Alan C

I've just posted in the Photo section asking for advice (cut / summary below), but I know you guys can cut it with the best in this area..

I nearly bought a Jessops Nikon D80 with the Sigma 18-50 f3.5-5.6 lens kit... for £630 today.. but stopped short thinking it would best to ask rather than blow the money on the wrong camera!!

Main stuff to shoot would be family stills, Football (Sean), WYIOC car meet shots and a small amount of WYIOC Motorsport (eg trackdays / TOTB / F1 testing) / Drive outs / Rolling road etc.. I'd like to play with the outputs but printing would be for the better shots only and not a regular occurance.. CD based and online mainly..

So, with £700 max to spend, what do I buy? Would the Nikon with Sigma lens above be OK and spend the extra on a few essentials (bag, memory etc) or would a better lens be more sensible?

It doesn't have to be Nikon either, but the reviews all rate it highly and of course I'd like to get the best bang for bucks...

I appreciate this is going to be a toughie and quite personal, but any guidance would be a good starter for 10 and would be appreciated...

Cheers..
Al.

MickWrx

Canon EOS400D with 18-55 lens would be my choice mate, then spend a couple of hundred on a Sigma 18-200 lens (great for Football) or any zoom distance shots with that lens you keep a fairly wide angle on zooms.

I find the Canon easy to get on with and with Me Dazza Apple and Sticky being Canon men, we can't all be wrong (can we )

£499 for the EOS400d with 18-55 lens ideal for portraits, and with the optional sigma 18-200 zoom (£200?) all you need.

the sigma 18-200 is a great lens for blurring the back grounds on semi zoomed shots..

all my opinion of course

MickWrx

Jessops actually do a great deal on the 350D same camera as mine and Dazza's with the 18-55 lens and a sigma 55-200 lens all in for £539

I would personally go for the 18-200 lens, as this covers all focal lengths.

I had no problem at all at the millenium stadium zooming into the far side of the stadium from the second tear

Alan C

Cheers mate... I didn't have you down as a Camera bod.. You were the 'etc' part of the title..

Points duly noted sir...

Apple

You won't go too wrong with either Canon or Nikon - I already had Canon lenses so saw no point in chucking them out to start again...

With Canon "film" lenses on digital the focal length is multiplied by 1.6 (on the 350D & 400D) to give the equivalent length in "old" 35mm terms so the 18-200 lens is effectively a 28-320mm lens - as Mick says, it'll cover most eventualities but watch out for the fastest aperture of the lens - f/2.8 would be nice but you won't get that spec for the price you're looking at F/5.6 is a possibility and then you run into needing a lot of light to take something fast moving with a decent shutter speed... (When has a WYIOC day ever had decent weather - remember TOTB last year? )

The beasty that I've used is 200-400mm or 320-640mm in digital terms and it still seems to be too short a length sometimes (must need to stand closer )

There shouldn't be anything wrong with either the 350 or the 400 but there's always progress - the 400 should be a better spec, less "bugs" than the 350, is newer etc. I'll have a look at some specs if you want...

That's enough for a starter - have to get to bed sometime...

Andy

Sticky Stuff

I've only ever had the Canon, and don't really understand all this lens b0llux.

It takes some nice pics, and that's all that matters really

You WILL need a tripodliode though.

And 4gig cards are a steal.


Getting your head around the aperture and exposure / time settings is the tricky part, but the beauty of digital is that you can play until your heart's content

theboy

I use a Canon 350D and a 18-55 lense for doing general photography, i also have a 75-300 Canon lense this coupled with a digital body gives a actual focal length of 425 (correct me if i am wrong). I use this for photographing motorsport (see my Zoints profile) this have given me hundreds of good shots which i have sold using Ebay etc.. I would recomend a good memory card which has a fast write speed and a spare battery as they always expire at the wrong time.

Guy Martin at Olivers Mount

cw42

iTrader: (1)

Canon 300d for 2 years now, can't go wrong with 18-55mm and 75-300mm lenses. Great bit of kit, and has taken pretty much most of the pictures in the smacs gallery

Dazza's-STi

400d mate... the Nikon is a great cam, not much between them, however the flash and the lenses are a little more $$$ with the Nikon... thats it... If you want to see what you can do with 300d, 350d then check out topleftpixel network anyone who says they need a better camera needs to be as goos as this before they get one... in other words you don't need one!
400d as its the new one will all the cam you ever need...

Alan C

Cheers guys.. seems I'm swinging to the 400 then... will start looking for the best deal then do some haggling