Need help deciding camera

[moo]

Hi, im still deciding about what model of reflex digital camera to buy.On the place where i am buying they have 2 offers of the cameras ive seen interesting for me:

*Canon 400D + AFS 18-55mm = 520€

*Nikon D60+ AFS 18-55 + AFS 55-200mm(INCLUDES 2gb memory+bag+tripod) = 600€

Thx for the help.

[MatthewMarshall]

I have canon and love canon, But that nikon d60 deal sounds like a nice deal. Hard decision good luck. check out these links they may help you decide.
http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/CanonEOS400D/
http://www.dpreview.com/news/0801/08012910nikond60.asp

[moo]

Thx bro. Ive read the link you gave and probably going to stick up with the Nikon d60.

Thx for the answer and any other comment would be aprreciated.

[hawkeye60]

I have a Canon which has worked flawlessly for over 4 years now. But they are certainly comparable and given the added zoom lens, it sounds to me like the Nikon is the better deal.

[katew]

I have the Nikon D60. I've only had it for a couple of weeks, but I'm finding it really good. I wrote a review of it, if it's of interest to you:

Dooyoo Nikon Review

[David Moffitt]

Buy a second hand Nikon D200 THere are tons of them around since the release of the D300. Expect to pay UK £450. In fact I have a brand new one if you are interested.

[moo]

Thx for all the comments.

katew thx for that review. Looks very good.

[skauskas]

Most of photographers are divided into 2 groups: Canon and Nikon (I'm not talking about people who are using Hasselblad)
I have Canon 400D and I absolutely love it.. And somebody loves Nikon.
I heard opinion (don't know if it's true) that Canon picture is "warmer" and Nikon is "colder".. but I never use Nikon so I don't know if it's really like this

[sirespen]

Buy second hand! You will save a lot of money. I bought a canon 30d + 50 1.8 for 370€

btw. sry for my bad english

Greetings from Italy

[Janet Petty]

Originally Posted by moo

*Canon 400D + AFS 18-55mm = 520€

My only comment is if you go with either, then upgrade your glass. Kit lenses, although good, will not give you as good quality pictures or give you the range of options that better quality glass will.

Go with the glass.

Janet

[Sweetlight]

Hi Moo,
I was in one of my satirical moods tonight and wrote about 250 words on the subject you inquired about and the power failed as I typed in my initial and I lost the whole damn thing. I am not feeling quite so funny now but to try and make me smile again, I'll do my best to help you here. Sorry to all of you who have not missed my I wanna be so funny but I am not writings but it's the cruel curse of us given the dreaded disease of artist and writer. It will probably be about 200 words shorter so you can all sigh a breath of relief.

Now Moo, to you I go. In those good ole' days back before gigabytes, ram memory and Photoshop, there was a very long, cold winter that stood between the lovers of Canon and those of Nikon. So all you read here is merely my humble opinion as I am sure I will be counter attacked by one of the other remaining warriors of said time.

