I really enjoy photography and have gotten to a point that I think I am ready to make the move from P&S to DSLR, and I want to do so in plenty of time to get comfortable with the camera in advance of my East Africa safari in November. I would like to find a camera that I can feel comfortable and take good pictures with relatively quickly as a DSLR novice - I've read a lot of the other DSLR threads and right now it seems like y'all are speaking a different language! - but that will also be able to grow with me as my skills improve. I have found a month-long, every Saturday "introduction to DSLR" course in my area that I will probably take, and will also do some practicing on my own but will probably not have time for a more lengthy or intensive course. I am ok with spending up to about $2000-2500 for camera, lenses and accessories, if needed.

With the above in mind, I would be very interested in hearing people's thoughts on the following:

1) which camera body? My previous and current P&S have been Canons, and I am familiar with the Canon manual options on those cameras (I rarely shoot in automatic mode) - not sure if that would help with getting used to a Canon DSLR.

2) which lens(es)? (I will also be bringing the small P&S that I took on my last Africa trip, if that makes a difference, since I have read that it can be difficult to change lenses on safari with the dust, etc.), and I think purchasing two camera bodies will be a little much for me right now.

3) which photo editing software? I have a Mac and currently use iPhoto to edit/organize my pictures. Is that sufficient or do I need PhotoShop or something similar?

4) Necessary accessories/attachments? i.e. filters, beanbags, lens cleaners, etc.....

Any and all advice is greatly appreciated!

Both Canon and Nikon make great cameras in all price ranges. Personally I think you should consider the Nikon D40 with the 18-200mm lens. For expert advice go to http://www.kenrockwell.com/tech/recommended-cameras.htm . His website is non-biased and very useful.

One thing that you should consider is the weight of the camera and lenses and the type of safari that you are taking. We are taking one in September where we are flying between camps on small planes. We have a total luggage limit of 26 pounds per person. For the trip I have purchased a Kodak Z712IS point and shoot. It is very light and has the equivalent of a 432mm zoom lens, with image stabilization.

Jack

Check out the Olympus E510

I just bought it and i love it.

I had a canon 30d and a nikon d200 prior to this camera.

The beauty of the olympus is its weight. I think its the lightest in its class.

I bought the 2 lens kit with it and got it for $650.

check out the reviews.

I made the same transition in 2006 from P&S to a DSLR, and I have continued to get more interested in photography as time has gone by.

With your budget, the decision about what to recommend seems pretty easy to me since you are going on a safari in East Africa, where you need as much focal length as you can get. I am going to make recommendations of Canon gear, since that is what I use and what you are already using.

I would tell you to get a Digital Rebel XTi or XSi -- this will run you between $600 and $800, body only. Personally I don't think the XSi is that much better than the XTi, so I would save money and get the XTi.

Then one telephoto lens -- the Canon 100-400. This lens costs about $1400, and is very versatile because of its zoom range. It has limitations, principally being that it does poorly in low light, but there is no single lens that can take its place on a safari and can be used in such a wide variety of situations. I have gotten a lot of really great pictures with mine.

Then you need a wide-angle lens for landscapes, people, or whatever. You have a couple of options here -- the new 18-55 IS lens has been well-reviewed and is very inexpensive ($200). Many people like the 17-85 ($500), as it is a bit more versatile in terms of the range it covers. There are better wide-angles I could recommend, but they are a lot more expensive and therefore not within the budget you specified.

Then you just need some accessories:
-- Compact flash cards, preferably fast ones like Sandisk Extreme IIIs
-- A bag to carry your camera and lenses in -- for this application, a small one will do, like a Tamrac Adventure 7 or a Lowepro MiniTrekker
-- A brush to clean the sensor can be really handy, like a Visible Dust Arctic Butterfly
-- Storage for your images, like a Hyperdrive SPACE or Wolverine FlashPac. Storage needs vary based on how many pictures you shoot and whether you shoot RAW or JPEG, but as an extreme example, my wife and I shot 155GB of pictures on our most recent trip (roughly 15,000 pictures, all RAW)
-- Extra batteries for your camera. Sterlingtek makes well-regarded ones that are quite inexpensive

Those are the essentials I can think of. And I am glad to hear you are planning on getting the camera well in advance of your trip to get familiar with it -- that will make a big difference in your safari pictures. Take the time to learn how the camera works and see what situations in which you get good results vs. bad results, then you will know where to look on your trip to get a good picture.

