help with Nikon d200 accessories

[gartea13]

As a graduation present, I am receiving a Nikon d200 camera in a month or so. I have virtually no experience with this kind of serious photography and am looking for some help to get started! Since I am getting only the body, what other accessories would I need/should I purchase to get the best products for a reasonable budget? What kind of price range should I expect and where is the best place to buy these products? Thank you so much for any help

[OsmosisStudios]

Well, you'll need a lens for starters. A good, cheap, and educational lens to start with is a 35mm or 50mm f/1.8 lens. Looking at $100-200.

[Almond.Butterscotch]

a lens (+1 on Os's suggestion for either a 35mm or a 50mm; I'd go for the 35mm myself as its a more useful focal length on the D200's 'DX format' sensor), a battery (or two, especially if you live someplace cold), a battery charger, a memory card (4-8GB should suit you just fine).

You know- the basics.

[ravncat]

I have a d200 myself - excellent camera.

The others above are spot on.

There are alot of things you can get for it, but what you need depends alot on what you shoot - and in order to do that you definitely need a lens.

The d200 has a shorter battery life than other nikon cameras - so a second battery is a must. I never had a problem with 3, one in the camera, one ready to go and one charging - that was pretty much enough for anything, including weekend trips - longer and you`ve gotta charge.

If you don`t have a memory card - you`ll have to get one, compact flash - If you look around, you can usually find fast Sandisk Extreme 3, 4 gigabyte cards pretty cheap on the net. Sandisk Extreme 3 is plenty fast for the d200 - while newer cards exist, I doubt you`ll see slow performance with the 3 (I don`t remember what speed rating it has, I think 20 mbps) You`re looking at 15-30 bucks for 4 gigabytes and decent speed, I think. you`d be looking at twice that for top of the line speed.

As for where to buy - Generally, if it is too good to be true, it is, and you get what you pay for with camera equipment. For accessories and lenses - I would go with Adorama , B&H photo/video and Amazon. They all have .com websites which can be convenient.

Beyond a spare battery, charger and lens, you`ll probably want to get a blower, like a giottos rocket. It`s a hand pump bulb that rockets air about for cleaning of dust. Any other accessory and you start getting into specialized needs that are either in order to get specific types of shots or make something more convenient.

If you don`t have a good handle on Exposure, Aperture(F-stops), Shutterspeed, Depth of field or ISO - you don`t need anything but time to learn that stuff. Eventually - you`ll want to start branching off towards the type of photography that interests you most - sports/fashion/portraiture/landscape/street ... the list goes on.

Photography gear tends to start getting pretty expensive - especially as you specialize. There are few deals in photography as good as the above mentioned 200$ 35 1.8 and 100$ 50 1.8 lenses... It`s not uncommon to pay more than 5-600 dollars for a lens - or even multiple thousands.

Accessories start to get expensive too - Tripods with a tripod head can cost near a thousand, and Flash units and lightboxes and equipment can get pricey too. If you can - and you know what you want to photograph - it`s cheaper in the long run to go all out and get top gear from the start - for example, spend that 1000 bucks on the strong, light weight, reliable, carbon fibre tripod with very nice head - you`ll end up saving over the 50 dollar starter tripod, the 300 dollar tripod upgrade, to find that you need another 2 upgrades. Suddenly, that 1000 dollars for the tripod seems better than the 700 dollars worth of junk up to it.

I wouldn`t worry about all that, until you get a handle on the technical stuff. There`s plenty one can do with basic kit and improvisation as well... Enjoy the d200, it`s a great camera body.

[gartea13]

Thank you all so much for the advice! Also, I forgot to mention, I would like to focus on taking pictures of rowers on the Schuylkill River in Philadelphia. What lens should i start out with for this kind of long distance photography? (the boats are usually 100-1000 meters away)