Is Canon EOS worth buying?

[abbingtonmatt]

Hey everyone I'm planning on buying a camera at a budget of $500. I want to try a SLR camera... so I have been looking around at different forums and suggestions and it seems that more people lean towards canon's cameras. And I find that Canon EOS is on sale now. A deal for it is only $515..
dealstudio.com/viewtopic.php?t=37299&ru=283
Is it a good price for SLR camera? Is this canon worth buying? Give me some advice..Thanks..

Or
Just now, my friend suggest me Sony Alpha DSLR-A100K.
It is $500 at B&H Photo-Video.

 

[ukcatfan]

That deal says Buydig. Their sister site, Beach Camera has the Rebel XT with kit lens for $450. I do not normally recommend that camera b/c I personally was disappointed with it when I handled one, but that is a pretty good deal. You have other options though. The Olympus EVOLT E-410 is also $450 with a kit lens. The Nikon offering in that range is the D40 for $480, but I personally would not go for it due to the no focus motor in body issue. It means that some of the popular lenses would only be manual focus. I normally recommend Pentax, but their current entry level model is brand new, so still going for full retail at ~$700. If possible, try to handle one in person before you make a decision. If I had not, I would have a Rebel XT and not be 100% happy.

Kevin

 

[jann1033]

I have a rebel xt, it's a great camera and under $500 is a great price. at the time it was released it was ( i think) the smallest lightest entry level dslr...now another one is( maybe the nikon d40? can't remember, but it's a lot smaller what ever it is) but the rebel is very sturdy, easy to handle for me( haven't ever seen a pentax in real life but the nikon is set up funny for me)...you can always go handle them and see if you like it as it's the same as the xti body wise.
don't know what p&s you have now but if it's canon the dial will probably be very similar to the p&s dial ( daughter has a A600 (?) and the dial is very similar
i don't know anything about the sony, i have noticed sometimes the shots from it look a little to saturated( ie bordering on fake looking) but not sure if that is done in post process or how the camera takes it.
I recently saw a review and the alpha was a 90, same as the xt ( the xti was a 92 as was the olympus e510)the nikon d40x as a 88 and the pentax k10d was a 86. the xt probably scored lower than the xti as it is only 8mp, no cleaning system,since otherwise they are pretty much identical.
i have tons of photos on http://jforsythe.zenfolio.com all taken with a rebel xt if you want to chech

 

[Pea-n-Me]

Since the Olympus e-410 was brought up, I wanted to post that Costco has a good deal if you're interested in that model. For $50 over your budget, you can get the camera with two excellent designed-for-digital lenses, a 2GB CF card, an Olympus camera bag and an extra rechargeable Li++ battery, all things which you'll probably buy anyway and can add a lot onto the cost of startup. http://www.costco.com/Browse/Produc...=0&Ntx=mode+matchallpartial&Nty=1&topnav=&s=1

The E-410 is the smallest/most compact dSLR on the market - at least for another month or so until Olympus releases the e-420 which will be even lighter. The e-410/420 take beautiful photos and have many modern features but one caution, if it's important to you, is that it does not have in-body IS, as does the next model up, the e-510 (which will probably be replaced soon with the e-520). Olympus developed a 4/3 system to keep their E system SLRs compact and it's unique to them (and now a few other manufacturers) so it's something you should check out before buying. I have an Olympus thread going somewhere around here if you're interested. Sample photos can be seen on flickr.com

PS if anyone's interested, there have been reports that a few lucky people were finding the Olympus e-510 w/2 lens kit on clearance at some Best Buys for $460 or so - sweet deal if you can find it.