I also suggest reading posts on one of more of the popular photography forums, my personal favorite is Fred Miranda, but there are many others. Many of them have dedicated nature/wildlife sections where you can get a lot of great tips from excellent photographers.

When you see the quality of images you get, you will kick yourself for not switching to an SLR sooner. Enjoy the new camera and lenses and let me know if I can answer any other questions for you.

Chris
www.pbase.com/cwillis

I used a Nikon DSLR (D200) with only the Nikon 18-200 VR lens on safari in 2006. This combo worked very well for the camps we visited. However, the 200mm range is just a tiny bit on the short side and very much so if you're into birds. Canon entry level DSLRs are good but I'm not sure if they have the zoom 18-200 lens equivalent of Nikon. After that lens range you are "stuck" with multiple lenses to cover the range that a good P&S does.

The D40 with the 18-200 would also work great (mentioned by 1bodem above). In fact I now have the D40X with the 18-200 as my backup camera. It is a very sweet package. (My primary safari camera is the D200 with 70-300VR lens). Certainly your budget will get a very nice DSLR kit.

Having said all that, what is just as important to your final images is "post processing", i.e. photo editing. Like you seem to already know. You don't have to do it but most (95%) of your images will benefit by cropping and/or color correction/manipulation. Just depends on how much you want to work with it. I am not familiar with Mac iPhoto, I use Photoshop.

Anyway, always exciting looking for new photo gear and have fun with it.

regards - tom

I use a Nikon D80, which I bought the day before I left for a business/vacation trip to London last spring. It was very easy to learn the basic functions. I referred to the manual only twice during the ten days I was in London and didn't really read the manual until I was on the plane home. I have friends who have purchased the D40x as an entry-level DSLR and love it.

Chris raises a good point in that you need to include memory cards, extra battery, camera bag, cleaning material (it's expensive) and possibly a portable storage device in your budget. I bought the Epson P3000 before my January safari and it also was easy to use. Of course, there's that small detail of underestimating the amount of space I needed and filling it up halfway through the trip, but that's beside the point!

A software package you may want to look at for post processing is Adobe Lightroom. It has more functionality than iPhoto and I think is a bit easier to use than Photoshop, especially if you don't want or need to do a lot of post-processing. You can download a trial version.

Good luck!

Thanks everyone for the incredibly detailed and thoughtful responses. I had just assumed that whatever I went with I would need multiple lenses, so will definitely investigate the Nikon D40 with the 18-200mm lens. I guess I am a little scared that I'll be spending two much time fumbling with changing lenses, getting things all dusty and missing good shots, but maybe that is unwarranted. I have heard really good things about the Canon Rebels the Canon 100-400 lens and will investigate that as well.

Chris, one Canon question for you: if I go the Canon route, do you think it is worth it to increase my budget to go for the Canon 40D as opposed to the XTi or XSi?

Thanks again, everyone. You have no idea how helpful this has been in focusing me in advance of the research and hopefully store visit to take a look at the cameras in person that I'm planning to do this weekend.

To answer your question about the Rebel vs. 40D, I will give you my observations about both, since I have both of them, and in fact I bought a 40D because of one particular frustration I had with the Rebel XTi. I still have my Rebel but now it is more of a backup camera for me. I have taken about 35,000 pictures with my Rebel and my 40D has about 1,500 shots on it so far.

First, the image quality of the two cameras is identical or nearly identical. They have the same resolution and very similar noise characteristics. The only improvement of the 40D in the area of image quality is that it has a 14-bit sensor, which means that in RAW files it has slightly better dynamic range (meaning that it will preserve more detail in shadow areas). But if you shoot in JPEG, you will see no difference, because a JPEG is an 8-bit file anyway.

