jessops employee who is knowledgeable about the basics and that will help. I am sure that any of these will serve you well for a while as you find your feet.
 
All 3 cameras are good cameras, but there are two choices within those:

The Sony will probably be the best features for the price, but...

Pro-grade kit is made by Nikon and Canon, so the range of kit available for Canon and Nikon users far outweighs that available to a Sony user.

If you do decide you like photography, you WILL want to upgrade (trust me - it's almost a curse :() Now, nothing stops you from changing brands but you will get used to your brand, and the longer you do it, the harder it is to change!

If it were me, I'd try and go for the Nikon or Canon, but to be honest, you should just pick whichever of the three is most comfortable to handle (ie go try them in Jessops)!

Good luck and don't forget to come back and show us your pics when you've bought it! :thumbs:
 
Thanks again for the advice guys.

I just noticed Jessops does a 6 month interest free finance thing which would up my budget considerably to around £700.

I'm going to give myself 6 weeks to think about it and go to a few shops if there are any around here and pick up a few cameras and get the feel.

At the moment I'm really pushing towards a Panasonic GF1 with a 20mm lens.. I've read both of the threads on the GF1 and G1 back to front a few times and I really like the idea of a smaller camera and going by the photos on here and flickr it produces brilliant images (Just as good as the DSLR's I've been looking at, although this could be just my untrained eye) Size is probably the most important factor though, I'd feel a lot more comfortable walking around where I live with it than a big DSLR + lens combo.

I'm sure I'll change my mind a thousand times between now and when I take the plunge, which is why I'm giving myself 6 weeks (perhaps longer) so by the time I get one I'll know I'm making the right decision.

It'll also give me the chance to ask a load of annoying beginner questions on here aswell, hope you don't mind :D
 
Sorry for another bump, rather than starting a new thread I thought I'd put all my questions in here.

Decided to actually buy second hand, I think £750 is far too excessive for my first venture into photography, I might not even like it!

Been looking at the for sale section and there are a few offers that have caught my eye but tbh I have no idea if they are good value or not, the lenses could be utter rubbish for all I know, is there a good site where you can find the lens and get a rating or sample pictures from the lens?

Also I don't want to spark the whole Nikon v Canon debate but I can't find a definitive answer on Google. Which one has the cheapest system? Infact you can even add other brands to this, I couldn't care less which one has the best quality £2000+ lens, I'm not going to be doing anything that would require spending that kind of money but I want to buy into a system where good £100-£200 lenses exist either brand new or second hand that would let me take wildlife, portrait, macro photos etc.. In decent enough quality to mess about with on the computer, I wont be printing or anything.

Also is it allowed to post the links from the sales section in here for opinions on the deals? Feels a bit cheeky doing so but I don't want to buy something and regret it when I find out it's not of semi decent quality.

Thanks :)
 
My opinion is that canon is a better system, as there is no "lens compatability" problems, where as i believe some Digital Nikon lenses do/dont have motors in the lenses which causes problems...

Cant help on the lens front though as im only just starting to up my system too.

A good 450d with a kit lens (18-55 IS) can be had from Ace Cameras in Bath ;) for within your budget.
 
Parker0485 said:
I want to buy into a system where good £100-£200 lenses exist either brand new or second hand that would let me take wildlife, portrait, macro photos etc.
Click to expand...

Any of the manufacturers will probably have lenses that meet those criteria. I'll tell you about the one I know (Minolta / Sony). The following are all good, cheap lenses with approx s/h prices:

Minolta 17-35 (landscapes etc) £200
or Sigma 24/2.8 "superwide", £60

Minolta 50mm/1.7 (portrait on a crop sensor) £80

Minolta "beercan" 70-210/4 £120, for stuff further away.

The only one I haven't owned is the 17-35 (puddleduck does/did have one), the others are all good quality lenses, especially the Minoltas and there is another longer zoom up to 300mm known as the "big beercan" which is also very good. Minolta were very big on colour consistency across their range of lenses.

