What's a good SLR camera for a beginner interested in photography as hobby?

[An Einnseanair]

Originally Posted by catman

jwkilgore: Great post! I'm trying to decide what to get right now. I've used SLRs for 40 years, so I at least want to get something with manual controls. All the equipment upgrades so rapidly for a given price point that it all seems like a bad investment, but one has to start somewhere. The Rebel t2i seems like a good place to start, but I'm wondering whether a superzoom P&S might be even better to learn the digital ropes on. I can easily see myself going broke buying more lenses for the dSLR!

[Edit: I remembered an earlier post where you mentioned your lenses worked with Canons, so I'm deleting first paragraph which doesn't make sense now]

With 40 years experience you'll blow through learning a P&S in a few weeks or even days. Instead of buying one, surely you have a friend or two with a P&S you could borrow... so borrow one for a week or so to get a feel for it. Much cheaper than buying one just to sit in a drawer when you upgrade, and you will definitely upgrade. As for actually taking pictures, the main difference between a film SLR and a DSLR concern shooting speed, instant picture review, and not having to worry about specialty film. Instead of keeping a stock of different ISO film for different lighting conditions, just change the internal setting. You'll also need to learn about white balance. With cheaper cameras this requires going through a menu system; high-end DSLRs accomplish this with switches on the body. Instant review is amazing; take a shot, look at it on the screen, zoom in to look at details, decide right then if you have "the shot" or if you need to take another. If you take action shots, you'll LOVE the shooting speed of a DSLR... because digital memory is cheap, put it on high-speed and just hold the button down. I've taken many thousands of digital pictures, and I once took 346 pictures of my son within 20 minutes. This would have cost a small fortune in film; I deleted a large percentage of them, but most of the ones I kept would have been missed shooting one frame at a time. But the main difference between film and digital is, of course, what happens after you're done shooting for the day. You have to have a computer and some knowledge of working with one to effectively store, edit, and process digital photos. Some decent photo-editing software (to tweak lighting, crop, etc.) is really useful as well.

Also, for what it's worth, Nikon just announced the new D7000. It's basically the best non-professional camera Nikon offers. Excellent processor, lots of manual switches for control, amazing 6fps shooting speed, dual memory card slots. But it's also bigger and heavier than the D90 it is supposed to replace, and is retailing for $1200 (body only). At that price, and because I'm tired of lugging around my relatively ancient and heavy D200, I've decided that I'm going for the entry-level D3100.

[catman]

jwkilgore: Thanks for the details. Yes, I know about the 'instant review'...amazing! I only wish someone made an adapter so I could use all my Olympus OM-system lenses on a Nikon body. It's easy to get one for a Canon body. I wonder why there is a difference? I suppose they must be deeply incompatible (like me and my second ex-wife).

I got interested in astrophotography with my film OMs. The big problem with that is guiding the telescope during long exposures. I have found that with a digital camera and software, it is possible to 'stack' exposures on top of one another so that instead of having to take one long exposure, one can takes as many short exposures as he wishes and 'stack' them, equivalent to one long exposure. How cool is that? (Also no film reciprocity failure to worry about!)

[artsyfartsymom]

I would go for a Nikon-- user friendly, affordable and great lenses. For a hobby camera, go for the D5000 or even the small, lightweight D40/ D40x. All are great cameras, high quality images and not too expensive. I have always and always will use Nikon. Use a rebel for Canon, if you prefer that brand. I hear good things and my friend uses Canon only. Both brands have great options for you.

Hope that helps!

[didee]

Thanks everybody for the fantastic info in your responses.

And the outcome is.......I got a Canon Rebel XS. I stumbled across it at a huge discount by chance. It was on sale and then another $100 off because it had apparently been returned and had been "repackaged." I was ecstatic. When I got it home, the discs were missing (not sure what they're for yet!), and I called Canon to see if I could download whatever they contained, and Canon sent me replacement discs. Their customer service was perhaps the best I have seen in a long time, really excellent.

I have no idea what I am doing with this camera. I went to the local camera shop and the man there was very nice and explained a lot of things to me (we have a deal I will bring him some cookies). I would love to find a photog class or a person to teach me about all the features.

I tried to take pictures of the moon last week or the week before when Jupiter was right next to the almost full moon. That wasn't very successful, but of course I wasn't using a tripod, and the man at the camera shop explained it to me.

I am excited to find some photo ops now. This could be fun.

Many thanks to all of you who responded for all your help!