Hubble, bubble, SLR trouble

So having decided it was time to get myself a ‘serious’ camera, so I spent much of the weekend visiting camera shops, reading camera books & leafing through magazine reviews. Deciding on which ‘body’ to go for was the simple part – just pick a price point & choose between the Canon & the Nikon.
What’s not nearly so clear cut is which lens to go for. One option is to pay the extra 70 quid & get the ‘standard zoom’, but when you’re spending 400 on the body, is a 70 quid lens really doing the camera justice ? I rather think not.

A good rule of thumb seems to be to split the budget 50/50 between body & lens. Still, that doesn’t help the decision process all that much. There is still the choice between a fixed and zoom lens. Most common advice on photo.net is to pick a 50mm fixed lens & add more as you need, but having used a compact with a 28-120mm zoom lens for a while, there is still the nagging thought that maybe a zoom would be more versatile. And there are soo many options with zooms too, a series of smalls with short ranges, but wide appertures, or go for convenience of a large range, sacrificing quality.

Oh well, looks like another busy weekend at the camera shops…