The Camera

Let me introduce the Nikon D3100...


Well I'm sure most of you all ready know about this one. I didn't have a lot of money to spend and even though I was looking to buy second-hand, my money wasn't going to buy much. I wanted a Nikon or a Canon but the Nikon came along first. It basically fell into my lap through a friend of a friend of a friend. It was a good price and It was in mint condition with its box and all accessories.

This is my first DSLR and I'm rather pleased with it. Most of the time I shoot in super fine Jpeg and the 4gb memory card, I got thrown in, is perfectly adequate for my needs. Battery life could be a bit better but Its certainly not a weakness. Only thing I'm not too impressed with is the auto focus in dark situations but switching to manual focus is quick and easy, plus the ability to zoom in on the live-view mode is also handy for manual focusing.

The video recording is a little bit of a let down as I can only seem to record 10 minute clips but that's not a massive problem. I haven't played with the video settings a great deal but I cant seem to enable continuous auto-focus in video mode?

I'm using a fairly high-end NEC monitor and there is little to no difference between raw and jpeg modes. I currently tweak none of my images so there is no need for me to shoot in raw. With jpeg I can hold more images and increase battery life.

I would happily recommend the Nikon but I can feel myself wanting to upgrade already. Maybe some new lenses will prove to be a good upgrade? Any advice on what to get would be much appreciated.

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