However, the 40D has plenty of features that make it a far better camera than the XTi. First and foremost is the autofocus system -- it is miles and miles better than the one in the XTi. The difference is painfully obvious in two situations: in lower light and with rapidly-moving subjects. The XTi will frequently miss focus slightly using a slow lens (like the 100-400) in low light, while the 40D will hit the focus much more consistently. And the 40D focuses faster and tracks moving subjects much more accurately than the XTi. These things are very important to me because I shoot a lot of bird pictures, so AF performance is absolutely critical. On a safari, the AF differences will manifest themselves in early morning or late afternoon shots without direct sunlight -- you will see the XTi AF system struggle with the 100-400 in those situations and you will miss some shots that you thought you got because of it. That is not to say that the XTi never works in those situations, but its accuracy rate is far lower than the 40D in low light with a slow lens.

The other differences in the 40D that are really important to me are: faster continuous shooting (6.5 frames per second vs. 3 for the Rebels); bigger buffer (17 RAW files vs. 9 for XTi); longer battery life; bigger and brighter viewfinder; higher ISO limit (3200 vs. 1600).

So that is a long-winded way of saying that if you want to maximize your ability to get pictures in as many situations as you can, the 40D will have a number of key advantages over the XTi. Both cameras will do well in bright light, but when the going gets tough the 40D will outperform the Rebel in these important areas. But then again, you will be spending about twice as much money (my 40D cost $1150). Whether it's worth it is really up to you to decide.

Let me make one additional comment. If you do go with a Nikon setup, I would get the D80 rather than the D40/D40x/D60, as the D80 has many more features, again including the autofocus system. The D40/D40x/D60 have a very scaled-back 3-point AF system that I think is much less useful than the AF system on the D80, or even the Canon Rebels for that matter.

I also would encourage you not to go the route of any 18-200 lens, whether the Nikon one or the third-party ones made for Canon cameras. Making zoom lenses invovles engineering compromises, and the more extreme the zoom range, the more the quality of the lens is sacrificed. An 11x zoom is considered extreme and outside the capability of any manufacturer to preserve optimal image quality. You will do better with lenses with less extreme zoom ranges, like the Nikon 80-400 and 18-70 lenses (both of which are within your budget). 200 is too short for a safari in east Africa anyway.

Good luck in making your decision. You can see comprehensive reviews of the camera bodies you are considering at www.dpreview.com and www.cameralabs.com, and you can see lens reviews at www.photozone.de and reviews from hundreds of users at www.fredmiranda.com/reviews. And if you want to see sample pictures taken with any particular camera or lens, head over to www.pbase.com, select "search" and search by camera. You can see hundreds or thousands of sample images for any camera or lens that way.

Chris
www.pbase.com/cwillis

Good luck with your camera purchase! The first thing you'll notice with a DSLR is when you look through the lens it's like looking through a great pair of binoculars. No comparison with a P&S.

I have Canon and just love the cameras and lenses. There is a never ending debate as to whether Canon or Nikon is best. I'm pretty sure they're fairly equal with pros/cons in each so pick whichever one you like.

FYI, and this goes to everyone, Sandisk has a rebate going for their CF cards. I just bought two 8GB cards for $199 and mailed off the rebate for $100 (VISA gift card) so the 8GB cards are costing $50 each. Very good price. There are rebates on other size cards as well. Here's a link to the rebate list.
http://www.bhphotovideo.com/FrameWor...isa_Cheque.pdf

I love my Canon 30D and the 75-300 mm IS lens. That is all I bring on safari. If you have the bucks then I think the 70-300mm IS lens is better. The 100-400mm IS is too big and heavy for me to lug around but my husband uses it and likes it very much with his Canon 5D.

Before I got the 30D I had the Digital Rebel XT and that was fine but to be honest the 30D is far superior. If I were buying now I would be looking at the 40D with the 70-300mm IS lens or the 75-300 mm IS lens.

IMO you definitely want an image stabilized lens.

Whether you go with Canon or Nikon the real difference is the finger on the button.

The 70-300, 80-400, 100-400 lens are just about all you need for 80% of safari photos. But you will find a need on safari and more so in everyday shooting for a wider angle lens like a 18-55. So I'd plan on getting both.

