I am going to take the plunge- help me choose

aureliaaurita

aureliaaurita

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I have set myself a budget of £250 for a second hand dslr with kit lens,

hopefully to buy a nice 50mm fixed at a later date

want something quite small as I don;t think i would end up taking hefty kit anyway- used to have a d80, it rarely left the house until I sold it

what lens / body would you reccomend? I have no preference as to make 🙂 whichever I can get a really lovely bit of glass for...also second had of course

my only other stipulation being I would rather simpler controls none of this 'sunset mode' rubbish...although I suppose I can put up with it fo ra price.
 
A pentax would be my suggestion.
The ability to mount all those lovely and affordable Pk lenses is fantastic.
Not to mention M42 as well. For your budget you should be able to find a k10d second hand.
 
aliceelizabeth said:
I have set myself a budget of £250 for a second hand dslr with kit lens,

hopefully to buy a nice 50mm fixed at a later date

want something quite small as I don;t think i would end up taking hefty kit anyway- used to have a d80, it rarely left the house until I sold it

what lens / body would you reccomend? I have no preference as to make 🙂 whichever I can get a really lovely bit of glass for...also second had of course

my only other stipulation being I would rather simpler controls none of this 'sunset mode' rubbish...although I suppose I can put up with it fo ra price.
Click to expand...
For that money - you can now get ( don't laugh! ) a shiny, brand spankin new Nikon D40!....yes - I know it's 'only' 6mp, but it's enough!, dead simple, small and works a treat with my old Nikkor lenses - albeit manually.
Dave.
 
I like the look of the pentax but am still for some reason drawn to olympus

mostly for the lenses I feel but then I don't know what pentax's reputation is in that department
 
Well thats easy. Takumar lenses range from used (doubt you will ever find a new-old-stock one) from $30 to $250 typically. $250 would be for a rather rare lens in damn good condition. Most takumar lenses are under $100.

The 50/1.4 can be had for $30 to $100 depending upon which version you get.

They are manual focus only though. Just as a heads up.

Much much more info available at pentaxforums.com, including lens reviews, sample photos, etc.
 
The Olympus E-300 or E-330 is a good bet. You can buy a million adapters to mount a million lenses as well if you want, and a lot of people do.

Much better camera than the D40, which sucks in my opinion, and small and quiet/ish as well. The VF is also on the right, so it feels more natural to mount if you normally use a rangefinder.

Just my two pence.
 
Check out the NEW, very small Olympus DSLR. Looks like an old Olympus Pen - that's how small it is. Believe it's call an EP1. B&H has an article about it.
 
I would recommend staying away from the lower end canons, the ones that are labeled 'rebel' in the states. If I am not mistaken, they are called xxxD in the UK, instead of xD or xxD, where the x's are whatever generational model number, such as 350, 30, or 5. They tend to be made very cheaply.

I would recommend going with either a Pentax or a Nikon. With both, you have the advantage of being able to use old manual focus lenses. I would choose the Pentax over the Nikon if you tend to go out a lot in poor conditions, because the pentaxes have very good weather sealing. I would choose the Nikon over the pentax if you like to use flash as the D40 is one of the few dslrs that has a 1/500th flash sync. I would also choose Nikon if you think you may want to move up to a full frame DSLR at some point in the future, as it doesn't look like pentax has any plans to go full frame any time soon. Also, if you do some shopping around, you could probably get a brand new D40 with kit lens for pretty close to 250 pounds, they are under 500 dollars here in the states now.

As to the lenses, one word of warning about off-brand pentax lenses. A number of manufacturers (most notably ricoh) used the Pentax K mount for their cameras, and a number of these lenses are very good. Unfortunately, many of them either do not mount on pentax dslrs, or they need to be modified to mount. By the same token, some of the oldest manual focus lenses won't work on the D40 without having modifications made, and there are also some autofocus lenses that won't autofocus on the D40.
 
thank you merkin, I do like my ricoh so working out a way of mounting them onto a pentax would have me sold

how do I find out which lenses will mount? I will need adaptors presumably...
 
no, if you look at the mount on your ricoh lenses (do you have the 50mm f/1.7? that is the lens I learned photography with, on a pentax k1000, fantastic lens), you will see a pin sticking out, probably about a half centimeter long, from the base of the mount where it attaches to the lens body. You have to remove the mount and then remove that pin. Unfortunately, it means that the lens can no longer be used properly on a ricoh film slr. As far as I know, no one has come up with a method to allow ricoh lenses to be used on ricoh film slrs and pentax digital cameras simultaneously.
 
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