Beginner First DSLR Camera

Thekillerqueen88

Thekillerqueen88

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Mark
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I am looking at buying my first DSLR camera and would like advice on what is recomended. I personally have preferred Pentax back when it was film photography and have looked at the KX, K100D and XG-1 on ebay (missing out on them all)

The XG-1 looks great however reviews have said that its only auto focus which doesnt work well with maximum zoom.

I know nothing of ISO settings etc, everything digital is all new to me.

I am looking for a something under £300 if possible.

What would you guys recommend? What do you think of the ones I have looked at?

Many thanks
 
When I was buying my first dslr about 4 years ago I bought a new d3000 from Amazon for £300. It was a really good camera to get me started. I then learnt what I wanted from a DSLR and when I chose to upgrade to a d7000 a couple or 3 years later I knew what features I wanted the new one to have. The d3000 was a good camera and I only upgraded because I chose to, not because I was limited by the camera.

I'm sorry but I'm no knowledge of the Pentax range so can't help you there.
 
Hi Mark and a warm welcome to TP. Hope you enjoy yourself here :)

Best advice is to go and have a look at the different makes / models etc yourself and see which you feel is best for you, which model feels best in your hand, which buttons feels best placed / fall easy / most logical layout for you, whose menu system do you / don't you like....

A lot of the time, people generally don't switch manufacturers once they start off as they tend to get comfortable, have a lot of kit that works with new bodies etc and the companies know this, so you can get some very good deals.

If you are used to Pentax previously, then they are certainly worth a look at to see if they are still as your old one was, or has the change to DSLR altered things significantly with ergonomics etc. One thing to bear in mind also, Pentax and Sony have Image Stabilisation (IS) built into the camera body, so whichever lens you use, it has access to it, whereas Canon and Nikon, the IS is in the lens - so sometimes you have a choice of IS or not IS when choosing a lens...

Hope this helps and most, enjoy the process of looking / choosing etc. :)
 
As above go try some out and see which feels most comfortable and most natural. Nikon hold the trump card at the moment in that their sensors are better than the equivalent other makes, but not everyone prefers the controls and layout.

Also consider the system. Canon and Nikon have the most complete systems in terms of lenses, flashes, accessories, support etc and you will find second hand gear more readily available.
 
For £300 your choice would be limited to the bottom of a manufactures range let alone a lens for it and memory card. in Nikon you could get theD3200 with an 18-55mm kit lens for £249 new. Canon offer their EOS1200D with an 18-55mm kit lens for £279 new. Both well within your budget

having taken a similar route in starting off at this end of the market i quickly realise how limiting it can be. Nothing wrong starting this way But I soon got frustrated with the limits my first DSLR. So going up the range another 3 times I have now got a camera I am happy with.

If asking my advise is to spend a little more and get a camera a bit more expensive to start with. Oh you are going to say I don't need/want/know how to use these features. Initially maybe not but they are there even if you start off using auto only. better to start off like this than loose money on doing part exchange/selling for a better model later on with those features added.

http://www.camerapricebuster.co.uk/ is worth a look at for prices

My route was Nikon with the D70s -D200-D300-D800 and cost quite a bit on each exchange except the D300 and D800 which I have kept
 
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As a former Pentax film shooter, I'll say don't get hung up on the auto focus issue, modern AF systems are awesome, and generally modern AF cameras are a pain to try to manually focus.

But as others have said, have a play with some different cameras and see what works best for you. Like modern cars, the worst ones are still very capable the good ones are just a bit better.
 
Love the Advice to go and play to get a feel of a Camera, try that in Cornwall!!!

OK if Currys/PCWorld has the one you want in the 2 available, otherwise pot luck on Amazon/Ebay. :snaphappy:
 
I would say your budget could go much further if you went for a used model.

There are many places to look but CEX can be cheap for SLRs, and theyve also just added a 2 year warranty for all purchases. Much better than a private sale where it could go wrong and the money lost.

Don't get too hung up on having the absolute newest model.

Try and think what features you definitely want and then match it to a new SLR model. Now go 1 model older, normally save hundreds and don't miss out on much :)
 
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stryvya said:
Love the Advice to go and play to get a feel of a Camera, try that in Cornwall!!!

OK if Currys/PCWorld has the one you want in the 2 available, otherwise pot luck on Amazon/Ebay. :snaphappy:
Click to expand...
Not the best advice :rolleyes: So we're not all psychic on where people live, but a quick google of camera shops in Cornwall brings up a large number of hits, all depends where in Cornwall and how willing you are to travel. There's no camera shops where I live and have to travel myself, I would always recommend others to do the same (within reason of course).
 
snerkler said:
a quick google of camera shops in Cornwall brings up a large number of hits
Click to expand...

Right, checked some out, Truro 1 closed other Nikon only.
Another Location listed DSLR under Auto Focus and had 2nd hand only, next one had nothing under DSLR available, 1 at Falmouth mainly a Processing Shop the other I must admit I had forgotten about and seems reasonable.

Some links got me nowhere.

Gave up after that, sorry
 
stryvya said:
Right, checked some out, Truro 1 closed other Nikon only.
Another Location listed DSLR under Auto Focus and had 2nd hand only, next one had nothing under DSLR available, 1 at Falmouth mainly a Processing Shop the other I must admit I had forgotten about and seems reasonable.

Some links got me nowhere.

Gave up after that, sorry
Click to expand...
Hmmm, but awkward then. Are there any local camera clubs, you could go along and ask to have a look at members' gear? They might not have the exact models but if you can get an idea of layout such as how Nikon differ to Canon that could steer you in the right direction. Or maybe a family member.

Failing that I guess as a last resort you could whittle it down to a couple of models, so for a £300 budget something like the Nikon D3300 and whatever the Canon equivalent is, order both from Amazon and then return whichever you don't want. With the 14 day cooling off period you can return the item even if it's been opened. Obviously don't take the mick taking loads of shots, and leave all the screen protectors/films on etc (y)
 
Sorry should explain, just stating how Location limits choice.

I am Secretary at our Local Camera Club and use Canon.
 
