@AttyVette No need to be so negative.

@cengland0

@phendrick brother, know this: you do not walk alone

@lordbowen So… Do you really love them?

@lordbowen a dog owner would.

@lordbowen, @MrMark has solved your problem.

Have dog owners buy this camera to take photos of your cats.

@lordbowen I bought an early digital camera as I was wasting a lot of film on cat photos. I ended up writing a book on how to buy your first camera, sold the rights to a dot-com for serious $$$$ and was hired by a photo magazine after they saw my book. Oh yeah, taught non-credit camera classes for 8 years. Cats have been berry, berry good to me.

@Boiler3k I love them enough to spend the $344 on them, and not on taking pictures of them.

@versabox yeah, but the shipping time is equally deferred.

@ruouttaurmind Several cheaper on google product search right now.

@BrinsonBeck I was specifically referring to the offerings here.

@ruouttaurmind bought that one. Good little camera.

@ruouttaurmind $310 at https://www.gpsoutlets.com/index.php?id_product=644&controller=product for what’s featured here. Get the long zoom lens on Amazon for $75, and you’ll still have $10 toward a camera bag if you really need (another) one for the BF package.

@ciabelle https://www.sitejabber.com/reviews/www.gpsoutlets.com Doesn’t look like that site is very good.

@ciabelle LOL. The sum total of info about this camera at that GPS site: No mention of US Warranty. Good luck. There’s a guy in a white van in the next town who will sell one of these to me for a hundred bucks.

@RedOak, @ciabelle, Ripoff Reports, BBB, SiteWatch, and nearly every other trust-score site doesn’t paint a very positive picture of GPSOutlets. Everything from “no battery or charger included” to Chinese model sent, to “charged my credit card 5 times over several months”

@jbartus Same boat here. I’m waiting on the a 5DIII deal, until then my 5DII is “good enough”

@darkdragon Hopefully you’ll get out of this oar deal.

@boygenius1991 There are also cameras with facebook in them now. Which, for some people, is all a phone is anyway.

@2many2no Sorry, my grandson asked Alexa to tell him a joke, and it seemed to have the perfect amount of lameness.

@2many2no haha…reminds me of this video.

@kevlar51 yeah, that’s what I gotta hold out for: more zoom. Or at least substantially better macro functionality. My iPhone 6S+ takes middle-distance photos just fine; it’s the close-up and far-away stuff with which I need a hand.

(If someone wants to school me on how this camera is awesome and I’m being an ignorant n00b, though, by all means go right ahead)

@RDW0409 you’d need a better lens than the one offered (and a better flash). But once you’ve gotten to the point that you realize how to use this camera to take better pics than your iphone–i.e. moving off the green auto setting and adjusting aperture/iso/shutter speed yourself–you’ll realize that this isn’t a great body.

I also think the pop-up flashes on these things ruin photos more than anything else. They shoot the light straight at the subject, resulting in a bright subject and shadow-filled dark background. And the auto-mode uses it all the time. An adjustable flash that you can point at a ceiling will do wonders right off the bat.

@kevlar51 this is good advice for which I am grateful!

/giphy thanks-dude

@MrNews I beleive meh has discussed this point at length and perhaps grew tied of it this time because, bears.

They’ve previously promised to support the Canon 1-year warranty even if the priced-controlling camera company (similar to others) chooses not to.

In fact, I’ve found this type of pick up where the manufacturer drops the ball support is very typical for meh.

@KwadGuy I dearly love Camelx3 and also believe this to be a solid price.

But Camelx3 is far from perfect - hardly surprising given the millions of items it attempts to track.

Examples of Camelx3 failure I’ve personally caught:

• Amazon and its sellers are notorious for quick price drops to gather attention or clear some inventory… quickly followed by price hikes… Camelx3 usually completely misses those deals.
• For some products, similarly, Camelx3 will show a price for a week or more that might have only existed for a minute or two… the seller knowing this would trigger a Camelx3 alert… and the customer arrives to find the same old price.

@GarbyRator You can make at least 2 haikus with this

@northstarcakes This, the T6, is more of a teamwork camera, since there is no “I” in T6.
The T6I is more for those who don’t play well with others.

