First DSLR

[AMAHOGANY53]

Hi Everyone,

I was wondering if anyone would be interesting in helping me out with a couple quesitions regarding buying my first DSLR.. Here goes I have an advance point and shoot and it does great but I feel like I want to step my photography up. I am interesting in shooting nature and sports are they any entry level cameras that will do that? Also I am very new to this so I am not sure about zoom really. My current camera is 15x does that matter on SLR? I am trying to stay in the 500 range not sure about lenses either. Do I need a zoom lens starting off and I have heard peopel discuss gettign a macro lens for my flower shots. Any and all input would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance

[welshmaverick]

Well from what you have said, it does sound like you need a zoom lens probably 200mm or 300mm would be fine for sports and nature. Normally new SLR's will come with a kit lens and then the zoom lenses start from about £150 depending on make and type of fit. As regards what make of camera i'll leave the others help you with that, as I am looking to upgrade from my Sony A200 and dont know which camera to get. I'll be posting a question now about upgrades and my budget is about £600 so you may want to check that to see if there any ideas on that post

Mav

[OsmosisStudios]

Your current camera packs alot into a tight package, but transferring the same abilities to a dSLR can get costly, and big.

Lets start with subject matter; you say nature and sports. Any camera can do that, but for nature you'll generally want a wide-angle lens and sports you'll generally want a rather long lens as well as high-iso capabilities. That does weed out a few of the lowest models.

Zoom range: Your camera covers a 15x zoom range, and while that's good, it doesnt translate simply to dSLR terms. dSLR lenses are measures in mm (millimeters): lower numbers are wide angle, higher numbers are telephoto. Depending on your camera (which model do you have?), you may need some very long lenses to get the same reach, which can get expensive. If youre really into sports, a fast-aperture lens with a long reach is gonna blow your budget to pieces.

Macro: specialized lenses are needed to get true macro, but they're fairly inexpensive (as far as lenses go), and easy enough to use.

All-in-all, you should try to get to a good camera store, try out a few models you think you'd like that fit your price range, and then report back.