Ok then, my simple blunt advice is buy a s/h Canon 40d, great camera, great ergonomics, great IQ as long as you don't want stupid high ISO's, fast and with a great set of lenses and accessories.
 
Thekillerqueen88 said:
I personally have preferred Pentax back when it was film photography.
Click to expand...
What's the 'When' Kimosabi? Film is still here! Check out the Film & Conventional section, we've even converted a few electric picture makers to the cause.
I was out on Friday afternoon, with my trusty old all mechanical, all metal Sigma MK1 M42 screw-fit and primes and a roll of 100ASA B&W trying to make some 'trichromes'!
Thekillerqueen88 said:
I know nothing of ISO settings etc, everything digital is all new to me.
Click to expand...
ISO stands for International-Standards-Organisation, it's the American-Standards-Association, or ASA 'film' speed, in Metric.
Modern Digital Single-Lens-Reflex is much the same as a traditional 35mm Film Single-Lens-Reflex, only it has a silicon chip where the film should be.
Still have a shutter in front of the 'sensor', still have a lens in front of the shutter, and an aperture in the lens.
& you still make an 'exposure' the same way; metering, deciding on shutter-speed and aperture setting.
Only 'change' really, is that having a sliver of silicon where the film aught to be, you don't wind it on, and you cant change film, hence film type or film speed... instead, the 'brain' in the camera lets you tell it what sort of film you want it to pretend to be, so can set the 'film-speed' shot by shot, if you want.... I'll come back to this I think.
Otherwise.... basic operation and mechanics, all the same.
Major innovations have been 'zoom' lenses become the accepted 'norm' and for them to incorporate 'auto-focus', almost universally now motor-driven in the lens, rather than in the camera body.
For most DSLR's the 'zoom' is still manual, focal length set by twisting the main control ring on the lens body, rather than 'Motor-Zoom' adjusted by pressing buttons of a lever by the shutter release as more common on consumer compact digital cameras. So operating a DSLR is still a two-handed job.
With Auto-Focus twiddling the focus ring for you, these tend to have 'shrunk' into obscurity.. often still there, and a switch will let you disable the motor and focus manually if you want; But, the nice familiar and often useful focus distance scales and Depth-of-Field indexes tend to have disappeared. So too have split-field focus aids in the viewfinder, now we have a matrix of red-dots super-imposed to tell us the 'focus points' the AF is using.
Otherwise? Meter Coupled 'Automatic-Exposure' has bee allowed to go crazy, in the electronics.. Instead of taking a Through-The-Lens meter reading and setting the shutter speed for you depending on the ASA speed dialled in and the aperture you set, For a Aperture Priority AE film SLR or t'other way about, setting aperture for you while you et shutter speed on a Shutter-speed priority AE film SLR.. on 'full-auto' the DSLR's Automatic-Exposure meters and sets all three settings, shutter, aperture and ISO (ASA), according to a 'program', taking into account the focal length setting ad focus distance to guess whether you are likely to want more or less aperture or shutter. You then usually have a conventional 'Aperture Priority' mode ('A' on Nikon, AV, I think on Canon), and a Shutter Priority mode, (S on Nikon, TV I believe on) Canon, and a 'full' manual mode, that gives you wig needle meter display and lets you set everything yourself. Only main difference being that lenses have lost the aperture control ring on the barrel, that, like the shutter and ISO get set usually through a thumb wheel on the camera. Other 'mode' they tend to have is a 'Program Automatic' setting, (P on a Nikon), that's tll fully-auto and sets shutter, aperture and ISO for you to the meter, BUT, you can 'program' it a little setting preferences or limits, say telling it to not use a shutter speed less than 1/250th.
Metering methods have become pretty sophisticated, too. the old Film SLR' were lucky to have a 'Centre-Weighted-Average' metering cell in the body, that took a single meter reading for the whole frame, with a 'screen' filtering everything outside the focus circle, to bas the reading to the light on the subject. 'Spot' metering, added another meter sensor with a much narrower angle of view, usually just the focus circle, to get a reading from 'just' a spot of the scene, while 'multi-spot' systems would let you take a number of spot readings, and the cameras electronics would remember them and average them for you. THIS 'multi-spot' metering is essentially what modern 'evaluative' metering systems do, only they can take hundreds of spot-samples across the frame, and can work out the range of brightness as well a the average, and use the data to pick an exposure value that' a 'skewed' average depending on what it's seeing. Like Aperture Priority or Shutter Priority though, you can usually choose whether to use such advanced method or the trusty old CWA or simple 'spot'.
'Pop-Up' Flashes are the norm, now, but cameras still have an accessory hot-shoe to take an accessory flash gun or remote flash trigger... OE word of caution on that topic, if you have an old flash gun fro a film camera DON'T stick it on the hot-shoe of a digital, the old flashes usually put the full current the flash drew through the shoe, where modern widgets just use a very low current trigger voltage, and the amps from a couple or more AA Duracells through them can easily 'fry' their delicate silicon chips.
SO, all in all... they do what conventional cameras always did, you can use one like an old clock-work Zenit, without even a TTL meter, if you wanted, or you can shoot one lke a 'big' poit ad shoot compact on 'Full Auto', depending on how much 'fiddlng' you want to do.
Back to the matter of replacing film with silicon, apart from saving buying lots of film, the digital sensor, are pretty amazing, and offer you almost any film-speed you might ever have been able to by, ad a few more to boot, at the touch of a button. ISO settings will tend to go from something like 100ASA to 3200or even 6400, faster than almost ay conventional and commercially available film way-back when, and some even offer 'boost' modes, a bit like 'push-processing' film, to get an extra stop or two over and above. What they do 'lack' though is slower settings, like the 25 or 50ASA films you might have got way back when for silky smooth land-capes and the like... which has begged folk dong super-log exposure 'stuff' the typical milked out waterfalls, to have to resort to high f-stop ND filters to get the shutter-speeds long enough and hold back exposure for them.
Colour Print vs Slide vs B&W? Pretty redundant, now.Electric 'sensor' doesn't record a 'picture', it record brightness values 'digits' for each of the pixel squares that might 'make' a picture, then whatever makes the picture, be the scree on the back of the camera or your computer or mobile telephone, reads the 'data-file' that contains those light level reading and uses them to 'paint by numbers' the picture it displays. so you get a positive colour image... but, if you want a B&W then the computer can do a different set of sums on the number to take the colour away, or gve different 'colour responses', like you might have got with different slide films, or in a similar way, different sums again, to create the sot of effects you might have got i the dark-room dog trage thig with chemicals like cross-procesing.
MIAN thing that digtal cameras 'do' here though is 'White-Balence' - if you remember taking pictures in doors on film and them all coming out rather 'orange' that was because of the colour temperature of electric light bulbs. Colour film tended to be 'balenced' to day-light, so used under 'warmer' tungsten lighting you got that orangie cast, used under flourecent strip lightig you tended to get a sort of green cast. You could but films balanced for tungsten or even fluorescent light, but in digital, computer i the camera can do some somes on the numbers in the pictures data file and 'correct' the colour for you dependng o the settings you choose for 'white Balance', which is pretty useful... you now have to go play in 'Photo-shop' or something to get such curouse effects n your pictures.
 
