Upgrading to my 1st DSLR

[3prettyprincesses]

They are the same price at $500 at B&H. They also have good deals on the two lens kits. The only downside, to me, of those kits are that you can only pick a black body. I have the red body, but came really close to getting the white one.

I have had it since last December. I upgraded to it from a Pentax K100D. You did get some good advice to wait to see what you need, but those two lens kit deals are sometimes hard to pass up. You probably will need a longer focal length for nature shots, so if it were me I would get one of those kit deals.

Everyone is different, but I would never use live view for action. On almost all DSLRs the live view is slower to focus than when using the viewfinder. I only use live view for tripod work or when I need to get above a crowd.

Once again, thank you for your helpful insight. I have spent the last 2 hours looking over the Pentax K-x and I think I'm going to go with it. There are so many features I love about it that the D3000 did not have. And thanks for the live view advice too. I really appreciate your taking the time to answer my multitude of questions!

Thanks to everyone else too!

 

[KAT4DISNEY]

Everyone is different, but I would never use live view for action. On almost all DSLRs the live view is slower to focus than when using the viewfinder. I only use live view for tripod work or when I need to get above a crowd.

AFAIK the Sony live view system is the only one that is "live" to really allow action shots with it. I've actually used it for some shots at a horse show and it works very well.

For the OP something like the Sony A500 mentioned would be a camera to look at. The Minolta camera brand was purchased by Sony a few years ago and that allows all the Minolta Auto focus lenses to be used on the Sony DSLR's. This camera and the Pentax K-x are the camera's I'd be looking at if I were starting. Both those brands also have stabilization in the bodies which is a big plus IMO. This means that any lens - even 20 year old Pentax or Minolta lenses will be stabilized.

 

[ukcatfan]

Once again, thank you for your helpful insight. I have spent the last 2 hours looking over the Pentax K-x and I think I'm going to go with it. There are so many features I love about it that the D3000 did not have. And thanks for the live view advice too. I really appreciate your taking the time to answer my multitude of questions!

Thanks to everyone else too!

You're welcome!