So you've had a day to think it over
and you're still hanging around, which must mean you are thinking
about, maybe, wanting to, sort of, try, might get a “real' camera.
Now you know how I feel about the high
priced spread, owning a Nikon makes you a Nikon owner not a
photographer, it makes you pay more for lenses and accessories and it
takes longer to learn about all the bells and whistles, cause they
just know you don;t need any help cause you are a Nikon owner.
But if you still have your heart set on
a Nikon, you picked a pretty good time.
So let's start with the basics...
How many pixels do you really need?
You can get a camera with enough pixels
to make a warm blanket and still have a coupla dozen left over. That
won't make your pictures any better. In fact the forty megapixels in
your phone won't make your pictures any better cause they are dinky.
To get all those pixels in a phone
sized sensor they have to be tiny. You want enough to make wall-sized
enlargements if you want them but not so many that you have to get a
new hard rive to store them. In fact if you shoot RAW you will have
to think about getting a larger hard drive anyway, but we'll deal
with that later. For now we're talkin pixels.
Twelve of'em. That seems to be the
magic number, enough so you can make BIG prints and still have enough
space on your hard rive for the new Katy Perry MP3.
Now there are a lot of cameras lurking
about with that sort of pixel count and if you are looking at a Nikon
them a good place to start is the D90.
What makes the D90 such a good deal?
Well for starters you can get your hands on one for under three
hundred dollars, two hundred and eighteen to be exact today through
KEH. Sure there are other places where you can get a camera and you
should look at them too, but KEH offers one of the best all around
deals. (They also have a D5000 starting at $175 so you can pick and
choose.)
Now remember the golden rule,
ELECTRONICS work are they don't. With cameras the real marker is
shutter count. A Nikon can stand 100K shutter activations. Now if you
get one with less than 60k on the clock you'll be dead long before
you push it past the 100k mark.
(I didn't know all this when I got my
Pentax K-x. It had 46K on the clock and a shutter rated at just 50k.
Doesn't seemed to have hurt it or me, it is still clicking away and
looks like it will for some time to come. So a Nikon should offer
even better durability.)
I won't go into all of the
bells and whistles there are sites all over the Net you can find that
sot of thing. I'll just say that you can do almost anything you can
think of with one of these babies.
But as with all things there
are some liabilities.
The lenses will cost you.
Fortunately there are a lot
of guys who wanted a Nikon and if you shop around a bit you can get
your hands on one for under a hundred dollars. And that is if you
shop local.
Our friendly, neighborhood
pawn shop in North Bend, World Pawn has a hand full of Nikon brand
lenses and a coupla nice aftermarket guys.
What to get?
For your first lens, and
this is where buying by the component, (That means a body only) is a
big help. Nikon often ships their kit lens which is a 18-55mm
do-nothing special piece of glass. You can do so much better and for
the first piece of glass on your camera I recommend a 55-200 or a
55-300. This workhorse will get up close and personal when you want
it to and reach out and grab those wonderful birds we are so lucky to
have living in our neighborhood. You might as well have a lens you
can learn on and do a lot of stuff with while you are making friends
with all of the dials and switches.
Oh yes, when you get your
new baby you can set it on Auto and walk away and it will take
wonderful pictures. But do yourself a favor and set it on P for
Program. This is a lot like Auto but better. You won't notice a thing
but you'll take better pictures.
So let's review.
Don't shop on Craig's List
They want more than any of
their stuff is worth and you will have absolutely no guarantee that
any of it will work and if it doesn't you have no recourse.
You can go to Wally World or
Freddy's and plunk down four bills and get a kit with last year's
discontinued model and a lens that's really a paper weight or...
You can go to KEH
I cheated, that's the page
for all of the twelve megapixel cameras so you won't even have to
poke around.
Or you can go to B&H
Or you can go to Adorama
Or you can go to
Any of these guys will do
you a solid. And for less than the cost of a kit, with a lens which
you don;t want anyway you can get a camera which will take better
pictures than you do and you can work your way into actually
understanding it and live with it for the rest of your days or...
You can see what you have
been missing and maybe buy a newer model and get into the main stream
and spend more than the gross annual product of the Arch Duchy of
Findyke. It is up to you, but while your deciding and in this
dreadful, upcoming election year when all of the good programs will
be preempted for debates, commercials and scandals you will want to
be outside taking pictures and away from anything which can carry a
political speech and you will be surrounded by Nature and all that is
green and good and you will live happily ever after!