Thekillerqueen88 said:
What would you guys recommend? What do you think of the ones I have looked at?
I am looking for a something under £300 if possible.
Click to expand...
I would recommend a NIKON! But I am based.
I am utterly unfamiliar with the cameras you mention.. they are probably great cameras and possibly have a lot of great qualities, bar one... they ent a Nikon or Canon!
THIS is a very big consideration. You are't buying 'a' camera, you are buying into a whole system. If you want to exploit that 'system' and use the facility to change lenses, by buying different lenses, or attaching accessory flashguns etc etc etc you need to look at the whole system, not just the camera. And Nkon and Canon have a got a HUGE dominance in the market, most ue one or the other, I think something like 90% of all digital DSLRS sold World-Wide are Nikon or Canon... so Nikon or Canon or 'compatible' third-party equipment and accessories are common and easily available, new or used, and at the most competitive prices, due to the economy of scales.
If you buy 'out' of the mainstream with anythg elce, be it a Pracktica, Pentax, Olympus or Panasonic or whatever.... between them, they only sell one camera in every ten, so there isn't such demand for equipment and accessories for them, so less is made, and what is, tends to be less ecconomical. AND ther' fewer people usg them, so there's fewer folk to ask how to use them.
SO, if you by Nikon or Canon, you get a greater range of lenses and accessories to go with them, those leses and accessories tend to be more readily available in the shops of on-line, and more affordable, AND with almost 10x as many people using them, you have that much greater pool of knowledge about them to draw on f you want to know anything.

And Both are baiting the market with 'entry' level DSLR cameras aimed at the £300 price barrier..... You would have to be pretty clued up, and confdent you were getting more for your money looking at a deal fro a different maker.

Personally, I plumped for Nikon. To me, the Nikon feels familiar and intuative to use, and 'almost' like one of my old film cameras. The Canon didn't. To ME at least it felt as alien a my daughter's 'smart-phone'.. except on that I was asking "Where's the buttons!" Where on the Canon I was just bewildered by them all! I only made the leap about 3-years ago, and went for the then entry level D3200, that was a tad over the £300 price break, and a close call against the D3100, which was just under. Since I have actually acquired two D3100's, both second hand, one for my daughter for her 'school' O&A Level photography and one for my O/H feeling 'left out'! But I don't think I would have been disappointed with the lesser camera.

Little of the back story; I was early to 'digital' in the mid-90's, but via the digital dark-room, a PC being a heck of a lot less messy than blacking out the bath-room! But made 'digital' images fro scanning pictures from film; originally from prints and a flat-bed scanner. Direct to Digital cameras the were dire and diabolically expensive. I the early 2000's 'digital' leapt into the mainstream, but, curtsey of the mass-market, consumer-compacts, were the faster to leap ahead term of performance and come down in price. Having bought a dedicated negative scanner in 2000, I bought a compact digital in 2003, when they fell into the under £100 bracket. Convenient, it did not replace my film camera, though I did recognise a lot of potential. Another followed I think in 2005 that was ore useful; but 2008, was actually 'impressed' by a Kodak compact, that with 'through the lens' composition thanks to the preview screen on the back, a 3x 35-105mm 'equivalent' lens, 7.1Mpix resolution AND 100, 200 and 400ASA settings! DID start to challenge the film cameras.Fact its battery reliably lasted a whole day, was a boon, an saw me less often carrying my trusty 'pocket' Olympus XA2 as 'Back-Up'! While the lens range and ISO range offered very useful range to rival the SLR' for an awful lot of my photography. Which put me in a lot of accord with the '4/3' and ''Mirror-less' camera camp, considering whether a 'bulkier' DSLR did anything more 'useful' for it.... 2012 and three Kodak compacts had been franken-camera'd into one, as I had bought one each for the kids.. who managed to smash them! Begging a 'New' camera.. and dilemah over whether to buy another 'better' compact, or get back to 'system' cameras with a mirror-less or DSLR.

The better compact and bridge options, were dismissed as somewhat underwhelming. Camera-phones meant that what was on offer was either ultra cheap and not even as good as the Kodak Franken camera I wanted to replace, or pushing up the price range, challenging 'Entry-Level' DSLR money for 'not quite' a DSLR. Mirror-less, got a long hard look, but, they don't really compete with entry level DSLR, and lack the support, so were tending to be VERY much more expensive to get the same level of versatility, and even more expensive to start expanding it.

The 'Entry-Level' Nikon & Canon DSLR's are just represent SUCH a huge 'optimum', so well 'honed' for a 'Beginners', to 'system' digital, the choice just kept rolliing back towards one they made SO much 'sense'... and still do!

And as said, I have not been disappointed by the D3200, and wouldn't have been with the D3100, and in the last three years have been steadily building the kit up to cover, and more, extend, the versatility I had with my film SLRs..... The 'kit' 18-55 lens that came (effectively for 'free'.. kit prices from the retail sellers were often cheaper than 'body-only' one fro specialists!) is a dam useful piece of kit.