@KwadGuy Har har

@northstarcakes I’d save my pennies for a T6i. But if I were starting out now, I’d save my pennies for a Nikon US factory refurbished D7200 (Canon 7D equivalentish) once they hit $700. (They’ll hit that soon, now that the D7500 is out.) Currently the best price is $830 with the kit lens.
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Nikon-D7200-DX-24-2MP-DSLR-Camera-w-18-55mm-VR-II-Lens-Paintshop-Pro-X8-Bundle-/201728334992

Nikon USA refurbs are usually pristine, like new, with fewer than 1000 shutter actuations. (A lot seem to be Costco returns with fewer than 50 shutter actuations.)

@bbf Why the Nikon?

@bbf Oh, and why choose Nikon over Canon if you’re an advanced hobbiest?

Well, compatibility with older lenses built since the late 1960’s if you buy a D7100, D7200, or any of Dxxx cameras that’s why.

Sure if you’re a professional, older lenses aren’t worth your trouble, or if you’re into sports and wildlife photography you’ll want the newest zooms and autofocus.

BUT… if you’re still refining your craft, or just trying to figure out the whole “art” of photography, then cheap ass used manual focus or almost as cheap Nikon “D” series screw drive AF prime lenses can allow you to explore low f/stop, creamy bokeh with some great quality lenses without breaking the bank.

Unfortunately this is also what the mirrorless crowd has discovered, so used prices of manual focus lenses have shot up in the past few years. (Nikon not so much since the cameras listed above were still backwards compatible to the point of being able to encode focal length and aperture setting into the EXIF data on each frame taken, so there was still a market for old 1960’s lenses for use with modern Nikon bodies. Canon, not at all backwards compatible unless it’s an EOS lens, so all that fine FD glass was just selling for a pittance more than 5 years ago. Same for manual focus Olympus glass.)

Also, for Canon, other than their 50mm f/1.8 prime, (the nifty fifty, aka, the plastic fantastic) their consumer glass is considerably lower quality than their “L” glass. With Nikon, their current primes tend to be solid even at reasonable prices, variable aperture zooms… those can be good or bad.

@northstarcakes Oh, and why the Nikon D7200 in particular.

Other than the compatibility with inexpensive, good quality manual lenses. It has all of the prosumer features in a camera that you’ll ever need for the first few years (or less if you’re talented) of experimental/learning shooting and has a fairly current sensor. And it’ll be robust enough to survive a few bumps.

You’ll know when you need to upgrade to one of the >$1500 bodies and what you require.

So it may be to a Sony Alpha A9 full frame, or one of the professional Nikon or Canon full frame bodies, or professional quality Nikon or Canon APS-C bodies. Or to Fuji or Sony high end compact mirrorless APS-C or even Digital Medium format.

I’m biased to a certain extent to manual focus lenses with aperture adjustments on the lens itself because I started with a film SLR in my teens, and am fine with manually focusing when it comes to “experimental”/learning photos.

With handheld sports/action shots, give me 1 gazillion point autofocus with modern non-geared autofocus lenses with optical stabilization any day over a manual lens (Since my focus skills suck on the fly.) Nikon has those features as well as Canon. The others, Fuji, Sony don’t quite have the new lens selection… yet.

@bbf wow. That’s a lot of info! I’m mostly a baby photographer, trying to get the most out of my cell phone, but I’m taking an intro photography class in the fall and been saving for a dslr in the mean time.
So, just keeping it real, most of that flew right over my head. But I’ll try to decipher it lol

@northstarcakes It all depends on how serious you intend to take the “hobby” of Photography.

If you’re just trying things out to take better everyday pictures, then I wouldn’t go with the Nikon D7200 nor the Canon T6i. IMHO, they’re too big size wise for somebody taking the leap from cell phone photography.

Just in case you don’t intend to take it up as a serious hobby, it’s nice to have a camera that you can use comfortably for vacations or more serious personal outings where a cell phone camera just won’t do.

