FYI I was doing some shopping at Sears in Anchorage and came across a Nikon D40 for $299.99 with the 18-55mm lens, which is very cheap. My D40 fits perfectly in my flight bag so it always is with me.

Of course the best camera for you is determined by what you want to do with it.

Is the D40 what you are using FOD? You take some great photos which are more attributed to the user than the equipment but nonetheless the end result is nice.

As for really getting into it and regretting a super zoom p90...I could see wanting a few more features but realistically I never see myself becoming a photography junkie. I will take it with me on the road or if I think something may be of interest where I am going I will take it but other than that I do not see any photo shoots in my future.

Now...if I buy the D90 will my shots look like Ansel Adams...that would be a plus.

I just read through the camerlabs review of the P90...and as much as I hate to admit it....the sample side-by-side comparison between the P90 and Canon shows better quality from the Canon. At least for that wide landscape photo they used.

Seems like the P90 may provide better user functionality (thumbwheel, for example)....but the Canon might provide slightly better image quality. A trade-off, it seems.

I've had my D40 for over a year now and am just beginning to master it. When I first got it the pictures I was taking were terrible, fortunately that was due to operator error and not the camera. I'd love to get a D90 which is a logical upgrade because my current glass would work on it.

What do you guys think about going to full-frame digital SLRs. At the low end this would be a Nikon D700 (new- $2 grand body only) or a Canon 5D (around $1200 body only). These are DSLRs with full-sized 35mm sensors like 35mm film cameras have. They do not crop the lens image to fit the smaller sensor (ie, APS-C for Canon or DX for Nikon). Obviously they cost more; but are they worth it? DPReview says they make cheap glass look shabby because the fuller diameter of the image is seen by the sensor, and you need to pair them with quality glass. I just wondered if anyone has tried them. I am also thinking about a Nikon D300 or a Canon 50D sometime next year, been using a cheap point and shoot but I am thinking about trying something technically more satisfying. The problem of course with any SLR is the size and weight.

I may be with you. I like that the canon has better reviews and seems to win side by side however I really like the ergonomics, look and general feel of the P90 over the Canon.

Here is a great comparison against the older sx10is (basically the same thing) that really shows where the P90 lets you down in image quality.

Nikon COOLPIX P90 review: real-life resolution, Nikon P90 vs Canon SX10 IS | Cameralabs


Next question: Since wide angle is an interest of mine, the SX20 says it has a 28-560mm lens. Is that 28MM the same apples to apples comparison as this wide angle lens from Nikkor that also claims 28MM? Nikon | Wide Angle AF Nikkor 28mm f/2.8D Autofocus Lens | 1922

The reason I ask is because in the reviews I have read, sometimes the numbers can be misleading and are not direct comparisons to eachother.

If I had the SX20IS with the 28-560 lens would I have the same wide angle capability than if I bought the D3000 and then also bought that 28mm lens?

I will continue to ask questions probably for the next month as they come up to help make the most informed decision. I appreciate the help I have gotten so far.

and FOD....I was initially a little scared to go with a D40 because of the 6MP but that photo you posted as well as the others in the past look really great. I am assuming that the only real limit with the 6mp you have is that you would not be able to blow it up into a poster sized photo and keep the same image quality correct? If that is the case that may be an option only because I do not intend to make any posters anytime soon.

Excellent question. The short answer is yes and no. This is somewhat of a tricky topic to explain (at least for me), so I'll do my best.

First, regarding the advertised focal ranges of the cameras you mention: the 28-560mm range is the Full Frame sensor equivalent focal range. Remember that a full frame image sensor is the size of a single frame of 35mm film, which was the prior basic film size standard before the digital medium. So, when a lens' equivalent focal length is given, it is measured in terms of the original 35mm (full frame) standard. The issue arises when you have image sensors that are not the same size as a full frame sensor.

Consider this:

Lens optics are circles, and image sensors are rectangles. If you could see the image as produced purely by the lens itself, you would see a circular image:



The light enters a circular lens element and exits the lens via a circular lens element. However, we make our image sensors rectangles because we don't want to have circular photos, but in order to make a rectangular image from a circular one, we have to crop out the areas of the circle that our rectangular image sensor doesn't cover. The light pink area in the above photo is the image circle that a lens makes, and the rectangles are the cropped areas that the sensor can 'see'. (FX and DX are Nikons way of saying Full Frame and APS-C size, respectively)



This particular image (above) I found on the web, and I just added in the Canons image sensor to scale with the DSLR sizes so that you can directly see how sensor size affects your field of view. (Gotta love photoshop!)

So:
The upper left of the image shows us that this is image was shot with a 14mm lens (Full Frame). Certainly a pretty wide field of view. The outer boundary of the photo itself is the image you would see with a 14mm lens on a Full Frame camera. Each black square inside the image shows how much of the scene would be captured by an image sensor of the smaller DSLR sizes (APS-C and APS-H). The inner most section is the field of view that the tiny Canon point and shoot lens would 'see'.

The dimensions of the sensors are shown in the parantheses in millimeters.