Worth mentioning at this juncture, one significant difference between 35mm film and mainstream Digital SLR is that most Digital SLR's use a 'half frame' or APS-C sized sensor, 16x24mm rather than 24,26 for a 35mm film frame or 'full-frame' digital. This gives rise to the 'Crop Factor' the sensor only covering the middle of the image circle you'd get fro the same length lens on a full-frame, so givig a narrower angle of view, or increased effective 'zoom'... Crop factor for APS-C Nikon s convenient 1.5, so a 50mm lens used on a DSLR has the same field of view as a 75mm lens on a 35mm film camera. 'Normal' angle of view, that would be provided by a 50mm les o a film camera then becomes aprox 35mm on a Digtal. OK? Got that? Cannon BTW have two crop factors for thier cameras, 1.3 and 1.6, depending on model.

So, 'Kit' 18-55 covers the same 'range' of focal lengths on a DSLR as a 27-82mm on a film SLR. That's just a tand more either end, than the 28-70 zoom that's still sitting on my old Olympus OM4, ad was the 'first call' lens for most photography, and 'enough' for most folk to do most of whatever they are likely to want to. On the DSLR it's still my 'most used' lens.

I bought a 'legacy adaptor', to be able to attach my old M42 screw-fit primes to the Digi-Nikon, shortly after I got it, which allowed me to get a bit more 'reach' from them, until I had saved up to get the 55-300mm zoom, that matches the 'kit' 18-55. With 1.5 crop factor that gives me an effective zoom to the equivalent of 450mm on a film SLR... which is more than double the 70-210mm zoom for the old OM4 offered, and almost as much as the 630mm it occasionally gave with a 3x tele-converter..

Consumer 'Kit' grade lens, it's image quality for the pixel peepers into that sort of thing, is not particularly amazing, but for £180?!?!? Its more than 'adequate' and its astoundingly 'affordable' , when I think back to what 'budget' long zooms used to cost for film cameras, let alone early Auto-Focus lenses for film! And a LOT of this is down simply to the fact that the Nikon/Canon market dominance demands the sales volumes to let prices be brought so low.

So, next stage. On Film, I was always beggared trying to find 'wide' lenses, particularly for the less popular OM system. I had always wanted something around the 22 or 24mm mark for either the OM or preferably the M42 screw. NEVER found one... well, did.. I got my hands on a lovely Zeiss 24 screw fit i a bargain box once.. but when I got it home it was wrecked.. full of crud ad the aperture scrap! Had to buy a whole £5 worth of cruddy Russian lenses to get that, too! Lol! Did tickle a genuine Zoiko OM 24 in a shop once.. util I feinted at the asking price! so never managed to get one on the front of a camera! What I DID turn up at a camera fair, though was a Petacon 12mm 'Fish-eye', which I think I paid £20 or £30 for in OM fit. Fixd focus and with three aperture settings it was a never a great lens, or even a 'full' fish-eye... didn't give full 180 degree field of view, and a full circle image, gave a cropped circle with about a 170 degree FoV.. was a 'cheap' gave it a try fishe-eye for f whe ew, and o better twenty years later when I bought it. WAS fun though....

Significance of the fish, however is that having had fun with that 12, in the 'leap' to widgetal, I didn't want to go backwards fro where I had been with film, I wanted to at least do what I had with film, without the faff, ad that meant replacing that fish. Which was one of the reasons behind buyig the higher MegaPixel D3200 over the D3100... fish wast sensor space, only putting a image in the mddle. Anyway.. I re-mounted the 12mm Pentacon M42, but ufortunately, with such a short focal length, intrudg 'in' to the mirror housing, couldn't even use it on the digital with the legacy adaptor, not that it would have bee very fishy with the crop factor limiting ts Feild of View to that of an 18mm lens... making it a bit pointless! But I slapped it on a meter-less Zenit for dedicated fish-eye-photo's until I could afford a digital fish. THAT took a LOT of saving up!

BUT this is the thing, I COULD save up! They ARE available and they aren't so utterly exorbitant. When all we had was film, I think most of the bigger name camera makers offered a fish in their line up. I know that Olympus offered a 'real' Zioko OM fish and pretty sure Nikon did, BUT they were thousands of pounds, then. Which was why the Pentacon existed, and was about the only 'independent' and affordable alternate. Now, for widgetal? Nikon offer I think three fish-eyes for DSLR's Independent Sigma (Who made the Panomar branded 12 actually way back when!) offer at least two more, Tameron, Tokina, Rokinon, ALL offer fish eye lenses! Cheapest of them starting from under £200! I had a choice of fish, AND choice of prices, thanks to the volume market, that are incredibly 'affordable' (Reletively!) THIS is what you get i the digital world, and what you get sticking to a main-stream system.

So, after a lot of head-scratching and the novelty of having choices! I eventually decided on the Sigma 4.5mm fishe-eye. About as expensive as Nikon's, but the Nikon is only 10.5mm and so not 'quite' a full-fish on crop-sensor digital, or even quite as 'fishy' as the 12mm Pentacon for film. Sgma's 4.5 is the real-deal, 'Full-Fish' delivering a genuine 180 field of view and a full round image... an the only one currently that does on a 'crop' sensor digital. So wanting to go 'forward' I stumped up nearly £500 for one. Bludy huge 'indulgence', as its hardly used! BUT, finally have 'the full fish', AND cost half what they did twenty years ago! One phone call, one VERY deep breath as I got the debit card out the wallet, and it turned up three days later on my door-step!

In digital, but more pertinently 'mainstream' Nikon/Canon Digital SLR; stuff that was just not on offer, anywhere, at any price, or was, but so rare you could ever find it or so expensive you could ever afford it.... IS 'available' ad it is 'affordable'....