Macro is not my thing so can't comment on that.
 
A colleague just bought a 450d second hand from a shop (t4 cameras?) for £350 with a guarantee. So cheaper starting place and a fallback if it breaks
 
First off I'd like to apologise for hijacking your thread but I'm in a similar position to you and hopefully any answers to my question may be beneficial to you too. I'm sure there have been a million threads on this already so I didn't want to waste more space.

So in the next couple of months I am looking into getting my first dslr. I am looking at the Canon 1000d and the Canon 450d at the moment.

There is a fair difference in the kit price at the moment, and to get to the point, I am wondering if there is a significant difference with the two bodies?

I am aiming to keep hold of the body for a good amount of time and not upgrade, so is it better to go for the 450d which looks like it has a couple of extra features?

Or should I go for the 1000d which is cheaper but presumably with better lenses can produce pictures just as good as the 450d?
 
One final word on the 450D. Since Canon now have the 500D and 550D in their range, it can't be far off being discontinued. When the axe does fall, there will be some serious bargains out there.

The great thing about the 450D (and similar cameras) is that it scales its complexity very well. You take it out of the box, charge the battery, plug it in, slot in a memory card, make sure it's in automatic mode and off you go. Most of the knobs and buttons can be safely ignored, initially. Over a period of months, you can then gradually get the hang of it and explore Program and Shutter priority mode.

I speak from personal experience. I bought a 450D about 20 months ago. When I started, I barely knew one end of the camera from the other but now I'm getting the hang of it.

As one or two people above have noted, a field guide is a good idea. There is an excellent digital field guide to the 450D from John Wiley, written by a lady named Charlotte K Lowrie. My copy has been extremely useful.

Good luck, which ever way you jump.
 
Sorry for the mega bump.. I never got around to buying a camera at all for various reasons however I'm starting to get the bug again.

For some reason I can't access the sale/trade section of the forum anymore so I've been looking on ebay.. my budget has shrank considerably since starting this thread and I'm now looking at spending £200-250.. very tight I know.

I've found that there are plenty of Canon 350D's in that price range that come bundled with the kit lens.. is this a good starting point? Something to last me a year or so before maybe upgrading?

I'd rather not bother at all if it's going to be poor.
 
I'd just like to throw something out there - you can pick up very very good film cameras for as little as £30 on ebay - the eos 300 for example is a 1999 model and has many bells and whistles, plus if you hunt hard enough and stay up till 4am you will find the £50 camera with the £200 lens included.

As for processing it's never been cheaper, iirc Jessops give you a free film every time you process with them and negative scanners are only about £30.
 
Another vote for a 20D. Still a superb camera. I sold a mint 20D last week for £150 so would leave plenty for a lens. You should be able to find one.

By the way, since you were last looking, there have been restrictions put on the Classified section - you need 100 posts now.
 
Thanks guys, now it's a case of deciding between the 350d, 1000d and 20D... all can be had for under £250... must say I'm leaning towards the refurbed 1000D with 1 year warranty.

I wish I wasn't so indecisive :shrug:
 
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Thanks I saw that earlier, I'm just concerned about lack of warranty. I'm tempted but scared!
 
Another question...

Is there much of a difference between a 20D and a 350D? I think I've narrowed it down between those two now.. A 1000D refurbed is pushing the price over the £250 mark and I really don't want to go that far unless it's a far better camera than the 20D/350D?

Thanks for any help :)
 
Well it's done, just bought a used 350D from ebay for £170 including kit lens, battery grip, bag etc..

Looking forward to posting my first pictures on here when it arrives, expect a blurry mess. That's if the camera actually works lol.. not entirely comfortable with buying on ebay.

Thanks for all the advice.
 
I have a 20D, still soldiers on. My only grouse is that the LCD playback screen is a bit small by today's standards. And it suffers from dust on the senor (the newer cameras have 'sensor cleaning' installed. It still works for me as a second camera body.
 
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