Waffle: DSLRs

[forgotten_aria]

To review:
So I have two old nikon lenses. A 70-210mm a nice low f-stop 50mm. These lens are old enough that the low end new nikon cameras can't auto-focus them. So I either have to go back a generation, the D50. Or get the 3rd level of nikon camera. The question is, should I be abandoning my old lenses or finding the money for the higher end camera, because not only will it support my lenses, but it will also be a better camera.

[Poll #1191976]

Comments

[eub.livejournal.com]

Some of the intertubes claim that the D70 has a longer-lived shutter than the D50, and they should be cheap too. Maybe I missed the definitive word, but what I found all seemed so nth-hand that I'd have a hard time worrying about it.

[forgotten-aria.livejournal.com]

Hm, I wonder why I wasn't considering the d70 before. It shoudl definately come on my radar. According to http://www.olegkikin.com/shutterlife/nikon_d70.htm it has an average of about 45k, or twice as much as the d50.

[bob-wonderllama.livejournal.com]

I bought a d40 (sounds like a really big die for d&d, doesn't it?) a couple months ago and I love it. Honestly, if I had an old auto focus lens I would have probably went with something else - but now that I've used it a lot, I'm not even sure.

How many lenses do you have? are you planning on getting more? Do you really need the lenses to autofocus? I generally only use autofocus for snapshot things and switch to manual for everything else anyways, so that was a big reason I didn't care too much about the new lens "features" (which was, admittedly, a bad move from Nikon.)

[forgotten-aria.livejournal.com]

I have two lenses. I'm not really planning to get more, at least not soon. I like using the auto focus when I'm just taking a lot of pictures of everything, which I sometimes do to get one good picture (shotgun photo taking) or when taking action shots. Both my old lenses are good for action shots for different reasons. My nice telephoto for far away stuff, and my 1.8f (I think it goes that low) for low light or high speed shots.

[eisenbud.livejournal.com]

Note that none of the DSLRs have a particularly good focusing screen for manual focus, so you may find it harder to focus than with older film SLRs if you give up the autofocus on your lenses, so I think the D50 or D70 are good choices.