And this years 'capitol investment'? Waiting delivery tomorrow or Tuesday ;-) having got over the wallet bashing of the 'fish' last year, this years saving up has bee blow o that 'Wide Angle' I couldnever get my hands on way back when. 22 or 24mm? That would be something in the 14-16mm range.... struggled to find for film, and feinted at the price when I did... but again for the 'main-stream', CHOICE of offerings from at least five makers, all very affordable, and on the shelves, from around £180 up ready for delivery within the week! Actually plumped this time for the Sigma (again) 8-16, one of the more expensive on offer, but also one of the 'widest'.. but since I have waited this long? Twenty Five Years! since I was fiddling with that knackered Zeiss! If I'm gonna do it, may as well do it proppa! Probably get half a dozen outings ad sit the bag almost as much as the fish, another 'indulgence' but what the heck, photography IS an indulgence!

Of course, this leaves me little to save up for for NEXT years 'indulgence'.. blimey! That's a first! This digital lark? It just makes stuff TOO Easy! Maybe I will have to take my Trichrome experiments and try dong some 'stereo-scopes', begging double-camera brackets and synchronised shutters or something! Or getting one of these fancy accessory flash-guns, I've not really discovered a need for yet, since the trusty old Vivitar 283 is't really 'compatible' with the electric picture makers.... who knows.

Thing is, for me, making the leap into DSLR, has bumped the 'adventure' back into life, opening the door to 'stuff' that was just not viable when all we had was film. Its there, its available, its affordable... IN the mainstream Nkon/Canon systems..... ad it can let you go almost anywhere you want to.

I curries, on your high-street, right here, right now; Canon EOS1200 whatever it is, with 18-55 'starter kit' £299. Nikon D3300 (the 'upgraded' version of my 3-year old camera), starter kit with 18-55, £279, and possibly some sort of deal, if you ask.... I wouldn't look any further. I really wouldn't. they are bang on the money, and gets the adventure started.. get down the shop, ad have a play with them both on display, see which seem to be easiest to get to grips with.. take a deep breath... A-N-D... well...you could save a few quid towards anther lens or something going second hand.... shopping about a bit... picked up the D3100 for the daughter and a 'fast' 35mm prime to go with it for under £200, and the O/H's with the kit 18-55 for just £140... which is great VFM and even on an 'older' DSLR like that, there's more than enough 'capability' in one to take you a very long way on the adventure.... but... starts with a first step, and new, in curry's today? Not a lot stopping you making that start ad seeing where it leads....

JUST be warned, this digital lark, CAN make it all just TOOOOOOOOO Easy.. especially to spend money! BUT at least you dot have to keep buying film... unless you want to of course.... do you till have that old Petax? Was it bayonet mount K1000 per chance? If you do, Dust it off! Get down pound-land grab a roll of Agfa Vista, give it an outing! Its still a lot of fun, ad more adventure still to be had!
 
Teflon-Mike said:
I would recommend a NIKON! But I am based.
I am utterly unfamiliar with the cameras you mention.. they are probably great cameras and possibly have a lot of great qualities, bar one... they ent a Nikon or Canon!
THIS is a very big consideration. You are't buying 'a' camera, you are buying into a whole system. If you want to exploit that 'system' and use the facility to change lenses, by buying different lenses, or attaching accessory flashguns etc etc etc you need to look at the whole system, not just the camera. And Nkon and Canon have a got a HUGE dominance in the market, most ue one or the other, I think something like 90% of all digital DSLRS sold World-Wide are Nikon or Canon... so Nikon or Canon or 'compatible' third-party equipment and accessories are common and easily available, new or used, and at the most competitive prices, due to the economy of scales.
If you buy 'out' of the mainstream with anythg elce, be it a Pracktica, Pentax, Olympus or Panasonic or whatever.... between them, they only sell one camera in every ten, so there isn't such demand for equipment and accessories for them, so less is made, and what is, tends to be less ecconomical. AND ther' fewer people usg them, so there's fewer folk to ask how to use them.
SO, if you by Nikon or Canon, you get a greater range of lenses and accessories to go with them, those leses and accessories tend to be more readily available in the shops of on-line, and more affordable, AND with almost 10x as many people using them, you have that much greater pool of knowledge about them to draw on f you want to know anything.

And Both are baiting the market with 'entry' level DSLR cameras aimed at the £300 price barrier..... You would have to be pretty clued up, and confdent you were getting more for your money looking at a deal fro a different maker.

Personally, I plumped for Nikon. To me, the Nikon feels familiar and intuative to use, and 'almost' like one of my old film cameras. The Canon didn't. To ME at least it felt as alien a my daughter's 'smart-phone'.. except on that I was asking "Where's the buttons!" Where on the Canon I was just bewildered by them all! I only made the leap about 3-years ago, and went for the then entry level D3200, that was a tad over the £300 price break, and a close call against the D3100, which was just under. Since I have actually acquired two D3100's, both second hand, one for my daughter for her 'school' O&A Level photography and one for my O/H feeling 'left out'! But I don't think I would have been disappointed with the lesser camera.

Little of the back story; I was early to 'digital' in the mid-90's, but via the digital dark-room, a PC being a heck of a lot less messy than blacking out the bath-room! But made 'digital' images fro scanning pictures from film; originally from prints and a flat-bed scanner. Direct to Digital cameras the were dire and diabolically expensive. I the early 2000's 'digital' leapt into the mainstream, but, curtsey of the mass-market, consumer-compacts, were the faster to leap ahead term of performance and come down in price. Having bought a dedicated negative scanner in 2000, I bought a compact digital in 2003, when they fell into the under £100 bracket. Convenient, it did not replace my film camera, though I did recognise a lot of potential. Another followed I think in 2005 that was ore useful; but 2008, was actually 'impressed' by a Kodak compact, that with 'through the lens' composition thanks to the preview screen on the back, a 3x 35-105mm 'equivalent' lens, 7.1Mpix resolution AND 100, 200 and 400ASA settings! DID start to challenge the film cameras.Fact its battery reliably lasted a whole day, was a boon, an saw me less often carrying my trusty 'pocket' Olympus XA2 as 'Back-Up'! While the lens range and ISO range offered very useful range to rival the SLR' for an awful lot of my photography. Which put me in a lot of accord with the '4/3' and ''Mirror-less' camera camp, considering whether a 'bulkier' DSLR did anything more 'useful' for it.... 2012 and three Kodak compacts had been franken-camera'd into one, as I had bought one each for the kids.. who managed to smash them! Begging a 'New' camera.. and dilemah over whether to buy another 'better' compact, or get back to 'system' cameras with a mirror-less or DSLR.

