Welcome to dpr Sephiros!.

For someone in your position there is little difference whether you get Canon or Nikon. Both are superb cameras and have a sufficient choice of lenses to handle most of your future needs..

Canon is the bigger company by some margin and sells more cameras and lenses. Look at the home page here and see how many threads there are for various cameras. At present Nikon has about 370,000 threads going, while Canon has 527,000. Whjen I was in your position I went for the dominant brand, which also has a greater choce of lenses especially int he telephoto range..

But this need not be your main criterion at all..

I know this is not the answer you want, but really there is no comon agreement that one or t'other is better. Go and handle both in your local photo shop and see which you like better..

Good luck..

Sephiros wrote:.

Hello everyone.

I bought a Canon Elph410 about 3 years ago as my first digitalcamera. Loved the quality, loved how simple it was to use. As oflately, I've been thinking about getting a new camera..

Mostly because I'm pretty sick of trying to take pictures with dimlighting. I normally have to stand there trying to take a pictureonly to get blurry pictures that look horrible..

I was told getting a good SLR with the right lens could help speedup the process when taking pictures in dim lighting..

Could anyone make a suggestion as to what kinda camera and lens Ishould be looking at? I'm either leaning towards a Canon or aNikon. Thanks a lot for your help, this is my first post ..

Whichever DSLR you get, for low-light pictures, you really will need a good wide-aperture lens. Something like f/1.4 or f/1.8 perhaps. The DSLR camera has the advantage of a large sensor, which performs well in low-light. But unless partnered with a decent lens, some of the sensor advantage is eaten into by the small lens aperture..

If you have the funds and enthusiasm to go down this route, it is a good plan. But on the other hand, you might look at something like the compact Fuji F30 or F31fd. Not in the same category as a DSLR, but much more affordable, very portable / pocketable and does pretty good in low light.Regards,Peter..

Thanks a lot for the information guys, I was just at Costco and they had both Nikon and Canon cameras out there. I handled both of them, and I do like th Nikon's feel over the Canon's. But that's as far as it really goes, but they've got a 90 day return policy there. So I'm thinking about buying one, playing with it for a few weeks, return it, purchase the other, and then return that one. That should give me a lot of feel for both cameras and make up my decision..

And thank you for the lens information, I wasn't sure which lens would fit my needs for a low-light picture. But now I'll look into the f/1.4 and the f/1.8 wide aperture lens..

Thanks for all your help, you guys have been a great help to me...

Thats a very decent idea, in fact I wish the camera shop where I buy my equipment has such a policy (they have a 15% restocking fee to discourage that). OTOH it's also one reason I would think twice about buying a new camera at Costco .

Anyway for shooting indoors, if you have a Canon, you can't beat the Canon 50mm f/1.8. It has a wide aperture for low light and it only costs about $70...

What I might end up doing is trying them out there and returning them, only to buy the camera from somewhere else then .

Thanks for the lens info too, I definitely want something that can shoot in dim lighting and something great for up close fine detail. Any recommendations on that one?..

For close up, depending on how close up, you might want a macro lens. Unfortunately I am not a macro photographer and cannot recommend a good one to you, but ask around and someone will surely know. If you mean close up by "quite close for portraits maybe I want to see the whole face) then you do not need macro, and the 50mm f/1.8 is just fine...