Digital SLR

[Sean Troy]

Hello all, where is the best place to look for a Digital SLR? I know Amazon has them at decent prices but is there a online retailer that is reputable and with good prices? I'm looking at Canon or Nikon at this time. Thanks for any help, Sean

[Steve Schlumpf]

Sean - Check this place out: http://www.buydig.com/shop/searchresults.aspx?cti=3014&pti=3014

I picked up my Canon T1i camera with 2 lenses and accessories back in January. Everything arrived as ordered and in minimal time! Very happy with them and will go back when I want some additional accessories.

Here is another site that may help you find a place: http://www.resellerratings.com/

Good luck and if you have any questions about the Canon T1i - I may be able to answer them.

[Carlos Alden]

Sean:

I have always tried to buy locally. I have shopped for the last 15 years at a local place where I am that sells audio, TV, and camera stuff. I get to handle and try out equipment, I get to return or exchange it easily, and from what I have seen I get better advice than what I find online or in warehouse stores. I usually pay a little premium for this - maybe 5% if at all - but I am helping to pay for the store being here and salespeople to help me. And I keep money in the community.

It has given me great advice and suggestions, and their counter help is extremely knowledgeable. They also have a national online site. I think you would get great advice from them. Solidly reliable and reputable place, and the prices will be comparable to just about anywhere else. I would feel a LOT better about buying from somewhere like this than an Amazon store I didn't know anything about:

http://www.onecall.com

Good luck. Also try Steve's Digicams website for loads of practical buying information: http://www.steves-digicams.com/

Carlos

[Jack Wilson]

also try www.buy.com, www.gearxs.com, www.frys.com, www.newegg.com, www.beachcamera.com. I have purchased from all of these and its been good. Also some how I got on a mailing list for www.abesofmaine.com, not sure if I ever bought from them.

[Bruce Page]

I bought my Nikon from cameta.com and was happy with both cost & service.

[Scott Shepherd]

B&H Photo or Adorama, both from NY. Excellent prices and excellent service and support. They also offer 3rd party extended warranties that are VERY reasonable. Both ship almost immediately and both know their stuff.

[Joe Chritz]

Can't help with where to shop but I use a D series Nikon at work and it is an incredible camera.

I know a couple of pro's who also use the D series and love them.

You can rack up a heavy bill quickly when you start shopping for them.

Joe

[Colin Giersberg]

I second B & H. I have the Nikon D300 and the D700. I bought the D300 at Wolf Camera and I got their extended warranty. After about three months, the camera locked up, and I couldn't do anything with it. I carried it back to Wolf, and they swapped it out, no questions asked. The D700 came from B & H, and I have no problem ordering from them again. While there is no problem involved, I had buyers remorse, contacted them to cancel the order the same day. The camera had shipped, but the lens I ordered too was canceled right away. I later ended up buying the lens from them anyway.
As far as problems go, don't get too worried about the brand. They all have the occaisional bad egg, but that should be minimal at best. In regards to the extended warrenty I got at Wolf, the clerk told me that a customer had set the camera on top of his car, loaded a few others things, then got in and drove off. By the time he realized where he had left the camera, retraced his route, and found it, the camera was toast. He picked up the pieces, went to the store and they gave him a new one because he had the warranty.

Regards, Colin

[Sean Troy]

Sean:

I have always tried to buy locally. I have shopped for the last 15 years at a local place where I am that sells audio, TV, and camera stuff. I get to handle and try out equipment, I get to return or exchange it easily, and from what I have seen I get better advice than what I find online or in warehouse stores. I usually pay a little premium for this - maybe 5% if at all - but I am helping to pay for the store being here and salespeople to help me. And I keep money in the community.

It has given me great advice and suggestions, and their counter help is extremely knowledgeable. They also have a national online site. I think you would get great advice from them. Solidly reliable and reputable place, and the prices will be comparable to just about anywhere else. I would feel a LOT better about buying from somewhere like this than an Amazon store I didn't know anything about:

http://www.onecall.com

Good luck. Also try Steve's Digicams website for loads of practical buying information: http://www.steves-digicams.com/

Carlos
I always try to buy locally also but we have no camera stores in this area. Other than crossing the river to go into Indiana and shop at Best Buy, online is my next best thing. I would never buy anything from Best Buy that costs more than a few dollars. They don't back up anything they sell and it costs to return an item. No thanks.