The better compact and bridge options, were dismissed as somewhat underwhelming. Camera-phones meant that what was on offer was either ultra cheap and not even as good as the Kodak Franken camera I wanted to replace, or pushing up the price range, challenging 'Entry-Level' DSLR money for 'not quite' a DSLR. Mirror-less, got a long hard look, but, they don't really compete with entry level DSLR, and lack the support, so were tending to be VERY much more expensive to get the same level of versatility, and even more expensive to start expanding it.

The 'Entry-Level' Nikon & Canon DSLR's are just represent SUCH a huge 'optimum', so well 'honed' for a 'Beginners', to 'system' digital, the choice just kept rolliing back towards one they made SO much 'sense'... and still do!

And as said, I have not been disappointed by the D3200, and wouldn't have been with the D3100, and in the last three years have been steadily building the kit up to cover, and more, extend, the versatility I had with my film SLRs..... The 'kit' 18-55 lens that came (effectively for 'free'.. kit prices from the retail sellers were often cheaper than 'body-only' one fro specialists!) is a dam useful piece of kit.

Worth mentioning at this juncture, one significant difference between 35mm film and mainstream Digital SLR is that most Digital SLR's use a 'half frame' or APS-C sized sensor, 16x24mm rather than 24,26 for a 35mm film frame or 'full-frame' digital. This gives rise to the 'Crop Factor' the sensor only covering the middle of the image circle you'd get fro the same length lens on a full-frame, so givig a narrower angle of view, or increased effective 'zoom'... Crop factor for APS-C Nikon s convenient 1.5, so a 50mm lens used on a DSLR has the same field of view as a 75mm lens on a 35mm film camera. 'Normal' angle of view, that would be provided by a 50mm les o a film camera then becomes aprox 35mm on a Digtal. OK? Got that? Cannon BTW have two crop factors for thier cameras, 1.3 and 1.6, depending on model.

So, 'Kit' 18-55 covers the same 'range' of focal lengths on a DSLR as a 27-82mm on a film SLR. That's just a tand more either end, than the 28-70 zoom that's still sitting on my old Olympus OM4, ad was the 'first call' lens for most photography, and 'enough' for most folk to do most of whatever they are likely to want to. On the DSLR it's still my 'most used' lens.

I bought a 'legacy adaptor', to be able to attach my old M42 screw-fit primes to the Digi-Nikon, shortly after I got it, which allowed me to get a bit more 'reach' from them, until I had saved up to get the 55-300mm zoom, that matches the 'kit' 18-55. With 1.5 crop factor that gives me an effective zoom to the equivalent of 450mm on a film SLR... which is more than double the 70-210mm zoom for the old OM4 offered, and almost as much as the 630mm it occasionally gave with a 3x tele-converter..

Consumer 'Kit' grade lens, it's image quality for the pixel peepers into that sort of thing, is not particularly amazing, but for £180?!?!? Its more than 'adequate' and its astoundingly 'affordable' , when I think back to what 'budget' long zooms used to cost for film cameras, let alone early Auto-Focus lenses for film! And a LOT of this is down simply to the fact that the Nikon/Canon market dominance demands the sales volumes to let prices be brought so low.

So, next stage. On Film, I was always beggared trying to find 'wide' lenses, particularly for the less popular OM system. I had always wanted something around the 22 or 24mm mark for either the OM or preferably the M42 screw. NEVER found one... well, did.. I got my hands on a lovely Zeiss 24 screw fit i a bargain box once.. but when I got it home it was wrecked.. full of crud ad the aperture scrap! Had to buy a whole £5 worth of cruddy Russian lenses to get that, too! Lol! Did tickle a genuine Zoiko OM 24 in a shop once.. util I feinted at the asking price! so never managed to get one on the front of a camera! What I DID turn up at a camera fair, though was a Petacon 12mm 'Fish-eye', which I think I paid £20 or £30 for in OM fit. Fixd focus and with three aperture settings it was a never a great lens, or even a 'full' fish-eye... didn't give full 180 degree field of view, and a full circle image, gave a cropped circle with about a 170 degree FoV.. was a 'cheap' gave it a try fishe-eye for f whe ew, and o better twenty years later when I bought it. WAS fun though....

Significance of the fish, however is that having had fun with that 12, in the 'leap' to widgetal, I didn't want to go backwards fro where I had been with film, I wanted to at least do what I had with film, without the faff, ad that meant replacing that fish. Which was one of the reasons behind buyig the higher MegaPixel D3200 over the D3100... fish wast sensor space, only putting a image in the mddle. Anyway.. I re-mounted the 12mm Pentacon M42, but ufortunately, with such a short focal length, intrudg 'in' to the mirror housing, couldn't even use it on the digital with the legacy adaptor, not that it would have bee very fishy with the crop factor limiting ts Feild of View to that of an 18mm lens... making it a bit pointless! But I slapped it on a meter-less Zenit for dedicated fish-eye-photo's until I could afford a digital fish. THAT took a LOT of saving up!

BUT this is the thing, I COULD save up! They ARE available and they aren't so utterly exorbitant. When all we had was film, I think most of the bigger name camera makers offered a fish in their line up. I know that Olympus offered a 'real' Zioko OM fish and pretty sure Nikon did, BUT they were thousands of pounds, then. Which was why the Pentacon existed, and was about the only 'independent' and affordable alternate. Now, for widgetal? Nikon offer I think three fish-eyes for DSLR's Independent Sigma (Who made the Panomar branded 12 actually way back when!) offer at least two more, Tameron, Tokina, Rokinon, ALL offer fish eye lenses! Cheapest of them starting from under £200! I had a choice of fish, AND choice of prices, thanks to the volume market, that are incredibly 'affordable' (Reletively!) THIS is what you get i the digital world, and what you get sticking to a main-stream system.

