Recommendation on lenses, please help!

[ookblah]

Hi all,

I'm new to this forum and have recently thought about purchasing a d50 (this will be my first dSLR). I have decided to not go with the kit lens, but I'm having trouble deciding on which lens. I have placed my upper limit budget to be ~400 dollars, so it won't be a "pro" lens by any means, but hopefully something significanly better than the kit.

I think I will mainly be shooting in indoor/semi-low light and outdoor. The lenses I were considering were the sigma 24-70 f/2.8 EX, tamron 28-75 f/2.8, or the 50mm f/1.8 (which will be much cheaper and better for the lighting, but I have to foot zoom=0).

I don't know much about lenses, but will the f/2.8 be good enough for indoor light? I have googled around and heard people say that it is the "minimum" for indoor and even then you need high ISOs (like 1600). In that case, it's hard for me to justify the cost if my picture would come out noisy and what not indoors. Also, I know I lose some range in the wide end, I don't know if you can take decent "wide" shots with 24-28mm...

Part of me would like to go with the 50mm as it is cheaper to start out with and learn, but I don't want to gimp myself. Any input would be most appreciated!

[coldrain]

Since the Nikon D50 is good with higher ISO settings (better than the rest of the Nikon lineup infact), you do not have to worry too much about if f2.8 is light enough. You can even get away with a Sigma 17-70mm f2.8-4.5. And that one WILL get wider than the two you propsed. Another option could be the 17-50mm f2.8 tamron, the 18-50mm f2.8 sigma or the yet to be introduced to market 16-50mm f2.8 Tokina.

What could be another option is for you to just go for the 18-55 kitlens (despite its cheap build it performs really rather well), and 2 primes: 50mm f1.8 for portrait stuff and such, and a nikor 35mm f2 for indoor stuff when the 50 (due to the 1.5x crop factor of the sensor) is not wide enough.

The two primes will be keepers, and the 18-55 kit is a nice lens to get to know your camera... and it will go wide enough for moderate wide angle shots when needed (it's also f3.5 at its wide angle, not too bad).

Then you can get to know your camera, and determine what lenses you want in future when you have some experience with it (maybe something wider, like a Sigma 10-20mm or a Tokina 12-24mm? or maybe that Tokina 16-50 f2.8 as replacement for the kit lens?).