Invest in the body or the lens?

[jim_higgins4]

I am thinking of buying either the new D300 or the D80 but am more interested

in securing good lenses---wide to mid and telephoto. I can have more

money to spend on lenses with the D80. But are there better lenses available

for the D300 or are they the same lenses? Money is the obstacle and I cannot

afford $1,000 lenses.

 

Jim

[tom_luongo1]

Any new autofocus lens works on either body. Did you ahve any particular lens in mind?

[niccoury]

Lens make a much bigger difference than the camera.

 

Go with the D80 and pro glass, a 17-55 f/2.8 and a 70-200 f/2.8

[michael_darnton1]

The lenses are probably going to be around a lot longer than the body. I'm buying lenses for my D300 as if my next camera will be full-frame, just in case. In my case, that means spending a lot on the primes that I really want, rather than buying a D3 now. I don't know if this applies to you, without knowing what lenses you're thinking of.

[mark_williamson6]

Michael is right. I have a D300 and am buying glass like my next camera is full frame. I am also buying the fastest, best glass they make. I got the camera because the D70 I had was gray market and was starting to get some questionable quirks. Now I want good glass. Lenses last almost forever if you take good care of them. Bodies will become obsolete withing five years.

 

Get the glass.

[seismiccwave]

With the D300 your photographs will look great with less expensive lenses.

[nolan_ross]

I think I would buy the D300 and the 18-135mm kit lens and start building a Nikon system from there. The D300 technology is very nice and will be excellent for many years. The D300 can use the manual focus lenses with metering. The D80 can use the manual focus lenses "without" metering. Not an issue if you are not going to use the manual focus lenses but I still find them very useful. Especially when shooting macro. Expensive lenses or pro lenses offer tougher construction, faster aperture and more weight. Hopefully 1st rate optics. There are lot's of lenses out there that are not considered pro lenses that are very nice and perfectly capable of producing professional quality results. For example the 50mm f1.8 Nikon is one of the sharpest Nikon lenses made and it costs about $110.00 new.

Good luck. You will be happy whichever direction you go. It takes years to build a Nikon system.

[oskar_ojala]

In the past week, I took some high-quality photos with a D300 and a 65 euro 2nd hand 28 mm lens. Lenses this cheap cannot be had if you want more extreme focal lengths or if you want fast lenses, but it depends a bit on what you're trying to do and how. A good zoom costs a lot of money, but an older 2nd hand prime lens costs less. However, these two are not entirely comparable.

[rolubich]

If you don't need AF I suggest to take a good kit lens for general purposes and then add some good Ai(-s) prime lenses (or zoom too). Just bought (199$) a 105 2.5 Ai-s and I have compared with my 70-200 2.8 VR: at 2.8 center sharpness is the same but 105 2.5 is sharper in the corners). My 75-150 3.5 E (100$) is sharper than 18-200 VR especially in the corners and has a better bokeh too. With D300 metering works ok.

[mvtol]

"With the D300 your photographs will look great with less expensive lenses."

 

That's not true. You will probably see all the shortages of cheap lenses more pronounced with D300! With today's digital bodies (D40/x, 80, 200, 300) lenses make the difference between a nice and a good picture. If you can't afford a very good lens with the D300 buy a D80/200 with a very good lens.

[elliot1]

As a former owner of D80s, my suggestion is go for the D300, or at least try it out to see what you think of it compared to the D80.

 

Unless you are shooting weddings or doing other event photography, you can easily survive without an f2.8 aperture lens.

 

Nikon does not make cheap lenses, but they do make some excellent inexpensive lenses that render images with superb detail, color and contrast. The 18-135mm is one of their best examples of this.

[juan_parm_nides]

Lens last longer than cameras, that is true. But you need a good sensor to reach the lens optical limit, where its endurance is optimal. It is a dilemma.

 

Cheers

[steve_levine]

That is a loaded question. Since digital bodies become obsolete in 1-3 years. I don't think that "invest" is the proper term? If it were me. I would go for quality in glass, and buy a used last year's (now obsolete) DSLR camera body.

