Nikon SLR Digital Cameras |

Here’s the advantages of the D50 (and digital SLR cameras in general):
* It’s vastly more responsive than digital compact cameras. With compact cameras, the autofocus takes forever, you have annoying shutter lag, you even have lag due to the electronic viewfinder. With the D50 everything is much faster. With action shots (even with kids and pets) that means you get more keepers.
* Bigger viewfinder. I know it sounds trivial, but I like to see details when I look through a viewfinder – not just check the composition.
* Better low light performance. dSLR cameras keep working without the flash during dusk and indoors. You can crank the ISO up to 1600 and still get great image quality. If you add a dedecated low light lens, like the 50mm f/1.4, you can even do street photography at night. (I do with my Nikon D200.)
* More control over depth of field. With the D50, you can take a picture of someone and deliberately blow the background out of focus. With compact cameras pretty much everything is always in focus, wich makes pictures look flat.
* Extra features. The D50 lets you take more control than than the usual ’scene modes’. That’s if you want to, of course. You can also just leave it on fully automatic.
* Incredible choice of lenses. With a compact camera, you have 5x or 10x zoom, and that’s it. I used to have a camera with 10x zoom myself, but indoors I was constantly backing up into walls. With my dSLR, I can slap on a super wide angle lens and make my tiolet look like a ball room. Or I can use a macro lens or a 600mm tele lens, or a low light lens, or whatever lens the job requires.
The down sides are that the D50 costs more (you can get started for around $800, but extra lenses cost $150 and up… way up) and if you do collect a lot of gear, you’ll end up dragging it all around in a heavy camera bag.

I want to buy a nikon slr digital, but I’m sort of new to the whole thing. I’m pretty much going to use it to take pictures of family, nature and stuff like that. I just want one for leisure and taking good quality photos. I was thinking of the D50? Also if anyone could give me some info on what kind of lens are good that would help too. thanks

Here’s the deal… if you just doing it for pictures of family, nature, or candid shot. Then, I will suggest the one you’re looking at, D50.

D50 was designed to be an entry level SLR Camera with easy of use functions for novice. The price of the camera is less than $600 in most big name internet stores. If you want to get the 18-55mm lens, it’s usually will cost you about $100 more. (I’m against that crappy lens, don’t buy it unless you are very cheap.) Get the 18-200mm lens from Nikon which offers VR (vibration reduction) and AF-S (Silent Wave motor for faster focus). It will set you back $749 because it’s a good all around zoom. If you want to be cheap, then get the Tamron for $399 (it will minus the VR and AF-S).

D80 is the next step up from D50. This camera is replacing the D70s. It is a better camera in terms of features that was designed more for the intermediate users. It’s focusing is alot better and some of the advanced feature are much improve over the D70s and D50. This camera will set you back $999.

D200 was the popular one this year becuase alot of working photographers love the advance functions and features. It will put you out at $1699 at most places and it’s back-ordered in many places. So you will not get any good discounts in most places just because they don’t have this camera in stock in most U.S. cities.

D2X/D2Xs is their flagship camera. No need to go into it. It’s too much of an overkill.

For what you want to do, D50 is the most reasonable way to go. If you need a good lens to along with that camera, splurge on the 18-200mm lens. The lens is always will be your long term investment because you can take it with you. The camera is the one that is always changing because of the technology.

p.s. Don’t get the 28-200mm lens suggested by the guy above. It’s not optomized for Digital SLR. The 18-200mm is a DX lens and it works great with digital SLR.