Have been thinking of upgrading to a digital SLR for a while… considering Nikon D5000 – any recommendations?
If you’d be getting your first DSLR, the D5000 would be a great choice, but with one (at least to me) big caveat. To me, the biggest limitation with the D5000 is that it will not autofocus with non-AF-S lenses. In Nikon’s alphabet soup for lens descriptors, AF-S means that the motor that focuses the lens is in the lens and not the camera. Reguar AF lenses (listed as either AF or AF-D) autofocus by having a motor in the camera focus the lens via a small mechanical coupling that sticks out of the camera mount. The D5000 does not have this coupling, so it will not autofocus with regular AF lenses. This can be a problem because it eliminates alot of otherwise perfectly good used lenses that you could buy used and get a lot of value out of. You’d have to buy all AF-S lenses. Cameras that DO have the mechanical coupling can autofocus with either AF or AF-S lenses. This isn’t a problem with Canon because all of their autofocus SLR cameras and lenses have been AF-S (I’m using Nikon’s term for
