First off a big thanks for the authors of the mammoth and extremely helpful sticky posts above. You have convinced me that it is worth a shot to be able to record some of the beautiful expereinces we witness as fisherman!

I have been desperate to try photography for a few years now but money has always denied me the chance. I am now in a position where I can afford to spend about £750 on a setup and have been told that atleast half of this should go on lenses.

I have budgetted £350 for the camera body and would preferably like a Canon (a photographer friend has kindly offered a loan on some of her Canon lenses whilst I get started).

Most of my photography will be either wildlife or fishing based with a bit of macro and landscape thrown in.

Which features would the more experienced suggest are essential and which are useful? Seems to be a lot fo talk about different types of autofocus with cross-type and servo being mentioned although I am not really sure what they mean.

It would seem my budget would enable me to buy a secondhand D40 or D450, which of these would be better suited?

I understand this may be a very open question but until I get the terminology and abbreviations clear in my mind it is really quite hard to tell the difference between most of the modern DSLRs.

Cheers in advance
Dan

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My experience is that the limiting factor in quality,,,,, by a LONG way is the lense quality.

Spend your money on the lenses, and you wont go far wrong.


I use an Olympus, which certainly has its advantages, but also dissadvantages. I now have 3 lenses, plus an extension tube. I havent even considered upgrading my body,,,,, but I would like higher quality lenses if I could justify the cost.

Nature (telephoto), macro and landscapes is a big range for one lens at the price you are willing to pay.

If you are going with Canon the nearest lens will probably be the 18-200. I use Nikon and have the Nikon equivalent and it is a superb all round lens and copes with all of these to a greater or lesser extent.

There is a bit of trickery involved with these superzooms that they won't tell you about: you only get 200mm for distant objects as the actual effective mm decreases as the focused object is closer to you. So if you are taking a macro shot at a supposed 200mm you will really be taking at around 90mm. That's fine for most things by the way.

It's not as good as a dedicated macro lens, or a full telephoto lens or a dedicated landscape lens but as a combination of all of these the Nikon is brilliant and I understand the Canon is almost as good. You will get a lot more shots too as the lens will be on your camera. This is the only lens I use for fishing or hillwalking trips.

Sorry, I can't advise on Canon camera bodies.

Hi/

I have used nothing but Canon dSLRs since 2004. I personally used to be on the lineage that goes 10D, 20D, 30D, 40D... but moved to the 7D last year. At work I use the lineage that started 300D, 350D, 400D, 450D...

You should get your hands on a 450D and a 40D and see how you like the feel of them. They are very different lines. The 40D is a full size SLR and some folk might find it a bit big for their first move into SLR-dom. The 450D is a smaller camera. However, I much prefer the big one - if fits in the hand nicely so that your fingers are over the buttons where you want them to be so you can press them while shooting without having to stop and look for them.

You will find the settings easier to operate on the 40D with the extra wheel and the extra LCD top panel. But as I say, it is horses for courses so you need to try them both and find out which you prefer. Both have 'live view', which their immediate predecessors, the 30D and 400D did not have. Live view displays the scene you are about to take on the back LCD panel and is very useful for fly macro shots.

As for lenses, for sure, that is where the extra money buys you extra image quality - but you don't need to worry about that just now when you are just starting out.

For the time being, the main thing is to decide whether you want to cover wide to long with 2 lenses, such as a 17-55mm and a 55-250mm, or whether you want to cover it with just one.

If you go for 2, I would suggest the basic Canon kit lens for the 17-55mm and the Canon EF-S 55-250mm IS. The IS gives you 4 stops of image stabilisation, which is very handy when hand-holding at 250mm. You can probably get the pair for around £200.

If you want to cover it with just one 'go anywhere' lens, the one I would recommend is the Tamron 18-270 mm VR. It also has 4 stops of image stabilisation. I have one myself and it gives good IQ allowing for the limitations that such a huge range covers.

Either of the above options would get you started and as you get more into it you can start trying out more specialist lenses like macros, extra wide (10-20 mm), fast primes and all the other mallarky.

Col

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Many thanks fr the replies. I will try and get hold of both to have a feel but I have a feeling i am starting to err towards the 40D, the extra fps seems like a good thing for wildlife and action shots and the extra bulk is not really an issue.

With the lenses I am looking at an 18-200mm Canon IS lens which is being sold secondhand for £250. A very good friend has offered to lend me a couple of lenses, including a dedicated macro, until I can afford to buy my own. Hopefully this will give me enough time to get used to everything as I start to build up my own kit.

Sounds like yet another expensive hobby to add to the list!

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Hi Dan/

Glad to hear you are tending towards the big boy . A useful rule of thumb with cameras is - the smaller they are, the more fiddly and difficult they are to get good results with. The bigger they are the easier they are to use and get good results with

Sounds like you are preferring to start with a 'one size fits all' lens. I haven't tried the Canon 18-200 mm so can't comment on it. There are very few bad lenses out there these days. I have owned a couple of dozen over the years and I only had one bad one - and who knows - it may just have been a bad copy of a good lens. The anoraks on the photography forums are always banging on about the variation between copies of the same lens - some of them go through half a dozen until they find one they are happy with.

Try reading a few reviews - there are plenty sources. Don't know if you know about this site... Check out the Canon 18-200 mm IS. Useful stuff, and good to have a play with their 'widget'.

The thing you have to appreciate with a one size fits all lens is that it will have compromises in image quality over lenses with less range between wide and long. However, the latest models are getting better all the time, and after a few years of avoiding them, I have dipped my toe back into the 'superzoom' market and have been pleased with the results.

Cheers,

Col

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Pfffft, Nikon all the way.

Nikon without a doubt, streets ahead of anything else

What is it with Nikon users? Folk who own Canons don't try to say they are better than Nikons, so why do Nikon owners look for ever tiny opportunity to make a plug for Nikon gear. Smacks of some kind of complex to me.

The camera is just a tool, FFS. They all have their pros and cons - Olympus, Sony, Pentax, Fuji, Canon, and Nikon and any I've left out. I just happen to have bought Canon and, having bought Canon lenses it kind of ties me in to their lineages. Dan came on asking for advice about Canon cameras because he had friends with Canons who could lend them to him and so it made sense to start there.

I hope my photographs do my talking for me, and not the gear I use.

Can we leave all this Canon vs Nikon crap to the anoraks on the photography forums and get on with taking photographs?

Col

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My daughter's Nikon I'm Canon