If you want interchangeable lenses and new equipment, I’d go for one of two mirrorless cameras: a Sony A6000 (APS-C sensor) with the kit lenses or the Olympus OM-D E-M10-MarkII (Micro 4/3 sensor) with the kit lenses (the Micro 4/3 sensor is smaller, so the lenses for the camera will be smaller, but the light sensitivity will be lower.)
These cameras will run around $600 new with the kit lenses and will be small enough to carry in a small camera bag with all accessories.
They also will accept “adapted” lenses, ie the old manual focus lenses, with just a $15-20 adapter. I’d suggest buying old Nikon Ai/Ais lenses if you buy some lenses for adapting to the mirrorless cameras just because if you ever decide to upgrade to a DSLR, these lenses will be able to be used on something like a Nikon D7200. (I learned this the hard way by purchasing about 1/2 dozen Canon FD lenses to adapt to my mirrorless camera, and when I upgraded to a DSLR, they were pretty much useless for DSLRs. But they were all relatively inexpensive, so it was not problem, except for the $200 55mm f/1.2 FD lens :-O)

If you’re willing to buy used, then the choices open up exponentially… and just depend on what the current availability is. Since you’re new to cameras, you should check out some local camera shops for used equipment. They’re usually quite helpful… but know how much new cameras are too, because used equipment from a brick and mortar retailer can sometimes come close to some better new camera’s prices from a big box store.

If you just want an all-in-one compact camera with non-interchangeable lenses, then I’m probably not well versed with those cameras to give you a good recommendation that isn’t greater than $500 new for a camera that you can try out some of the “Depth of Focus” blurring you’ll learn about in photography class.

@northstarcakes what’s the difference between the T6i and the 6i?

@bbf I’m not trying to make a business out of photography, but I am hoping to use it for a blog I have. I also live near Yosemite national park and would really love to learn the skills I need to do justice to the beautiful landscapes and nature that are available.
I’m as serious as I can be to drop the better part of a grand on a good entry level dslr.
I appreciate all your advice! I don’t really have anyone else to ask for it. The local camera shop didn’t have much used equipment, and what they did have wasn’t any cheaper. I also felt like the guy was trying to upsell me on the Sony alpha. From what I’ve read about mirrorless they’re getting better, but I still think I want a dslr.
As for Canon vs Nikon I don’t have any opinion other than the 6i seems to have good ratings.

@northstarcakes It depends if you need to hike out with the camera to remote places… if you do, then it’s probably better to get a more robust camera that won’t fail if it gets banged around or dusty.

It’s a dilemma because typically for landscape photography one wants a camera that has high resolution and a large selection of wide angle lenses. That would point to getting a professional full frame Canon or Nikon camera, or maybe a Sony (>$1200 for just the camera body…) Or even one of the new Fuji Medium Format digital cameras (>$3000) for professional level prints.

However, if the photographs are going to be used primarily in a blog, that means that they’ll be scaled down to sizes that are around one thousand pixels wide, which is less than 2Megapixels… so high resolution doesn’t matter all that much.

Also if you’re taking pictures mostly in the day time, then light sensitivity isn’t that big of an issue as well.

So it may just depend on how sensitive you are to weight… if you’re going to be hiking for hours, then smaller, and lighter is definitely an advantage. For example, last time I went on a vacation to Asia, I brought my micro 4/3 camera (similar to the Olympus M10 mark II) and lenses. The whole set up including a fisheye lens, a prime wide lens, and two zooms that covered 24mm to 300mm, batteries and flash, weighed less than my full “professional quality” Nikon DSLR and a full sized zoom lens. I traded off bulk and weight, for lower resolution and lower light sensitivity.

If you just want to get started with a solid system, I’d still recommend you start with a smaller system with either an Sony A6000 or the Olympus OM-D E-M10 Mark II with a few lenses. They should be good enough for most things and you’ll know when you’ve outgrown them, but you can still use them for vacations and situations where a phone camera just isn’t quite enough.

@MrTizl The T6 is pretty much a downgrade feature wise except for WiFi and focus accuracy wise would be equivalent.
But since you can set the focus point by using the touchscreen on your camera, it should be better than the T6. Are you using the touch screen to set the focus point to ensure what you want to be in focus is what the camera is attempting to focus on?

Stick with your SL1. An upgrade would be to a T6i/T7i, and if you don’t have more than one lens for your camera, or if your camera came in a kit with 2 and you never change the lens, then you really don’t need to even upgrade to a T6i/T7i unless you just want to.