Digital SLR Camera

Guys, I have this new born craze for some exotic photography (planning to retire too soon:)). Have been browsing a lot of data regarding what will be the best SLR buy for me in my 1K $ budget. Any guiding lights welcome if you have some personal favorites/recommendations.

you can get a lot of camera for that amount of money. Digital camera change so quickly though, I don't have any recommendations for you except to go to http://www.dpreview.com.

http://www.dpreview.com is awesome because for many of the models that it reviews, it has full sized original sample images from each camera in a variety of light conditions so you can see for example, how much noise there is in low light, or how much aberration there is in a lens.

You need to give us a bit more to go on. what do you want to do with the pics? print them? will you need a printer? is accurate color important to you in the prints? you'll need to calibrate everything.

Do you just want to look at them on your computer? do you want to manipulate them? you can use gimp or you can buy other software.

1 grand can buy a lot of camera, but not so much camera, lenses, software, peripherals.

jinx is very happy with her sony a100

glatt;646957 wrote:

you can get a lot of camera for that amount of money. Digital camera change so quickly though, I don't have any recommendations for you except to go to http://www.dpreview.com.

http://www.dpreview.com is awesome because for many of the models that it reviews, it has full sized original sample images from each camera in a variety of light conditions so you can see for example, how much noise there is in low light, or how much aberration there is in a lens.

Thanks! This is what I am most cautious about. I don't want to end up spending my bucks for something that ends up outdated before I reach my garage. Otherwise I am novice about these SLRs but nevertheless, these are few buzz words I will care about:
-Interchangeable Lenses
-Shutter Speed Control
-Light Metering
-Larger ViewFinder
-Motorwinder

Actually I checked out gazillion of google hits. And I ended up more confused. Here's one good find I am banking on:
http://www.usa.canon.com/consumer/controller?act=ModelInfoAct&fcategoryid=139&modelid=17499

But again, I dont have anyone to frankly advice me about its superiority (apart from those reviews on the web-site, which i wickedly don't believe). If some professional out there is reading, I just need to check if there's something better than this model available in my budget.

lumberjim;646980 wrote:

jinx is very happy with her sony a100

Yeah, thats cool gadget. Laid my hands on it back in 2006. I guess its bit outdated, as I can see through online comparisons that better goodies are already available.

wanderer;647011 wrote:

Thanks! This is what I am most cautious about. I don't want to end up spending my bucks for something that ends up outdated before I reach my garage. Otherwise I am novice about these SLRs but nevertheless, these are few buzz words I will care about:
-Interchangeable Lenses
-Shutter Speed Control
-Light Metering
-Larger ViewFinder
-Motorwinder

Actually I checked out gazillion of google hits. And I ended up more confused. Here's one good find I am banking on:
http://www.usa.canon.com/consumer/controller?act=ModelInfoAct&fcategoryid=139&modelid=17499

But again, I dont have anyone to frankly advice me about its superiority (apart from those reviews on the web-site, which i wickedly don't believe). If some professional out there is reading, I just need to check if there's something better than this model available in my budget.

DSLRs don't have motorwinders as there is no film and therefore nothing to wind.

wanderer;647011 wrote:

Here's one good find I am banking on:
http://www.usa.canon.com/consumer/controller?act=ModelInfoAct&fcategoryid=139&modelid=17499

That EOS 50D is reviewed at the site I linked to. When you go to the review, please notice the white box in the center of the page up towards the top that says "1. Introduction." When you click on that drop down menu in that box, you will see that there are 31 more pages to the review. MAke sure to look through the whole review especially the conclusions page. dpreview puts this camera in its "Highly recommended" category.

If you look at the list of "highly recommended" cameras at that site you can see how old the cameras are and ignore the ones that are a few years old. You'll see that Canon has a newer camera out that is also highly rated. It's the EOS 550D

I don't see that it has an image stabilizer, which is something I would want. I see some of the Canon lenses do, so I wonder if it's not offered in the body itself...

Sites like Best Buy etc let you do side by side comparisons of several cameras at once. Might wanna do some of that.

Yeah, image stabilization is good. I'd say a necessity. I don't know how that works in DSLRs. In my "SLR-like" camera it's built into the non-removable lens. Are they in the removable lenses in SLRs?

The Sony Alpha bodies have it - super steady shot. Looks like with Canon it's in some of the lenses.

The A500 is pretty bad ass for the price. 1fps slower...

Yeah but with a 18-55mm lens, ya gotta walk, way over there. :lol:

Lots of good Carl Zeiss lenses for the Sony though, and he'll have change from the grand to get one. Actually, I'd skip that lens package all together and just get the body.

Plus check these out - this is why you want the IS in the body.

You really can't go wrong with a Canon or Nikon.

I would hold off on the 50D, as the 60D may be coming out soon.

Nope, no in-body image stabilization for the Canon line, though there has been clamoring for it. It's just in the lenses.

I own a Canon Digital Rebel XT, and more recently, a Canon 7D. On the Canon side of things, you can go to the Canon Digital Photography Forums (http://photography-on-the.net/forum/index.php), see example shots from various cameras and lenses, hear what people think about the equipment, rumors, etc.