Nikon D50

I was looking at my Marriott Hotel account today and discovered that I can buy products with Marriott rewards points. Now, I travel a lot and have accumulated a lot of points over the years. While browsing the site, i found a camera that I like. I purchased, with points only, a Nikon D50 Digital SLR camera. From what I can tell by reading on-line reviews, it is a pretty nice camera.

Anyone have any experience with this thing?

Its closest competition would be the D70, and from the differences I can see it would depend on your level of photographic experience and what you are wanting to do with the camera.

If progressing from a Point and Shoot (P&S) camera, this one seems to be everything you could (except more lenses after you get it). The biggest negative I see is that it takes secure digital (SD) cards vice the Compact Flash (CF) cards. In my mind the negative here is if you did pick up the hobby as a passion and wanted to upgrade cameras all other Nikon DSLR's use CF cards.

If you had the points and the D70 were available I would take it. The D50 however seems like more than capable as a camera, although I have never used one this is going by the comparision to a D70.

Thanks,

I read a number of reviews on-line and all of them compared the D50 favorably with the D70/D70s. It apparently lacks some features that the D70 has, but also has some that the D70 doesn't. I am not a professional photographer, and had been simply looking for a replacement for my cheap Fuji Fine Pix camera. I did a lot of photography (35MM SLR) when I was younger, but have not been much into it in the last 10 or so years.

I did price additional lenses (the 55-200mm one seems to be the most recommended) and depending on how much I decide to get back into the hobby, I may go purchase one (about $200).

Thanks again for your input, it is much appreciated!

I think you would be very happy with the D50 then. The flexibility of manual functions, aperture priority, and endless lens possibilities greatly improves switching to the slr style as you know.

One nikon lens that is great and inexpensive is the 50mm primes, both the f/1.4 and f/1.8 can be purchased for around and under 100.00 used. I do not have the 55-200, however would strongly suggest looking at used lenses to save a bit of money...

The photographer is the most important aspect of photography, the lens would be second, followed by the actual camera. At least that is what I am told