Planning to buy a new camera

[sde1500]

iPhone sucks at taking pictures. I want beautiful pictures of my tank. And other things, but mainly the tank. Lets face it, I'm spending all this money to make the tank look nice, people here can't ooh and ahh as well with cell phone pictures :dance:

I have just about settled on this one, but want to check in with the people here, thoughts? http://www.amazon.com/Camera-18-55mm-Ultimate-Includes-Telephoto/dp/B017UWCPCQ?ie=UTF8&psc=1&redirect=true&ref_=ox_sc_act_title_1&smid=A13BNE3P7C8THK

[lpsouth1978]

The Nikon D3300 is a good entry level camera. For your purposes it will be great, with the right lens. The lens that comes with it is decent, but not great for the shots most of us want to take of our tanks. You will definitely want a good Macro lens. Unfortunately, these are NOT cheap. I recently purchased a Nikkor 105mm Macro lens that cost me $900. You can get some good shots without it, but AMAZING shots with it.

When looking at cameras, lenses are more important than the camera body itself. Whatever camera you decide on, you will always want to stay with that brand. The lenses you purchase for it will work on other camera bodies in the same series, so a Canon lens will fit on another Canon body should you upgrade. However, not ALL Nikon lenses will fit on ALL Nikon bodies. I am a fan of Nikon, so I say go for it, but there are certainly other cameras that will do the job.

[sde1500]

Cool good to know thanks! I think I'll be sticking with the more basic lenses provided, unless they really don't cut it for pictures. The wife tolerates the spending on the fish tank, she is ok buying a camera because it will be for many uses. I think I'd be pushing it just a little bit by trying to spend a bunch more on a better macro lens for the ultra sexy close up haha.

[lpsouth1978]

Let me clarify that the Nikon lenses will fit on ANY Nikon camera body, however using a DX lens on a Full frame (or FX) body will give a heavy vignette around the edges. Any of the DX or FX lenses will fit (and work) on the crop frame camera bodies, like the D3300 you are looking at.