Quote Originally Posted by fillum View Post
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I'm a fan of buying used to get started (that's what I did) but I think the D60 is too far behind the D5100 for the few hundred dollars you would save (for example the D5100 + 18-105mm is $670 including insured shipping from eGlobal). That extra $320 gets you a hell of a lot more camera (and warranty).


Good luck with it...


Cheers.

Then again the D5100 is just as far behind the D5200 in terms of both technology level and feature set as well. So to start off with, and keeping in mind the financial constraints and possible uses, I still reckon the D60+18-105mm, and then the 70-300mm VR would make an ideal beginner set for at least a year or so. In that time, the D5200 will drop to a more reasonable price as well.

So for an initial outlay of less than $800, you could have the D60+18-105mm+70-300mmm rather than the same gear costing with the D5100 costing closer to $1100!

Not sure if the OP has mentioned that they have a tripod(for landscapes), and obviously won't yet have any filters and other useful paraphernalia that can be important for some situations.

While the extra dynamic range can be dealt with relatively easily, the extra 5Mp of resolution of the D5100 compared to the D60 won't make much difference for someone that's only starting out.(ie. printing large).

Noted tho that the better high ISO quality of the D5100 will be a significant advantage compared to the D60, but in the genres listed by the OP, not particularly significant.

D5200 is currently sitting at about $750 on DWI's site .. it won't be too long before it drops into the $500-600 range.

Having used a D5100 and recently a D3200, to be honest they don't feel all that much of an improvement over the D70s, in terms of feel or performance .. particularly AF speed!
D7000 is another level tho, and the D5200 uses the same AF technology as the D7000, so one should reasonably expect the D5200 to offer a focus performance advantage.

If bird photography is one of the key forms of photography, then AF performance will become important. For this reason, I reckon that the D5100 will become a limitation sooner, rather than later for the OP.