Throw some D's on it
With the birth of Kiwi, it was time to get a little more serious, and so I replaced my Canon S5 with a Nikon D5000. Although I was always a Canon guy before, the camera is excellent.
The S5 was a great training tool, but even the first few pictures on the new DSLR immediately showed a tremendous improvement in image quality. The body was not quite as large as I was expecting, although it certainly is heavier and clunkier than any point & shoot, even before you screw a lens on. As kind of an upper-entry-level offering the D5000 uses more on-screen menus to select settings; this isn’t too bad (I got used to it with the S5), but sometimes changing the ISO on the menu is slower than I’d like. Also there is no in-body autofocus motor, and so I’m mostly limited to AF-S lenses. Also, I have to mention that having a side door dedicated to the flash card is so much better than the S5′s questionable decision to have the flash card go into the battery compartment. That was a terrible idea…
Not as bad as you'd think
One of the main features of the D5000 that set it apart is the swiveling LCD screen. At first I was concerned about the bottom hinge design, since it obviously is much less useful than a side hinge. You have to adjust it prior to putting the camera on a tripod, and even then the tripod blocks most of the screen. I thought this would bother me a lot, but actually it doesn’t. The reason? Well, Live View on DSLRs sucks. It’s sooooooo slow to autofocus that it’s pretty much useless. So really the only disadvantage of the bottom swivel is that it is useless for self-portraits using a tripod. I can see why some consumers prefer to have a better/larger LCD rather than the swivel.
Kit lens
The bundle I got came with a couple lenses and a camera bag. The kit lens is a Nikon Nikkor 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 DX G AF-S. It’s a pretty good lens for the most part, though it didn’t come with a hood (and cannot use the hood that came with the 55-200mm). On the plus side, at least it has VR to reduce shake, and it’s the standard 52mm thread size so that I only need to buy one set of filters.
Be nice if I could get out of the house to use this
The other lens that came in the bundle is the Nikon Nikkor 55-200 mm f/4-5.6 DX ED AF-S. This lens also has VR and by all accounts is an excellent lens. Unfortunately, I have yet to go out with this lens, because my picture-taking is confined to my apartment, thanks to newborn Kiwi.
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Hahahaha..can I just say how hilarious it is that the two posts after the birth of your son are about violent video games and cool new electronic toys? You are awesome!