I would like to purchase my first dSLR camera, as I am interested in delving into the dark world of amateur photography. Where is the best online resource to buy a camera? eBay, or a dedicated website? For right now, I think I'd like a Nikon D40, which I would like to buy body-only, as I've heard the kit lense is a little slow.
As far as lenses are concerned, I initially would just like one general-purpose lens with no special telephoto- or wide angle- properties. Does anyone have a good source of information for learning about lenses for a beginner? Also, I would like to be able to buy the camera kit and lens from the same site, although I realize I might have to make some compromises!
Start by reading this.
http://4-ch.net/hobby/kareha.pl/1171662214/l50
By the way, I still highly recommand Canon.
www.henrys.com is a local store with quite a big online shop as well.
I'm not really a hobbyist, but lacking an alternative board I'm posting this here:
I'd like to buy a digital camera, just to occasionally shoot some pictures with. A decent movie recording feature would be nice too. Can anyone recommend me something in the $300~400 price range?
>>4
The Canon IXUS is a good compact one. Flexible for its size, good overall quality, nice screen, recording is quite good. Just remember to reencode your movies in something like x264 because the files are BIG.
>>5
Hey thanks, that looks really good. I think I'm going for the 860 IS or 960 IS.
So I bought the 860. When I got it I shot some pictures and noticed a vertical blue line on the left side of the screen, which was more noticeable in darker light circumstances. Today I went back to the shop and I got a new one because of the defect. Everything seemed well until I zoomed in on the pictures or used the movie mode: there's a white spot in about the center, and it's very clearly seen when zooming in digitally. Because it takes quite a while to go back to the shop I'm thinking about sending it back to get it replaced.
I do like the device itself, but I'm pretty unhappy with these two defect models. What's wrong with Canon's quality testing?
Well that's the first time I hear about that kind of problems on Canon models. Well maybe not the first time but it's quite rare. Maybe you landed on a defect lot, or maybe it's the shop you bought them in that's not really... careful with their stuff.
The white spot is obviously a captor problem.
Well, I guess if you send them back to Canon you'll be assured to get a working one, but it might take some time.
Oh and by the way: forget about the digital zoom. Seriously. Don't even think about it. If you really need more zoom, just max. zoom optically, take your shot, then zoom in using photoshop. Your camera would do the same thing, except you won't be able to get the cropped parts back, and the filters are better in photoshop anyway.
I went back to the store with my IXUS 860 IS (and faulted SDHC card I bought there) and asked for a replacement. They swapped the camera and I got one which captured a big blue spot on every picture. I immediately said this and they swapped it again. I turned on the camera and when the lense thing extended it made a loud clicking noise, so that one was swapped too. "Must be a faulty batch...", the guy said, "if this one doesn't work we're going to look for a different model." This one seemed all okay, so I took it home with me. (Of course) I now saw a little red dot on all pictures, which is a lot harder to see than the other errors, but is still annoying in my opinion.
You can see it here (scaled to 1024x768):
http://tinyurl.com/2zdfjo
Check out the region at (135,391). What do you think?