In those good old days, advertising budgets were huge, for those of us who busted our butts our day rates were outrageous and we got what we asked for or walked out the door, it could be that sweet if you worked hard at it. Living in the lap of such luxury I prided myself on the equipment that accumulated in my old Zeppelin Hangar in near Tampa that I called studio/home. If I shot square I shot Hassy, if I shot 4x5 or larger nothing less than Sinar, I miss my Broncolor lights about as much as I missed my ex-wife the first year we were divorced. Man those lights were sweeeeeett and ridiculously priced, especially with what you can buy for that amount of money these days. Now to the 35mm system. There has never been nor shall there be anything sweeter then that lovely green glass that finds itself within the barrel of those old Nikon lenses. We had altars, lit candles and prayed in the direction of the nearest Nikon factories in those days. There were some Canon folks, we called them freaks and weirdoes behind their backs but we cherished, loved, fondled and coveted our F3's, FE2's, Nikon Speedlights and again that green, green glass of home. Not a lens to this day will ever compare to that beautiful 180mm straight lens they made. In those days it was just as much of a taboo to have a zoom lens of any type, just like leprosy or anything similar. If you were caught with a zoom you were chastised but if it was an off brand zoom say ummm, let us just use Tokina for instance, you were laughed out of the room, out of the building and it took years to work yourself back into the loop. Zoom lenses those days just could not hold the crispness that they are capable of now. Now we love most of them even if they don't have green glass. Then the dreaded day happened, the one we were warned of, that we laughed about and though of much like our Y2K scare, digital cameras, give me a break. I mean, I live just an hour north of where the space shuttle enters and exits our atmosphere and there are still folks here who think the lunar landing was all on film but it was much more possible than a digital camera but my, my, my did we get a smack in the face. Now what the hell do we do? It was like quicksand, one day we were just walking and the next thing we knew we were up to our neck. Some of us crawled, scraped and wormed our way out, we studied our megabytes and pixels, our ISO's vs. our ASA's and what the hell is all this CTRL, ALT, DEL stuff? A lot of them drown though much like the guys who were eaten by sharks after the U.S.S. Indianapolis was bombed. They just gave up and took off their life jackets.
Those of us who moved on with it hired private security firms to secretly guide us to Canon plants in small groups so we could hold and touch this Canon thing, and see just how crappy the glass was and what color, my god could it please just be green.
In my mind, that was a huge crossroad in the camera world. Nikon had two choices give up and die a slow death or do what they always had and blow Canon out of the water. I think they tried but they just could not find their way through the thick fog. Slowly but surely all of us Nikon freaks came out of the closet so to speak and started actually appearing in public using a Canon. It was tough girl. 12 step groups were formed and it was hell just getting past step 1 but one day at a time we did it and one day at a time Canon came around to the point that they were now creating equipment that was what Nikon used to be and we prayed would be again but sadly, again in my opinion they just never made it. I was at a huge trade show about a year ago in Orlando, one of the biggest in the world. The Canon booth was standing room only, it was incredible kinda like a carnival just no ferris wheel but the Nikon booth was just pitiful, there is not other way to say it, just pitiful. The only think that caught my eye as I walked by was the beloved shimmer of the front element of a large lens and that beautiful emerald green coating. Kind of like the smell of jasmine or an old James Taylor song, it just brought back such sweet memories, I cried a tear and went and watched the hot models pose for everyone at the Canon booth.

Okay, I feel better now, sorry in advance as you are all shaking your head saying, this damn guy thinks he is funny but he's not. It's okay, my girlfriend just walked in, read it and said the same thing. If you don't get the green references just look at some of the old Nikon lenses, they have a beautiful green coating on the lens elements.

I'm proud to say that I now have an equally gratifying collection of Canon paraphernalia and it is just lovely.

To suggest a camera to you is hard because I don't know what you want to shoot. If you are gonna shoot action or sports, you need a D1'ish camera but if you shoot art, that 5D is just an awesome camera with a tremendous file size that makes poster sized prints with ease.
Thanks for the trip down memory lane, Fire and Rain is playing now on my MP3 player and I opened the window so I can smell the jasmine now.

Namaste,

c

[Mike]

Remember that a camera is a tool. One should first look at what you are trying to do and then pick the tool that will do that job the best.

If you where a carpenter trying to re-nail a picture frame, you would not pick a sledge hammer to do that job, and neither would you use a tacking hammer to break up a concrete sidewalk.

So it may come to pass that you will have two or more cameras to best do the job at hand.

[jmn]

The nikon is better built, since it IS weather sealed. The canon isn't. Canon doesnt make its cameras like it used to.
The Nikon feels more solid in your hand too.
As for the electronics, they are pretty much the same in that respect.

As for lenses. You are going to find more NIKKOR lenses, thus cheap lenses since canon kept changing their lens types in the 80s and early 90s.

Both Canon and Nikon have two types of lens lines (this is important, so read carefully)
There are full framed (35mm) lenses and APS-C lenses.
Canon generally denotes this as EF-S lenses for APS-C and EF for full frame lenses. I assume the L series is also full frame.

Nikon denotes their lenses by DX for APS-C and FX for Full Frame. No denotation usually means FX if I'm not mistaken.

It is better to buy FX/EF lenses than DX/EF-S lense, if you can....since the debate between APS-C and 35mm is still on.

I myself have a D300, and I would recommend that or even an old Kodak DCS 14n or a D200. They are both share each others technology due to an agreement between kodak and nikon. Interesting though, the DCS has a nikon lens mount, and Nikon autofocus, a 14mpx cmos chip and first made in 2001.....way ahead of any Nikon or Canon camera body.