[David G Baker]

Another plus for B&H. Good prices, service and excellent selection of equipment.

[Larry Frank]

I have used Tristate Camera in New York for a lot of years. They have been good on price, returns and advice. I would rather deal with a store that I can call and talk with the people. Several reputable ones have been listed in the thread. I think the price will be similar at most of them but you can kind of wait and watch for a special.

When you are buying a camera, you may want to also see if you can get a good deal on an extra battery, extra memory card, camera case, etc.

[Andy Pedler]

Another recommendation of B&H. You might be able to find a better price if you really shop around (but then again, you might not), but you can't beat their service.

[Cary Falk]

Sean,
Have you put your hands on the cameras you have in mind? You can't go wrong with Nikon or Cannon but they have a different feel. I went with a Nikon D80 instead of the comperable Cannon because I like the way it felt in my hand

[Mike Cutler]

Sean

I just purchased a Nikon D90 about a month ago. I personally chose to purchase through a local brick and mortar store. That's me though. If my camera breaks, or needs service, I want to be able to walk in and talk to someone.
In my research of Nikons. The absolute cheapest price I could find was through, are you ready for this, Walmart.
I know what everyone is thinking, but you can purchase the higher end Nikons and Canons through Walmart's online page and have them delivered to a local Walmart.If you know anyone that works at a Walmart, they may be able to purchase the camera for you at an additional 10% off the online price.
As for after the sale service, I doubt Walmart is going to be able compete with any dedicated camera shop, and certainly not BH. They're pretty much the standard.

I went back and forth between the Nikon D90, the D300 and the Canon 50D. All really nice cameras.

[Eric DeSilva]

+1 for B&H and Adorama. I've used them both, and they are reputable, high volume, low cost dealers.

I seem to recall that Costco, oddly enough, sometimes has very good kit prices on the Nikons.

[Eric Franklin]

I bought the Nikon D90 & the Nikon 18-200 VR lens last December from Amazon. I couldn't find a cheaper price anywhere. I've had good luck with B&H and Adorama in the past. Newegg is another place that sometimes has great prices on items like this. I bought an Onkyo receiver last November for a great deal.

I will agree with others that should you need to try the camera in person before you buy to make sure you like it because what every brand you buy, you are stuck with that company unless you want to re-buy all your lenses and flashes. Photography can be as expensive as woodworking.

[Colin Giersberg]

For what it is worth, buying locally is great for the personnal service, but when it come to repairing a camera, more than likely, it will have to be sent to the manufacturers service center. Cameras are way to complex for the vast majority of camera shops to do any repair work.
For further advice, check out FM Forums (Fred Miranda), where there are sub forums for Nikon and Canon and one more for all other brands, Nikon Cafe, Nikonians, DP Review, and others. The ones that I mentioned are the biggest forums out there, so you stand to get a response from someone.

Regards, Colin

[Sean Troy]

In my price range, I've narrowed the choice down to two. The Canon XSi or the Nikon D5000. Anyone have any experience with either one? Pro's and con's? Thanks, Sean

[Colin Giersberg]

I'm sure the D5000 would be a nice camera to have. Whichever way you go, set the camera to shoot in RAW mode, Lossless Compressed, which preserves all of the information in the image. You will need a program like Picasa (It's free), Adobe Lightroom, Photoshop or some other program to convert the RAW files to JPEG images, but you only do that after editing the images to remove spots, correct colors, remove objects that you don't want, etc. After editing, use Save As to save the images as JPEGs. This preserves the original images for future changes, where again, you use Save As to save the new copy.The file sizes are quite large, upwards of 15 Mb, so be sure to get a 4 or 8 Gb memory card, and download the images to the computer quite often. If you fill the card up, it can take several minutes to download the images.
Keep the ISO setting as low as possible for the best images without noise. As you go up in ISO, the noise increase, so use that feature carefully. You may also need an external hard drive to save the images for backup purposes. It's amazing how a large hard drive (or so you thought) can fill up quickly, so the external drive is a nice option to have, and when full, use another to save your work.
Don't get discouraged by your efforts. They will improve over time. You will see lenses that you want, because the lens is a better quality, allows more light in, which allows for faster shutter speeds to stop any blur, and overall, gives you more versatility in the way you shoot. There are accessories that you will want. Some will be good to have, others, not so much, but only you can decide that.
Enjoy the experience, join photography forums and learn from what others are doing.

