If the D7000 is out of your price range then it may be worth looking at the D90. That is an older model (nearly 3 years old now I think) but it is still a ‘current’ model in the range. As the OAP of the range it is now being sold at bargain prices. As of today it is listed body only on amazon for £550. http://www.camerapricebuster.co.uk/prod723.html gives the current best prices along with a history – a good site for researching camera prices. I’m not sure exactly what its capabilities are with old manual lenses, but it is in many ways the D7000′s predecessor and it certainly has the body focus motor for old lenses without focus motors. It doesn’t have the same high ISO capability of its newer siblings, but it is a very highly respected camera and could be worth investigating rather than waiting years to save up for the newer models.

Couldn’t agree more. Not only that, but as you’ve hinted at, without some decent lenses you typically won’t get anything that captures more than a tiny bit of the scene. I’ve tried using a cheapish digital camera to take pictures of the inside of my properties, but you just cannot get any sense of size as it just doesn’t have the wide angle needed to capture more than a small view of the room.

Personally I tend to snap away, but not so much on the basis that a few might turn out, more on the basis that I tend to shake the camera, or not quite get the framing right, and so I’ll snap several similar ones so I can select the best (and I *DO* delete a lot) later.

My “other camera’ is a completely manual FED4 – on the shelf and covered with a lot of dust. I recall that when I did use it, the subjects would usually have got bored before I’d finished setting it up !