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Thanks for the prompt response. I have short listed the same and some others quoted below (though it is from Amazon US, I wonder if it is available in India)

a) Amazon.com: Canon Deluxe 200 Tripod: Camera & Photo

b) Amazon.com: Dolica AX620B100 62-Inch Proline Tripod and Ball Head: Camera & Photo

c) Amazon.com: Vista Explorer 60" Lightweight Tripod with Tripod Bag: Camera & Photo

Please advice.

I recently bought a Vivitar ( forgot the model number). It is quite sturdy and can take the weight of a DSLR and heavy lens and has ball feets for better grip even on uneven surfaces.

It costed Rs.900/-only and i am satisfied.:thumbs up

I am sure the topic of 'Shutter count' might have been discussed somewhere in this thread, but due to the number of pages, its not easy to find a significant post related to this.

I was curious to know my D60 status as many comments are seen in different forums cautioning the new buyers about the refurbished body (used camera sold as new one) in the grey market. Now here is what I used and found. Does it sound normal ?

I bought my D60: 21st May 2009
Link used: Jeffrey's Exif viewer
Shutter count on a photo taken on 22nd May 2009 : 352
Shutter count as of today: 2616

Gurus, please put your views, it might help every new buyer in the market to avoid or to be more careful about grey market products.

Well, the term quite sturdy is relative. I have a Manfrotto (190DB + 486RC) which cost me 8.5K about 4 years back. Once Rudra used it for whole day with his 1Ds and 70-200 2.8 IS lens. Most of his shots had shakes despite the gentle breeze. There was nothing wrong with the tripod, it just wasn't sturdy enough for the equipment.

Sure, that's possible. I was just outlining my experience which wasn't too bad. My equipment being a humble Nikon D40x with 70-300mm Tamaron Tele-photo.

I suspect Vivitar to be too feeble for even Nikon D40x with 70-300mm. Light tripods are very susceptible to breeze.

Thats why I suggested 3662, the 6 feet heaviest vivitar.
The trick is not to extend it fully, but only to half its length(with just one section extended). It will be around 4 feet in height then, and good in breeze.
I use the model one stage below this one.
In breeze I do not extend it at all, therefore I get a tripod just 1.5 feet in height, but it suffices, and even in good breeze, it is sturdy. However, if I extend it, then it goes for a toss!

Once I had to extend it in breeze, and it was shakey. So I hung the camera bag(with lenses etc.,) on the hook provided below the center, and everything was good!

I have only used it once and found it a good superzoom lens. Had the chance to try it at few tennis matches and it was quite good. Yes there is a bit of distortion but then again its expected.

m4/3 benefit both from small flange distance and 2x crop factor and obvious ommision of viewfinder. But if nikon and canon make then smaller following m4/3 they are no longer DSLR, they are EVIL cameras.

By Cheap knock offs i meant bogen, victory, Goldphoto, BH, Benro, explorer, Amvona, etc. Bogen is part of Manfrotto but its cheaper, most of these have 1-2yr older designs with almost same finish. Some also pop up on ebay without names.


+1

Tripod is one of the most ignored piece of equipment. To be honest there is no point even buying some lightweight carbon Fibre tripod. Get a decent Manfrotto or a knock off and then add sand bags in the middle.

I do have 3-4 cheap crappy tripods but they are used for reflectors and i mean small reflectors. I found myself needing these to mount few polished mirrors for light bending.


D90 is not going anywhere anytime soon. To be honest i dont think the deal is that good. I would suggest get D90+twin kit lens. Other stuff, well DealExtreme: Cool Gadgets at the Right Price - Site-Wide Free Shipping (Page 1) will take care of ;)

Also the lenses are not good compared to Kit lenses and Wide angle and 2x TC are not worth $2. They will degrade image quality.

Cheers

Though I am a complete noob, the count of 352 on the second day of buying doesnt seem ok unless you shot these many photographs in 1 day.

Experts your inputs pls!

Thats exactly the reason I posted the matter here. But I dont know how accurate this exif data reading can be. I might have clicked maximum 50 until the photo used for data reading. Still we have 300+ in question. Another possibility is the test shots done by the shop keeper or the potential buyers in a span of few months while the body was kept for sale. I remember the shop guy had clicked more than 10 snaps infront of me to show different features. Gurus might be able to throw some light on this. please:

also the most missed part is switch between viewfinder to Live View and vice-versa, which adds to shutter count each, also switching between Info View and Live view as well. Even I was bit confused that just 10-11 snaps and my shutter count was 26. Just because I switched between LV and viewfinder alot

Though 300+ is still high

Shutter count for my cam stand 735 after some 600+ snaps

Oh toggling between live view and back adds to shutter count? In that case I'd not be using live view even if my camera has that feature, for the feel good factor of it :D

1 year plus few months and my shutter count stands at 8000 :(

Have you guys calculated how much percentage of the shutter count is your keeper shots? You'll become sad after calculating that. :)

Shutter is hardly significant these days. I have yet to see any non-pro hitting shutter life who bought the body brand new, bodies get sold way before that. Shutter count was significant earlier since at 1/4000 shutter speed, shutter blades experience more than 1000G force during starting and stopping. But shutter mechanisms have come a long way.

I got a D3 sitting here like a paper weight with shutter count less than 4000.

If one has to actually consider shutter count then they also need to consider live view mode, shutter speeds used, shutter speed at high burst, low burst and single shot modes. Reason being in single shot mode, shutter blades takes upto 4 times longer to travel compared to full burst mode even when shutter speed is set to 1/4000.

And 8000 is nothing, i knocked 10K in less than 3 months ;)

Easiest way to increase number of keepers is to make sure you are framing carefully and Dont think of cropping while shooting, make it a habbit and i guarantee %age of keepers will increase.

EDIT: What i mean by framing is, not just consider the subject in the middle, follow thirds rule and think of the corners.

Cheers

here goes (Ken Rockwell's Updates) entries under Jan 17.

quips like: "...DSLRs are about as relevant today as dial-up modems and SCSI-conected scanners; How many cameras and what lenses did I carry for a week of shooting? Just a Canon S90. I wasn't shooting anything that moved, so I'm not wasting my time hauling either of my two D40s.

there are some other posts also somewhere on his site where he derides dslr's as too complex and how compacts are better.

Basically, compose better pictures. :D