Regards, Colin

[Scott Shepherd]

In my price range, I've narrowed the choice down to two. The Canon XSi or the Nikon D5000. Anyone have any experience with either one? Pro's and con's? Thanks, Sean

I don't think you'd be unhappy with either one. Both are more powerful than the average user will ever know. I've played with some of the "deeper" functions of my camera and done some cool stuff, but I've never met anyone with it, or one like it, that had any idea how to use any of that stuff. Hard core Canon and Nikon folks won't have too many nice things to say about either of those, since they are the entry level models, more or less, but as someone that's going from a point and shoot camera, you'll be happy with either, in my opinion.

Long term lesson to learn is better photos come from better glass. You can certainly buy a $250 lens for it, but the $1000 lens with the better glass is well worth the money. A good lens on a entry level camera is still better than an entry level lens on a high end camera. Nikon and Canon both have some stunning lenses (with stunning price tags).

[Ed Harrow]

Be very careful with on-line camera 'stores'. B&H has a good rep, however. Make sure you know what is included, what's supposed to be included, and that it comes with a US warranty. Lots of shady deals in the camera world.

I've used Hunt photo (even way back when it was Hunt Drug!) for years, and feel they've been honest and forthright. My current is a D200 with the 18-200 zoomtele. I purchased them in late 2006 and they haven't had a hiccup. I can't say enough about the general utility of the lens - it sure beats the bag-full I used to carry around.

[Eric DeSilva]

Long term lesson to learn is better photos come from better glass. You can certainly buy a $250 lens for it, but the $1000 lens with the better glass is well worth the money. A good lens on a entry level camera is still better than an entry level lens on a high end camera. Nikon and Canon both have some stunning lenses (with stunning price tags).

I would agree good glass is important, but disagree that it is always costly. You can get a very good prime for relatively little money. Nikon's 35mm and 50mm lenses are very good, and very fast. Learning to shoot with primes is worth the effort.

The other observation I'd make is that digital really, really deserves post processing. At a minimum, for any pictures I intend to print/post, I will adjust white balance, set white/black points, typically push the contrast a bit, crop and sharpen. The differences are not subtle. Getting a decent tool like Adobe Photoshop or Lightroom (or even GIMP, which is free) is something I would highly, highly recommend. What most people don't realize is that a lot of this kind of stuff occurred in the darkroom when people processed their film. If you are disappointed that your digital pics don't look as good as your old film pics, it may be the lack of the photo pro in the back room on the lab. Now you have to do some of these things yourself...

[Hal Peeler]

Plus 1 for B&H. I've had great service from them. And as was mentioned before, sometimes good deals on good used equipment.
Hal

[Scott Shepherd]

The other observation I'd make is that digital really, really deserves post processing. At a minimum, for any pictures I intend to print/post, I will adjust white balance, set white/black points, typically push the contrast a bit, crop and sharpen. The differences are not subtle. Getting a decent tool like Adobe Photoshop or Lightroom (or even GIMP, which is free) is something I would highly, highly recommend. What most people don't realize is that a lot of this kind of stuff occurred in the darkroom when people processed their film. If you are disappointed that your digital pics don't look as good as your old film pics, it may be the lack of the photo pro in the back room on the lab. Now you have to do some of these things yourself...

And you can't use any of that to adjust color properly without having a good monitor and a calibration tool for your monitor. You can spend a lot of money trying to get into that side of it. Good software, good monitor, calibration device for your monitor.

Most people have no idea that when the light changes in the room, just through simple light coming in through blinds or a window, it changes the color representation your eye sees on the screen. A good calibration device will make those adjustments automatically as the light changes.

[Raymond Fries]

I bought my Canon from them last year and did the Bill me Later thing. 0% APR and paid it off mith my tax check. :)

[Josh Rudolph]

Adorama is my goto place for my cameras. Have ordered many times through them and have had very good luck.

I would also keep Costco as a consideration. Their return policies are great if something shouldn't work out. They didn't have the specific model I wanted when I was buying otherwise I would have likely bought from them.

Josh

[Jim Terrill]

I used a deal alert on slickdeals.net to get my Canon SLR. I ended up getting it from Dell and saved about $150 compared to amazon. Just another thing to consider.

[Ron Carlton]

I have had great service from both of these venders for over 25 years. I am looking at the Canon 40D or 50D. Canon makes the best cameras for astrophotography (Nikon is catching up).