[jc5066]

Anyone responding at this point is completely guessing and throwing out advice with-out knowing exactly what your asking.

 

What are you currently shooting with? What type of photography do you do. I hate to assume, so is this strictly for armature use?

 

In general, the lens is the better investment, but not always. Back in the film days a body was simply a box that held the film and may have had a few bells and whistles. In the digital era the body now has a big implact. With that said, its really difficult, well impossible, to answer your question with-out more information.

[michael_alger]

I usually go for the best affordable glass I can get. However, a better camera is also nice because it feels better, it has certain nice features a cheaper one does not have and it therefore may "last longer" than a simpler one. Face it, you will buy the better camera eventually anyhow...

So, what about going for the D300 and then, rather than getting cheapo-current kit-plastic lenses, get used decent ones with it. For instance the 35-70 2.8, some used primes, the MF 105/4 micro rather than the 105/2.8 AF-S VR micro and so on, you get the idea. You can always replace one with a current one whenever the budget allows.

[michaelchristensen]

Buy the camera body for your needs today. Buy the lens for future growth in photography. I want to say that a lens is a better investment, but as they keep adding digital chips and motors .. who knows? Good glass is always going to be good glass .. microchips, motors, and plastic are easily obsoleted.

 

I'd make sure my camera body supports old glass in case you come across a bargin lens you want to use manually. Everything digital, cameras, scanners, storage, media, (batteries) .. are somewhat proprietary to the software programs you use .. all of which changes faster than you can click a shutter .. none of which is considered an investment.

[carl_becker2]

Go to your local camera store to get a feel for the differences in the bodies. They are many, most important to me where control layout and lens compatibility. If you can manual focus then some older tele?s can be had at a good savings. Look into one of the kit zooms.

[brian_weinkauf]

Think about the future. Where do want to be in a few years or so. Do you want a FX body? If so avoid DX lenses. Be careful not waste money now on lenses (or bodies) that won't meet your future desires. Be patient and try to form a buying plan.

 

That said. IMHO buy good or great glass.

 

I like my D80. Do I want D300 (or D3)? You bet! Would I give up 70-200/2.8 for a D300? Never!

[dbcooper]

The D80 and the D300 take the same lenses, if you're talking about more recent AF lenses. As mentioned above, the D300 will have more functionality with older lenses.

 

IMO, spend your money on the glass. Seems odd to me that you're willing to drop $1800 on a D300 body, but not $1000 on a lens. I think anyone is better off with a lesser body and better lenses, and not the other way around.

[wpahnelas]

if you don't have a good body or lenses you're working with already, then it would be foolish to buy a more expensive body to start with, and have no lenses to work with. the difference between D80 and D300 is roughly $1000 USD. for that kind of money, you can get the kind of accessories that will make the D80 a useful and productive system. a D300 body with whatever kind of lens you can scrounge up is going to force you to spend money it sounds like you don't have, or really cramp your style.

[hayward]

Invest in the lens.

 

DSLRs are a little diffenent than film, though, in that there are differences in the end results between different bodies. I shot 2,000 frames of kids soccer this weekend using a Nikon 300mm f/2.8 AF-S and a 70-200mm f/2.8 AF-S with a D200 body and D50 body. My son used the D50 and I used the D200 and we switched the lenses several times. Sometimes we switched the cameras so I was using the D50.

 

The net result was that the D50 pics were inferior - fewer in focus (slower AF than the D200, slower frame rate), grainier, and less room to crop.

 

Now that said, if you asked me to pick D200 and a Nikon 70-300mm G or ED vs. a D50 and the 70-200mm AF-S or 300mm f.2.8, I'd take the D50 and the better glass...

[jim_higgins4]

I own a Nikon 35mm system with following lenses:

Sigma 28-70mm 2.8; 85mm AF Nikkor,1.8; 50mm. AF Nikkor 1.4; and

a 105m Nikkor, 2.5.

I imagine I can use all of them on a DSLR body with the 1.5 ratio.

I want something that will allow me shoot nature, cityscapes, and some

action photography--sports.

This will be my first DSLR camera.

From the posts I have received, "go fo the glass" seems to be the

consensus.