Unless you get something like a 18-200 lens. In image editing you can crop the 200mm to look like 400mm and it will print fine up to 8x10 inches and look fine on web sites. Here is a little example, before and after, of how cropping can bring in the subject like a longer lens. And even more importantly how an image can be much improved by editing (Photoshop).
http://tinyurl.com/yot76o
I'm not trying to push an 18-200 lens on you, just that it is more versatile than the numbers indicate.

regards - tom

Tom - Excellent examples. I have the 18-200 and I find it extremely versatile.

Let me give a BIG 2nd to Chris re. the Canon 40d.

I've shot Canon going back 30 years, switched from my beloved T-90 and F1N with the old FD lenses (anybody need a 500mm L 4.5? Spectacular lens, but, alas, not compatible with EOS). Then in transition to EF lenses and EOS 3 bodies. for my first Africa trip Sept. 06.

Got my 40D just in time for going back to Zambia in Oct. 07. LOVE IT!

Got pix impossible to get with film (Canon high ISO IQ in low light is wonderful). Autofocusing much quicker and better in low light than the EOS 3, 6.5 f/sec great for birds in flight. Live view is cool, too.

Some reviews have said that IQ is as good as the full frame 5d. Don't kiow about that, but I know I am quite happy--no thrilled with the results I;m getting--and I haven't even explored all the potential of the camera yet. Partly because I find the basic options so user friendly and do everything I want.

My longest lens, so far is a 300mm w/ 1.4 tel ex. With the 1.6 crop factor, it did almost everything I wanted. I've heard very good things re. the 100-400 mm too, and have seen some very nice images.

Good luck,

Jim

I think the PMA tradeshow has happened recently for 2008, in the past I have found deals on the "newly obsolete" cameras on amazon.com as the new ones are announced.

I haven't done enough research yet to figure out if there are new Canon or Nikon models though.

Thanks for posting this though, as I'm about to start my research in anticipation of our oct trip.

The only new cameras announced at PMA were entry-level ones: Canon announced the newest Digital Rebel XSi and Nikon announced the D60, which is the successor to the D40. Neither of these new cameras was especially exciting, in my view. They will cause the previous versions of these cameras to go down in price, though.

Canon also introduced a new lens that might be of interest to some very high-end safari-goers: an 800mm f/5.6 lens that weighs "only" 10 pounds and looks set to sell for about $11,000. I am not sure why anyone would use this for a safari when you can just buy a 600/4 for $6,000 and put a 1.4xTC on it, but presumably Canon thinks someone is going to buy it ...

Chris

Thanks again, everyone. I was feeling a little intimidated by all the options but all the advice has really helped. I have been doing a lot of reading on the various websites that were suggested, and I think I am going to try to sneak over to a camera shop at lunch today and take a look at the Nikon D80 and Canon models.

Even though it isn't being replaced right now the Canon 40D has dropped a little in price. It's $1149 several places, including bhphotovideo.com (which is where I buy).

Like Cindy, B&H is also where I buy any new camera-related stuff I need. They are wonderful, both with respect to prices, promptness of shipping, and service. They enjoy a sterling reputation with serious photographers because of their great service.

You can also buy used equipment and save some money on the classified forums on Fred Miranda, Naturescapes and other photo sites. I saved about $500 on my 300/2.8 this way (even though it was only 6 months old when I bought it) and made a new friend in the process by meeting the person from whom I bought the lens.

Chris

I'm off to Tanzania in a few weeks and spent countless hours researching this same question (with same budget). I would suggesting searching www.dpreview.com for "safari" and you'll find countless posts on the subject.

When I posted a similar question on DPReview, nearly every person told me the same two things: 1. go cheaper on the camera body and spend money on the lenses 2. strongly consider two camera bodies so you aren't changing lenses / missing shots.

Here is what I decided to buy.

1 New Nikon D40 with 18-55 kit lens ($450)

1 Used Nikon D40 body only ($300)

Nikon 70-300VR ($479)

Nikon 18-200VR ($679)

Bag, filters, safari bean bag, SD cards, etc. ($200)

I'll let you know how it turns out, but I have regretted any of my purchases yet. I realize the 18-200 and 70-300 overlap a bit, but I also wanted lenses that would serve me well on other trips when the focus wasn't wildlife and the 18-200 seems to be the perfect "travel lens".