So, after a lot of head-scratching and the novelty of having choices! I eventually decided on the Sigma 4.5mm fishe-eye. About as expensive as Nikon's, but the Nikon is only 10.5mm and so not 'quite' a full-fish on crop-sensor digital, or even quite as 'fishy' as the 12mm Pentacon for film. Sgma's 4.5 is the real-deal, 'Full-Fish' delivering a genuine 180 field of view and a full round image... an the only one currently that does on a 'crop' sensor digital. So wanting to go 'forward' I stumped up nearly £500 for one. Bludy huge 'indulgence', as its hardly used! BUT, finally have 'the full fish', AND cost half what they did twenty years ago! One phone call, one VERY deep breath as I got the debit card out the wallet, and it turned up three days later on my door-step!

In digital, but more pertinently 'mainstream' Nikon/Canon Digital SLR; stuff that was just not on offer, anywhere, at any price, or was, but so rare you could ever find it or so expensive you could ever afford it.... IS 'available' ad it is 'affordable'....

And this years 'capitol investment'? Waiting delivery tomorrow or Tuesday ;-) having got over the wallet bashing of the 'fish' last year, this years saving up has bee blow o that 'Wide Angle' I couldnever get my hands on way back when. 22 or 24mm? That would be something in the 14-16mm range.... struggled to find for film, and feinted at the price when I did... but again for the 'main-stream', CHOICE of offerings from at least five makers, all very affordable, and on the shelves, from around £180 up ready for delivery within the week! Actually plumped this time for the Sigma (again) 8-16, one of the more expensive on offer, but also one of the 'widest'.. but since I have waited this long? Twenty Five Years! since I was fiddling with that knackered Zeiss! If I'm gonna do it, may as well do it proppa! Probably get half a dozen outings ad sit the bag almost as much as the fish, another 'indulgence' but what the heck, photography IS an indulgence!

Of course, this leaves me little to save up for for NEXT years 'indulgence'.. blimey! That's a first! This digital lark? It just makes stuff TOO Easy! Maybe I will have to take my Trichrome experiments and try dong some 'stereo-scopes', begging double-camera brackets and synchronised shutters or something! Or getting one of these fancy accessory flash-guns, I've not really discovered a need for yet, since the trusty old Vivitar 283 is't really 'compatible' with the electric picture makers.... who knows.

Thing is, for me, making the leap into DSLR, has bumped the 'adventure' back into life, opening the door to 'stuff' that was just not viable when all we had was film. Its there, its available, its affordable... IN the mainstream Nkon/Canon systems..... ad it can let you go almost anywhere you want to.

I curries, on your high-street, right here, right now; Canon EOS1200 whatever it is, with 18-55 'starter kit' £299. Nikon D3300 (the 'upgraded' version of my 3-year old camera), starter kit with 18-55, £279, and possibly some sort of deal, if you ask.... I wouldn't look any further. I really wouldn't. they are bang on the money, and gets the adventure started.. get down the shop, ad have a play with them both on display, see which seem to be easiest to get to grips with.. take a deep breath... A-N-D... well...you could save a few quid towards anther lens or something going second hand.... shopping about a bit... picked up the D3100 for the daughter and a 'fast' 35mm prime to go with it for under £200, and the O/H's with the kit 18-55 for just £140... which is great VFM and even on an 'older' DSLR like that, there's more than enough 'capability' in one to take you a very long way on the adventure.... but... starts with a first step, and new, in curry's today? Not a lot stopping you making that start ad seeing where it leads....

JUST be warned, this digital lark, CAN make it all just TOOOOOOOOO Easy.. especially to spend money! BUT at least you dot have to keep buying film... unless you want to of course.... do you till have that old Petax? Was it bayonet mount K1000 per chance? If you do, Dust it off! Get down pound-land grab a roll of Agfa Vista, give it an outing! Its still a lot of fun, ad more adventure still to be had!
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It is a Pentax MZ-30 with a really nice Tamron lens. It belonged to my step dad and he took some really nice photos with it which made me more partial to Pentax than any other camera. Not only that but i would like to make the most of the Tamron lens :)
 
Thanks for the input. I didn't get any email notifications hence my slow thanks!

I appreciate all your comments and advice but have decided to stick with Pentax, and managed to get a bargain for a Pentax KM (K2000). I decided with Pentax because of seeing first hand how great the photos are from them. I know Canon/Nikon do seem to be the most popular but who wants to jump on the band wagon? I also do not have first hand photo samples that I know haven't been photoshopped to the max to improve the image qaulity. I also stuck with Pentax as the Mz-30 i have, has a very nice Tamron lens that is still worth over £100. I expect this will also work perfectly with Canon & Nikon but have seen it work wonders with Pentax.

I am completely new to photography so I shall definitely be picking everyone's brains when it comes to help with settings etc.

Thanks again!
 
