I will start at the end – I decided on a Nikon D80, and what a relief it was to get the decision made. The link to Ken Rockwell’s review gives a great summary of the camera and reviews it against other models so I will wont go over that here.
All the advice I got, and everything I read said to go with a ‘quality band’. So in my mind that really narrowed it down to a Canon or a Nikon. I KNOW there are other quality brands around and I mean no disrespect to any of them (or their owners) but a huge part of brand value is ‘perceived value” so in my personal view that made it a Canon or a Nikon.
At this stage my wise advisors became somewhat biased and useless at the same time! As I have said Mike is a Canon man and Matt a Nikon man so no surprises which brand they were going to suggest. I picked up two more friends opinions, Wayne has just bought a Canon and Mac is a Canon man. Hmmm – 3:1 to Canon, but I have always backed the underdog! To be fair they all said that either brand where great and it was really a matter of personal preference. Of course if I had existing lenses then that would be a big influence, so although I didn’t at this time, I would have next time so in reality the decision wasn’t so much about this body as opposed to ‘the’ body. As I said last week I don’t actually buy into the theory that the body is likely to be the item that you upgrade. I really don’t want that to be the case which is why I have bought a camera that is way more than I actually need now, but that I intend to ‘grow into’, and use for many (many) years. I have paid more than I intended to although I got a really good deal on it, but I am happy with the decision. It fulfilled my main criteria:
– fits the hand really well,
– buttons etc all easy to access and intuitively feel in the right place,
– starts up really quickly,
– shoots RAW and
– looks great!
To be honest this is the DSLR that I thought I would buy at the very beginning, but having gone through this process and done the extensive research I feel far more comfortable with the decision.
Now – what lens(s) should I get????
Get one of each! 🙂
🙂 each what? Any suggestions? It seems that I can go for one mega lens that covers pretty much everything from 18mm – 300mm, or break that same range down into 2 or 3 individual lenses.
If you have read Ken Rockwell’s site you will pay extra to get the Nikon 18-200 VR. I have this setup, and it’s a great combination!
I have seen that – interested that you have it and rate it. Thanks!