Another what camera thread

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granty84

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Hi All

Sorry for this another camera thread (bet the majority of you get fed up with them)

I'm after a dslr camera and am totally unsure of what to get, my knowledge of photography is zero at the moment but have been very eager to get into it for a few years but my other hobby has stopped me investing in anything, i'm not to worried on the make as ive used a canon and nikon in the past but i am more swayed towards the nikon.

I keep looking at the d3100 as a couple of friends have them and like the ease of use and guides which i suppose conme in helpful, the only 2 things really putting me off with this is i read that they don't have an auto focus (is this really an issue?) and am i going to outgrow to soon as i want to keep it for a good few years?


I've got a budget of £500 just at the minute so all i want is a kit lens to start with and will want to buy a couple more lenses as i go along, my other hobby is carp fishing so i will be doing alot of self takes of myself during all hours of day and night alot of people seem to use either a 55mm or 35mm fixed lens for this so that will be one lens, and obviously sitting by a lake wildlife (mainly birds) will be another interest of mine but haven't a clue of what sort of lens i would need for that?

again sorry for the boring thread and that i've babbled on

Any help or suggestions would be very much appreciated
 
Cant think of a DSLR that doesn't have auto-focus capability because the auto-focus in most Canon/Nikon DSLRs is built into the lens not the camera. The 3100 is supplied with an 18-55 Auto-focusing kit lens so no worries there. For a little more than your £500 budget you should be able to pick up a twin lens kit with the 18-55 and 55-200 telezoom. This will cover all your needs for quite some time and is a nice lightweight combo. The same kind of deals are available for the Canon entry level DSLRs (55-250 instead of 55-200) as well for much the same price. You might even be able to trim a little off the price by replacing the Canon/Nikon telezooms with a 3rd party Tamron/Sigma 70-300 zoom which would give you more reach. You wont go wrong with either make and will make the perfect start to expanding into the massive amount of kit available for both brands.
 
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I would go with the Nikon 55-200 with vibration reduction over the Tamron which has none. The Nikon is optically better as well.

Just make sure e Nikon lens is the VR version. A lot of th jessops deals are not.
 
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There is no real difference between canon and Nikon. It's down to personal preference and if your friends have nikons and you like the menus then that sounds like the one to get.
 
does anyone deal with london camera exchange, there is one in reading i could pop into and try see what deal they could do for me, are they strict on pricing or is it worth haggling with them?
 
It's worth haggling with any shop especially in today's financial climate. LCE are a long established outfit and you shouldn't worry about buying from them.
 
LCE are great, i brought a used D7000 from the leamington spa store. When I had intermittent issues with the camera not recognising when a memory card was inserted they soon sorted out the problem. When I had further issues with the dreaded grease spots on the sensor they cleaned it free of charge and if they problem persisted they offered to it back either a refund or for another used d7000/new one when they had stock of either, and for the same price i paid for it whilst keeping it until the stock came in. I've had no problem since then so I didn't take them up on their offer, great customer service from the leamington spa store,would recommend them to anyone.
 
Well this morning I went into reading centre and went into both jessops and lce. Jessops were cheaper so I tried going back to lce and they wouldn't even price match the 3100 even after chatting with the guy for 20 minutes I even tried the what about some extras like mem card, bag etc for a cheaper price but he just wouldn't budge, so went back to jessops and ended up paying £499 with the 18-55 Nikon vr lens and the tamron 70-300 lens with mem card, he then said you need some filters so I managed to get 2 free filters out of them one was £27.99 and the other £14.99 which was pretty good.

I know I could of got cheaper online elsewhere but I'd rather be able to go straight back to the store if I have any issues.

Only problem now is that I wanna go play, but having just done a 12 hour nightshift I'd better get some sleep otherwise I'll just end up doing something stupid and damaging it
 
L.C.E.s loss, jessops gain. You could have spoken to a different assistant on a different day and got a deal I guess.

Just go have fun and don't fret too much about damaging the camera, lol, there tougher than they look just make sure you protect the front lens element ( the filters from jessops were probably for that? )and watch for dust ingress when changing lenses ( keep the camera facing down ) apart from that go and get shooting :thumbs:
 
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