Laughterlife! Question for you
 

Hi
At the Toronto GTG you told me you had recently bought a new camera and Im trying to recall the specs.
Can you remind me?

Enjoyed meeting you by the way. It was a fun evening!

Hello,

Yes it was great meeting you as well, I guess your trip is coming up quickly now!

I bought the Nikon D60 camera with a 18-55 lens. I saw it again yesterday for a price of about $670 I think. I am purchasing a 55-200mm lens as well so I will have adequate zoom on the trip. I have been very happy with it so far and have tested it out in many different scenarios.

Hope that helps, let me know if you have any more questions.

My 2 cents. If you are getting the Nikon D60 and want a zoom range of 18-200mm, get the D60 and the Nikon 18-200mm zoom. I don't however see this listed as a typical kit/package. You may have to do some calling to have it put together for you.

regards - tom

http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage....prd96500050001

What about this deal? Does that look adequate?

actually the Best Buy Price was not that good-in US dollars. Would be cheaper to purchase separately in Canada.

I didn't purchase the additional zoom at the time because I found the camera and 18-55mm lens as a package, had time to learn before my trip so I didn't really need the extra zoom. The one thing about buying the lens seperatly is do you always want that huge lens on your camera when you get back. The 18-55mm is fine for family events and such so it depends on how much you want to have to carry around whenyou get back.

If it is cheaper to get just the 18-200mm though that might be the better route. Kinda personal preference there. I would also ask about a lens cleaning kit as well because you dont know what environments you are going to encounter while away.... I will be in the desert for part of my trip so I know I will be finding sand for months afterwards.

One more thing I learned about..... you want to make sure you have image stability on the lens. It came automatically on the one I bought. I have seen the same lens for cheaper and realized that was missing. Good for if you are doing game drives to help with focus.

Another 2 cents. If you get as a kit or already have the 18-55 lens, I'd get the Nikon 70-300 VR lens next. But it is a bit bigger, heavier, costly than the 55-200mm.

regards - tom

Another alternative is to rent the longer zoom lens, especially if you don't think you'll have a lot of use for it later. We rented an 80-400 zoom valued at $1900 for our Nikon D80 for only $300/month (shorter periods available). We picjed it up about a week before departure on our 3-week trip in order to practice a bit!

We are home.....trip was unbelievable and the camera worked very well. As it was purchased fairly close in time to the trip a very fast learning curve was necessary.
Now the work begins of picking out the best of the 2800 pics taken!

Hey, good to hear you are back. I have been looking for a post from you to see how the trip was. Would love to hear more. I can be reached at giles2525 @ hotmail . com (remove spaces).

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Hope your trip was wonderful. I too am looking forward to reading about your exploits.