Digital SLR Camera Advice..

[PeeBee]

Agree with what Cuppa has said above. I was given a Canon 550D with twin lense kit for my 50th birthday, and we now have canon macro, telephoto, wide angle etc, but whilst we have the armoury to shoot just about anything with great effect - members of a camera club, so run in manual, shoot in raw, editing etc, the bag gets bloody heavy. My daughter bought a canon mirrorless and its so small, and the lense range is unbelievable, has really high resolution and isn't much bigger than a mobile phone. Its rated at 18mp, which for shots blown up to say 300 x 450 is fine, depending on ISO of course. I have toyed with the higher precision 5D MK3 and the new 7D but can't see how a mere mortal with slowly failing eyesight is going to actually get any better with a camera cost 7 times what mine did. I would recommend staying with the factory lenses unless you get a specific referral otherwise. Go for the units with internal stabilisation for sure. Sigma do make very good lenses however there are definitely differences between the quality of some lenses, but thats only when you get a highly trained professional micro review then compare. Going for a full frame camera is great if you are really going to get serious and maybe blow up images to large size of go down the publishing route. We have a couple of guys in the club with them, but honestly, whilst they are good photographers, most of the difference occurs within the editing ie photoshop or similar.