Rob C
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Registered: 15th Dec 99
Location: Birmingham
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Can anyone recommend a good 'starter' digital SLR camera? I'm not in any danger of upstaging David Bailey so something reasonably priced that I will be able to achieve good results with?
any advice would be appreciated 
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Ian
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Registered: 28th Aug 99
Location: Liverpool
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Depends on budget, newer stuff generally is higher res and higher ISO with less noise and thus better in low light as you can turn the sensitivity up, but even older stuff now is still worthwhile checking out. Biggest investment is lenses really. You'll need at least something wide angle - 20 to 40mm ish and something a bit longer, maybe 135/200. That could be hundreds on its own.
Price of Canon D30 which is their earliest DSLR has now bottomed out at around 250. They're not going to lose much more money which will be good for upgrading in the future.
Add to that a 20-35 f3.5/4.5 for 150ish, cheaper now because everyone bought the more versitile 17-40 (300-400ish)
Then your choice of telephoto is anywhere between 100 quid for an 80-200 f4/5.6 up to 800-900 for a 70-200 f2.8 which is an absolutely ace lens.
Also worth considering is 70-200 f4 at 400-500, still a nice robust heavy thing and looks the part but cheaper than f2.8 model as it doesn't let as much light in so you'll need to go slower shutter speeds - to be honest no big loss as most motorsport stuff you'll want a bit of blur on anyway to give the impression of movement.
Then you'll need a tripod, flash gun, memory, batteries, bag blah blah 
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vibrio
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whats your budget.
D50 + 18-55 lens £500
http://www.buyacamera.co.uk/xsearch.asp?RecId=NIKCA740&pt=k
budget for a 1 gig SD card £60
Filter to protect lens £18
optional
flash SB600 £190
longer range zoom 70-100 sigma £180
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Rob C
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Registered: 15th Dec 99
Location: Birmingham
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Thanks for that Ian, I had been looking at some previous threads and people had mentioned a Fuji Finepix 5500 / 5600? Are these any good? What are there limitations?
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Rob C
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Registered: 15th Dec 99
Location: Birmingham
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I would rather stick with something that will take XD cards as I have a 1gig XD and a 512mb and a 256 somewhere too, so it would save some money.
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vibrio
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you won't get an SLR with an XD card only point and clicks
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vibrio
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quote:
Originally posted by Rob C
Thanks for that Ian, I had been looking at some previous threads and people had mentioned a Fuji Finepix 5500 / 5600? Are these any good? What are there limitations?
limitations
small sensor size = high noise
slow AF speed
slow multiple burst speed
less adjustablity
small buffer
images are not as sharp (not aproblemm unless you want to print above A4)
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Rob C
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Registered: 15th Dec 99
Location: Birmingham
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to a relative photography beginner, would one of these cameras (5500/5600) have any advantages over my existing camera which is an M603 Fujifilm just one of the compact zoom type cameras?
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vibrio
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yes - they have some manual control. you can adjust apeture and shutter speed white balance etc. IIRC the s5600 can also take raw
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Rob C
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Registered: 15th Dec 99
Location: Birmingham
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so it would be an ok camera for a beginner? to be able to acheive fairly decent results? You cant change the lenses though can you?
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vibrio
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no you can't change lenses
ok yes but I was a beginner with a proper dSLR. never seen the point in owning a point and click
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Ian
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Registered: 28th Aug 99
Location: Liverpool
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Any advanced fixed lens cam will be good for learning, so long as you have control over shutter and aperture. The newer stuff is generally a lot closer to SLR control and response but they still tend to eat batteries, lag the shutter and introduce noise because they're so compact.
Trouble is if you do fancy a DSLR in the future you need to learn your way around the new cam and change card types etc. and lose money on the cam you learnt on.
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