As you might have seen in an earlier post, my wife and I have recently decided to get into photography. We did the research, and bought a Canon EOS 450D DSLR. Fantastic camera, love it, really happy with it. I’ve already learnt a lot about DSLR photography, and have been teaching Peggy what I’ve picked up.

And herein lies the problem.

Over New Year, we stayed down in Bournemouth, and had time to relax and practice the camera skills a bit. I’d bought a f1.8 lens for taking indoor shots without flash, and that flexibility – along with the great depth-of-field effects – let Peggy have a lot of fun with the camera. So much fun, in fact, that we realised that sharing one camera beytween the two of us isn’t going to work! We’re going to end up with too many situations where I want to shoot one thing, and Peggy would rather shoot something else (probably a bird, cat, or plant). We had such a situation on New Year’s Day, in fact – I was busy taking photos of classic cars on Bournemouth beach; Peggy wanted to shoot seagulls.

So, it looks like the best solution is to give Peggy the Canon kit we’ve already accumulated and I’ll start again with another camera – in other words, it’s time:

What DSLR should I buy Part 2

Ok, so the obvious answer is to just buy a second 450D, right? It was my first thought, and indeed my second. I already did all the research once and the 450D really is the one to get in that ‘range’, as it were, so it’s definitely good enough. And I know I like it, I’m used to it, and we already have three lenses for it – plus if we get more lenses, we can keep on sharing them.

That was my thinking.

Then I looked at my thinking a bit more closely, and realised that my main reason for sticking with the Canon 450D was the lenses, and when I thought about it a bit more, I realised it was no reason at all. If I biuy another one, I’m gonna have two of the kit lens – so no advantage there. Alternatively, I’d get the 18-70 f2.8 lens – but then Peggy would be wanting to borrow it frequently as well, so we’d ahve to get two – and indeed, same with other lenses – we’d end up swapping over all the time, or buying two of each, so there’s no advantage to us both having the same camera.