Which kit should I buy for my D3200?

Leah3250

If this has already been a topic of discussion, I apologize! Just point me in the right direction and I will be happy!!

I have finally made up my mind that I want to buy a dslr camera and have settled on the Nikon D3200. My problem is all of these kits! I have no idea what I actually need or what I will use.

bruto

I think this post ended up in the wrong forum, and you might want to re-post it in the D3200 section for more D3200 owners. However, since I am one of those, I will throw in my long-winded two cents, or perhaps @moose can move it.

Be wary of bundle deals that often include unneeded gadgets and a gray market product. B&H, Adorama and other good retailers often throw in a couple of things like a bag and a spare battery, but skip the accessory lenses, straps, cleaning kits and the other gadgets. Even the good retailers have accessory bundles, but look for the best deal that includes the camera and lens or lenses and skip the rest if you have to pay for it.

After you've learned the basics, gotten used to the camera and what it can and cannot do, and what you miss or don't miss, then is the time to look at additions.

To start with, the basic camera with the kit lens will do a lot. If you expect to shoot birds and distant animals and the like, a telephoto lens is a good idea. You need not get that immediately, though sometimes a tele zoom will be offered at a substantial discount if you buy the package. I note, for example, that B&H offers the basic camera with the 55-200mm lens for only $70 more, which essentially means you buy the extra lens for less than half price. B&H has a very good reputation. They ship fast too.

I would stick with a known reputable seller and read all the fine print. Many discounters have what sounds like great deals until you read the tiny print and find that the camera is "gray market" which means no Nikon repair facility in the US will touch it. Some may be unpacked and repacked, meaning the pieces that make up the deal may or may not be new and matched, even if they appear to be correct. The small savings on a super discount may disappear pretty fast if there's a problem.

For telephoto zooms, many like the 55-200mm, which certainly is a bargain. I have the 55-300mm which costs a bit more, but when I got it it came with a huge discount.

Many people love the 35mm f/1.8 prime lens, and others prefer the 50mm f/1.8, both of which are optically very fine and relatively cheap. I would wait before jumping at one of these until you have experimented a bit. Your kit zoom will cover both those focal lengths, and after a while you'll get a feel for which you use most. 35mm is "normal" perspective, very versatile, and 50mm is a short telephoto that many favor for portraits. Both those prime lenses are very sharp, well behaved, fast and bargain priced for the quality you get. The faster apertures add some creative control in the form of shallower depth of field, allow shooting in dimmer light, and focus a bit faster than the kit lens.

Two accessories that you will almost certainly want soon if not immediately will be a second battery and more memory cards. Make sure you always have a fresh charge when you go out shooting, and preferably a second battery. Copy your photographs often and keep plenty of memory on hand. Don't let zillions of shots accumulate on a card and then find that you've misplaced it, or corrupted it, or that it's full just at the moment the baby laughs or the lion jumps.

Because Nikon USA keeps some control over retail prices, don't neglect to check local retailers if there are any. Their prices may be close to the best discounters, and a brick and mortar store may offer intangible benefits that are worth a few bucks. Nikon's own price for the two lens bundle is only a few dollars above that of B&H. Target also has it for about the same price, though you may have to pre-order it for store pickup.

Among web vendors, I think B&H is probably the best, and Adorama a close second; I've dealt with both. Keep an eye out for discounts as they come and go.

Leah3250

You have been very helpful! Those are exactly the questions I wanted answered! My gut instinct was to bypass all the crazy excess stuff in those packages, but now I'm certain I will. I still will opt for the discount on the 55-200mm lens to go with though.

I'm sorry this showed up in the wrong spot. My message also got sent before I was through typing, thanks to a very active 2 year old. ;) Hopefully this message can be transferred to the right spot!

BlindMoose

I am looking into purchasing filters for my D3200 Nikon camera and I do not know which ones I should start with as I am a beginner at photography. I was told to purchase a UV filter - maybe a polarized and a density filter. How do I know what size mm filter I need for my camera?

mgblunt

The D3200 requires a 52mm filter.

bruto

Yes, the 18-55mm kit lens requires a 52mm filter. Some people consider a filter useful for damage protection, but most of the tests I've seen suggest that it is of little use. It will not do you any harm in most instances, but it may decrease contrast and increase flare in difficult light. If you take your camera to the beach, desert, ocean, etc. get the filter and use it then, but I'd leave it off the rest of the time. Tests I've seen suggest a filter will break much more easily than glass, and an inexpensive zoom lens is likely to suffer internal damage from impact anyway, whether or not the glass is broken. If you are very rough with your camera, the filter can protect against scratching and dirt, but most of the time, it's just not needed. Get a good lens hood instead, and you'll get better protection and better reduction of flare.

As for a polarizing filter, unless your kit lens is the latest version, the collapsible one with a push button, which comes usually with the D3300, you're likely to have the 18-55mm VR that came with the D3200. It has a rotating front element, which makes a polarizer unusable with auto focus, because a polarizing filter depends on its rotated position.

A neutral density filter is likely to be your most useful filter here, since it is the only way to slow down shutter speed when the light is bright, and thus the only way to get blurry flowing water and the like in daylight. Get one that's fairly dense, 4x or so, and it should prove quite handy.

Graduated ND filters (half darker and half lighter, in order to smooth out high contrast scenic shots by darkening the sky while lightening the foreground), are like polarizing filters, essentially unusable with the kit lens because of the rotating front element. Such a filter can be very nice for sunsets, but to use one of these with the kit zoom, one must pre-focus, turn AF off, and then rotate the filter as needed without further focus adjustment.

The lens "throw", (i.e. the amount of rotation between closest and farthest), is very short on these lenses, and that means that even a tiny change in focus will throw off any rotation-dependent filter.

I should add that the UV Haze reduction of a UV filter is something that film requires but digital does not. Digital sensors filter out UV anyway, and filtration is not needed.