Personally.. and deals done so a bit stable door after the horse has bolted.... I don't know which Tameron lens it is that has made you make this choice... not many 35mm film era Tameron lenses command such elevated prices, not many modern era AF Tamero lenses command such elevated prices! Certainly for optical quality they were never regarded for any remarkeable 'excellence' they were always a 'budget' alternative to the OEM camera maker's offerings, and back then, sold significantly on their 'universal' Adaptal mount, and suggestion that this meant they only had to tool up to make a single lens, to sell to every-one, the economy of scale making savings to offer a 'better' lens for the same money.
Checking spec, the MZ is an auto-focus 35mm film SLR taking Petax KAM lenses... which is a bit of an odd one, and far from common, and begs the first question, regardless of how great the Tameron lens on it may be, is it actually a Auto-Focus lens? Was quite common in the early Auto-Focus era to mount manual lenses to auto-focus bodies via adaptor, and Tameron with the Adaptal 2 system were eminently well suited to this, when auto-focus lenses for AF cameras were often ONLY available from the OEM camera maker, and exorbitantly priced, so only way many could affod to attach anything but the standard 'kit' lens.
Next, whether its an Adapter fit manual lens, or a dedicated KAM mount lens, big question aught to hang over 'copatability'. Frst does the Tameron even mount to the Pentax Digtal? And if t does, will it 'work' with the camera?
First 'worry' particularly using an oldr 3rd party, non Pentax lens, would be whether screwing it to a new Digital, could damage any of the contacts on the new cameras monting boss, that wee never there on cameras when the lens was made.
Next wuld be, if it does and doesn't crunch aythig, do those old contacts line up ad do anythng? There's on metal shorting unused cotacts in the camera or anythg, and with the lens attached, does the camera 'work' or is it tryg to talk to the lens and get aperture or focus data through a contact the lens doesn't have? If I switched it on, with that les attatched.. would I get a fizzle and pop and puff of smoke as some delcate electronics shorted out, or would I be looking at an error message on the screen tell'ingme that there was 'no les attached' and it wont take a picture or 'something'.
would want to check 'compatibility' VERY bluddy carefully before I tried putting an old lens on my new camera!
As said, have and do use 'legacy' manual focus lenses on my Nikon, but adaptor I use checks out, doesn't damage any contacts and doesn't short any of the electronics. Beyond that, when fitted, camera does chuck up a 'No lens Fitted' error and will refuse to take a photo o any of the automatic 'modes' I have to use full manual, and even THEN, not getting aperture date fro the lens, it doesn't offer any 'metering' i the view-finder, I have to use a hand-held meter, f16 suny rule guestimation, or 'chmp it' taking test shots ad looking at them on the preview screen!
THEN, and checking the spcs same issue with the KM, its a crop-sensor digtal camera, it has a sensor just a little smaller tha half the area of a 35mm film frame, introducig the 'Crop-Factor'.
Only lookig at a square half the area in the middle of the circle the lens was designed to put an image over, it has a much smaller angle of view, meaning that a 50mm 'normal' angle lens from a 35mm film camera, would have the angle of view of a 75mm (or so) telephoto, on film...
May be a good lens, but used on a digtal camera, it will work quite a lot differently to how it did on a 35mm film camera, framing as a lens maybe 1.6x the focal length it has.
Good news is that its image quality, on digital is likely to be enhanced even over what it might have offered on film. Most lenses image quality drops off towards the edges of the field of view, ad you tend to get more 'abortions' or 'distortions' in the corners... which a 'crop sensor' looking only at the middle of the image circle the lens offers on 35mm film, lops them off! so you just get the 'better bit' from the middle.
Meanwhile, taking a peek at DigtalRev.. OEM Pentax lenses? EEEK! Not a very large range on offer, ad blimey they ent cheap! While looking at the independents, not showing 'Pentax' fitments for any of them! They may do, if you ask or search about, BUT, to make use of one legacy lens, that wont work the same way, if at all on digital, imposes some pretty drastic limitations on your 'system''!
To 'salvage' a £100 lens? It's not a compromise I would make.And if its a manual lens on an adaptor? Well, if you want to go that way and play with legacy lenses, then there's an awful lot out there, and very good M42 screw-fit primes can still be picked up for relative 'pennies' on e-bay, even a Ziess 50, like mine could be picked up for well under £50, more like £25 if you take one a little more 'used'. And up fro 28mm ish to whatever you want, with other names on them, for genuinely pocket money prices, as mentioned the crop factor taking only the centre section of the image circle, all likely to offer as good or better IQ than a middle era Tameron, especially if its a zoom. Even more and more unloved so even more affordable zooms of that era about that could be adaptor fitted to digital, and again, deliver similar quality to what a Tameron is likely to offer.
I think for some misguided idea of the 'worth' of that one lens, you have probably made life an awful lot more difficult for yourself, for almost no practical or financial advantage... BUT, like I say, stable door.

But PLEASE check very carefully what that lens is, and its compatibility before you try screwing it to the front of your new camera!
 
To expand a bit on the compatability of old lenses on Pentax DSLRs.

There is a problem, as Mike has noted, with some K mount lenses; they can get stuck on the camera body and a specialist repair shop will be needed to free them.

However, this problem is limited and if you restrict any old lenses to Pentax ones (ie made by Pentax, as opposed to made by another manufacturer but with a K mount) there won't be a problem. That is not to say lenses from other manufacturers will cause a problem, I have a couple that work with no problem, you just have to be a little careful. This article is quite useful on this topic - http://www.theatreofnoise.com/2008/05/ricoh-lenses-on-pentax-cameras-ricoh.html

As far as using old Pentax lenses on Pentax DSLRs is concerned the easiest ones to use are the 'A' series lenses. These have a letter 'A' on the aperture ring after the highest f number. This article gives a lot information on the use of old Pentax lenses - http://www.robertsdonovan.com/?p=1181
but essentially if you use an 'A' series lens the only thing you have to do is focus it, the exposure is taken care of by the camera (and as the stabilisation is in the camera any old lens is also image stabilised). Manual focussing with a DSLR is more difficult than with 35mm SLRs, and I would not want to use it with fast moving subjects, but for many subjects it is just a matter of practice. If the old lens is not an 'A' then things are more complicated but the above article includes some info and a link.

There is more work involved in using older lenses but as mentioned they can be picked up for very little and can get some decent results - the two shots on post 12 of this thread https://www.talkphotography.co.uk/threads/are-old-35mm-lenses-worth-buying-for-use-on-a-dslr.494014/ were taken with an old K mount Sigma lens.

If you do try to get a range of old lenses for your DSLR you will find a problem at the low end. Old 35mm SLR lenses were made, understandably, for 35mm cameras and the shortest focal length you are likely to find will be in the region of 24mm. The crop factor of your KM will give this lens a field of view equivalent to 36mm, ie not that wide angle so you might have to look towards modern lenses for the short end of the focal range.

The range of modern Pentax lenses is definitely smaller than Canon or Nikon but covers most of what many photographers are likely to use and although you might have to work a bit more to find them there are third party lenses made in the K mount, for example have a look on this site - http://www.srsmicrosystems.co.uk/

However, the most important thing is you have a camera you are happy with and just get out and take lots of photos. Don't buy any new lenses yet, get to know what you have and then decide if you need anything more. If you do not already know about the exposure triangle, have a look online. Although you will get lots of perfectly good shots without knowing anything about it, IMO It is essential to getting the best out of your camera.

Dave
 
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