i have a d3000
its nice
plus with the money you save you can buy some nice lenses and a flash or somethign

Didn't say that you could, haha. BUT for someone just getting into photography, its overkill imo. Plus spending that much on body would be around the $1500 budget, with no lens. Not to mention if you are going to throw down that much money on a body, you aren't gonna use cheap class on it, you'll spend the money on much nicer glass.



Sadly, the d3000 can only auto focus with the new AF-S lenses because it doesn't have a motor for AF. You're gonna spend more money on the newer lenses with AF-S than you would buying older and much better lenses that are just AF. Therefore spending less money on a body and getting new not as nice lenses will set you up around what you'd spend on a much better body, the D90, and older better AF lenses.

This post was edited by CitizenScuba on Mar 19 2010 11:00pm

I'd probably agree with the people giving the D90 their vote.
With $1500, you can get a nice body - but no glass...making it worthless.

Either save up some more money, get the D300 and a good lens collection with it...or buy a D90 and spend the rest on building up your lens collection.

d300!!!

work on lens collection/borrow from in-laws !

A good condition, second hand Nikon d700

Spending 1500 on a body would be pointless. With either of these options you'd end up doing exactly that. Then you wouldn't be able to get any lenses. Having that nice of a camera body without any lenses makes the body worthless. Yeah sure you can borrow a lens from the in law, but you won't have it all the time. Performance of the D90 is nearly as good as the D300, and you get that for much cheaper. Then you'd be able to get at least two lenses, good ones at that.

And if you're gonna get a D700 you'll spend at least $1800 my guess for a second hand body. And if you spend that much on the body you better be getting an arsenal of nice glass. For instance... The 14-24mm f/2.8, The 50mm f/1.4 prime, The 135mm f/2 DC prime, and the 70-200 f/2.8 VR. Spending approximately $5k on glass. Which is obviously over budget. But if I had the money, that's what I'd get in a heart beat And honestly I'm thinking of saving up for the 700 myself. But at the moment I only have the 50mm prime and I'm able to borrow the 14-24mm whenever I want and my macro lens. I only have about $1300 saved up, sadly I think I'll have to wait til I have over $4k saved up that way I'd be able to get the body plus the 70-200 2.8.

Anyway, in the end. D90 plus two nice older lenses will be THE BEST route for what your budget is. End of story.

damn I'm getting so much mix messages lolz... my in law actually has the D90, I just got a replied from him through the email. I think I guess it all goes down to personal preferences haha, I'm going to go to the camera store to check it out on Tuesday or so to get a feel of it, I'm going to check both the Canon model and the Nikon and decide which one I would prefer, hope I find the one I want thanks guys