Help with lenses

[JB9903]

I recently won a Nikon D80 at a photography fair. I've used Minolta and Canon film SLRs in the past, but I've never owned a DSLR before (nor have I done much research into them or their components - I guess you could call me old school in that regard). I won the camera from a vendor who said I could trade it for another camera and pay the difference. However, I've only read great things about the D80. I guess I could pay a little more for the D200 (~$500) to get the metal body and the 5fps, but I'm not sure if it's worth it - although I'll use the camera for outdoor sports about 30% of the time. I also looked at the Canon XTi, but I have big hands and it was a little awkward holding it - some of the buttons seemed to get in my way. I'm looking for an all-around lens or multiple lenses to suit my needs. I hope I can get some great suggestions! From my browsing of the forums, it looks like there are plenty of knowledgeable people here.

Budget

~$1,200

Features

Image quality - 10

Do you care for manual controls? Either auto or manual focus will work for me.

General Usage

What will you generally use the camera for? In order: 1. Landscapes 2. Architecture 3. Outdoor sports (i.e. soccer, football, baseball) 4. Portraits

Will you be making big prints of your photos or not? Yes.

Will you be shooting a lot of indoor photos or low light photos? Maybe 20% of my photographs.

Will you be shooting sports and/or action photos? Yes.

Miscellaneous

Do you need any of the following special features? (Wide Angle, Image Stabilization, Weatherproof, Hotshoe, Rotating LCD) Image stabilization (since I don't always take my tripod with me) and wide angle (i.e. landscapes, architecture) would be a must. I don't know if I could get all of this in one lens to get the best photographs, but I don't mind hauling around multiple lenses to get the best shots.

[mcenut]

You might get better responses in the Nikon DSLR thread (http://www.dcresource.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=23)

The Nikon D80 is a good enough camera and the price was right.

[coldrain]

IS is most needed at longer focal lengths. Did the camera come with any lens?
Since your budget is limitted, I would suggest the Nikon 70-300 VR version. Earlier 70-300's from Nikon sucked quite a bit, but this one performs quite well on the whole, even at 300mm. And it gives you image stabilization, which in the tele end will come in very handy.

That will be about $500 from your budget.

Now I do not know how wide you want to go. The Tokina 12-24mm f4 will give you very nice image quality, very sturdy build quality, and will skim another $500 from your budget. The Sigma 10-20mm f4-5.6 is another option.

Keep in mind that you have to multiply the focal lengths with the 1.5x crop factor due to the smaller sensor size, than what you are used to with your 35mm film SLRs.

This will leave about $200. If you can stretch the budget a little, get a Sigma 18-50 f2.8 EX DC Macro, to fill in the standard zoom range. ($430 or so).

A nice lens with big max. aperture will be of course the Nikon 50mm f1.8.