And NOW the important stuff...
The 1x, 1.3, 1.5x, etc values are the crop factors. Basically, how much of the image is cropped from the full frame sensors image. The 35mm is a 1x factor because thats the standard that the other sensor sizes are based off of (1 x 35mm = 35mm). The APS-H sensor size of 28mm is 1.3 because (1.3 x 28 = 35mm). And so forth.

Since you want to know about the D40, which has an APS-C size sensor with a 1.5x crop factor and the 28mm lens you reference. If you put a 28mm lens on the D40, you won't be seeing a 28mm full frame equivalent field of view. Why? Because the D40's smaller image sensor can't 'see' as much of the scene as a full frame sensor can. How much can it 'see'? Simple:

28mm x 1.5 = 40.4mm. (lets just call it 40mm). Thats 40mm full frame equivalent field of view. Having a smaller sensor basically produces a zoomed in image. (We see a narrower field of view when we zoom in, right? Same result)

Take the Canon SX20IS with its tiny sensor: the 28-560mm focal range is the full frame equivalent. The true focal range of the lens that is physically attached to that camera is 4.8mm-96.5mm (28mm/5.8 = 4.8mm; 560mm/5.8 = 96mm). In order for the Canon's tiny sensor to see a picture with the same field of view as a full frame camera, it needs a SUPER wide focal length of 4.8mm. If you attached the same lens to a full frame camera (4.8mm) you have an IMMENSELY wide angle.

But do you really need to know all this? NOPE! The 28mm Nikkor lens is ALWAYS 28mm...the field of view you get from it is PURELY dependant on the size of the sensor that the lens is attached to. All of this conversion non-sense is COMPLETELY irrelevant because it only serves to give people who insist on remaining in the old-fashioned 35mm world a frame of reference so that they can understand these new image formats.

Phew, that was easy. Clear as mud??

Everything I described here is the cause for this:
Nope. 28mm x 1.5 = 40mm field of view for the D3000. 28mm lens on the tiny Canon sensor would give you a zoomed in 162mm field of view (28mm x 5.8).

As for owning a D40, D40x, D60, D3000, D5000, understand that these cameras require lenses that have autofocus motos built directly into the lens itself in order to have autofocus. The 28mm nikkor you linked to is an AF (autofocus) lens, however it lacks an internal focus motor, and requires a camera body that has its own focus motor built into it to provide the autofocus capabilities.



On the left is a D40; the right a D80. Notice in the lower left quadrant of the D80s lens mount there is a tiny little drive-shaft poking through that the D40 doesn't have. That little drive shaft is connected to the autofocus motor in the D80's body, and it connects to and drives the gearing that rotate the lens elements in the lens for focusing.

In order to have autofocus capability on the D40, you need lenses that have the motor built into the lens itself. You can tell if a lens has this capability because it will say AF-S or AF-I on it. The AF-S and AF-I designations only apply to Nikon/Nikkor lenses (3rd party makers have their own designations for this function). If you see a Nikon (Nikkor) lens that only says 'AF', then it requires a camera body with built-in focus motor, which the D40 family does not possess.

This effectively limits your lens selection to AF-S/AF-I lenses, however there are quite a few available, and more are being created all the time.

To my knowledge, Nikon is the only mainstream DSLR maker that has cameras in its line-up that do not have in-body focus motors. All Nikon DSLRs above the D5000 have in-body focus motors.

Wow that was a lot of info.

Thanks for going into such depth on that and breaking it down dummy style for me. I can google the same info but I cant interact with google and ask follow on questions and get clarification with a real person.

I think one of the items I may be looking into for a large consideration would be the wide angle capability as I feel i may end up using that more than I would need a super zoom capability.

This is an example of what interest me as far as wide angle and the lens being less than 3 feet from the windscreen but still capturing window pillar to window pillar: http://www.airliners.net/photo/Cessna-150/1469588/L/

Not sure what kind of copyrighting they have but It will not let me paste a direct link to the picture here.


Now in what I have learned I am assuming a photo like this would not be possible with a Canon sx20 or the Nikon P90? Would a D3000 with a 28mm wide angle lens get the job done?

If the answer is that that the super zooms just cant do it due to their smaller sensors then it looks like I am headed to dslr land. Id like to find a local place where I could just get hands on each camera because that would also tell alot as well but there is nowhere local that carries all models. Next time im in NY I will stop by B&H.

I read that the larger sensor in the DSLR gives a wider image area for a given focal length, great, but the truth is that entry level DSLR lenses tend to have a lot of defects associated with them like chromatic aberration, barrel and pincushion distortion and vignetting at the edges. So if you go to an entry-level DSLR the wider field of view will be nice but you also will get all these imperfections in the deal. This is why I am hesitant to go in at the entry-level and I am thinking about jumping to a full-field DSLR, despite the extra cost. By the time you buy and unload a Canon Rebel or something like that you might as well save up for a Canon 5D or a Nikon D700 plus a good lens. But maybe it is not a big deal, who knows. For what I do the images are probably ok from a low-end DSLR.