NinjaMonkey said:
The included lenses are from Olympus, it is bundled by them not a dealer.
I've just found a Nikon D50 with the 28-80mm F/3.3-5.6 G Lens for $599 from Ritz camera.
I did not read all the posts here so I might say something which has allready been said.
Here though is my advice:
- Get a Nikon. The thing you must look out for when buying a SLR or DSLR is the lens mount on the camera. Nikons have the so called F-Mount which exists since the 1950ies... on a modern camera body like the D200 you can use all the lenses that were made since ca 1977. Of course you will want to start with new lenses but it kinda shows the thought that has gone into the lens mount design (of course the design has been extended to allow for data transfer and such but mechanicaly it's the same as in the old days).
- True that a DSLR will always be better than a compact but that doesn't mean that you should buy the camera with the cheapest lens. Beginner or not but consider getting the 18-70mm f3.5-4.5. It is the best value for performance and still affordable. Don' get a 3.5-5.6 lens as these are really bad no matter what.
- The D50 is nice but consider the D70s. It allows you to grow much further into photography without having to buy a new camera body in 6 months. Furthermore the D50 is the only Nikon DSLR which doesn't use Compact Flash. So if you ever upgrade your camera body you will have to buy new memory cards which really is a drag. All others use CF Cards so there is no problem.
- I really don't want to start the flame wars here but do yourself a favur and don't get a canon. Go to a shop and hold the D50 or D70s and then the EOS 350 or 20D / 30D.
It's like Microsoft and Apple. One company put's love and thought into their product and the other just marketing dollars.
- Besides that: the chip inside the DSLRs is normally smaller than the size of film in an analog camera. that means that (on a Nikon DSLR) your 50mm lens becomes a 75mm one because the crop factor is 1.5. 20mm becomes 30mm and so forth.
Now: In the last 13 cameras that Nikon produced the sensor always has a crop factor of 1.5. Nikon calls this size "DX". go to a site like dpreview.com go get more info on that.
Canon on the other hand produces cameras that have sensors with different crop factors like 1.3, 1.6 and 1:1...
That is going to be a problem if you one day invest in some of the more expensive lenses and develop a strategy and then you buy a new body and all the factors of your lenses have changes. Suddenly all your lenses might slip more towards telephoto range or the other way towards wide angle...
That's all that I can say...
Again: I don't want to start a flame war here but I just feel that you get a better value with Nikon products. Them using a different card format on the D50 is a shame though.
Hope the info helps