During every sale season, lot of friends ping and ask for options to buy a DSLR for regular use. Lot of folks have started migrating to DSLRs from mobile or compact digital cameras. Few of them are also opting for mirrorless but still DSLR demand is huge. Most of these folks need a quality camera for clicking family photographs on special occasions or when travelling. Last week on of my closed friends sent a similar message on whatsapp.
He shared 2 options Nikon D3300 and D5500. Asked me which of them should be opted from these. The good part is that he shared 2 options so I got to know the budget he has in mind. That's always important to know because there is huge range of DSLR cameras. Both D3300 and D5500 are good entry level DSLRs. I had bought one D3300 for family some time back and had some idea about the difference between these 2 cameras. When comparing these 2 cameras, I suggested to go for D5500 mainly because of 39 focus points instead of 11 and 9 cross-points instead of 1.
After checking out more on pricing part, I came across Nikon D7000. One of my close friend owns this camera and it was upgrade for Nikon's popular D90. As of today D7000 is available for 39,500 Rs and D5500 is for 49,000 Rs. Which means one has to spend 1.25 times to buy D5500. When I compare both the cameras and consider that camera would be used for regular use, I find D7000 as more sensible choice. Most of the features are similar. It's 16 megapixel but that's more than enough and you certainly don't need 24 megapixel for home use. D5500 has edge over ISO, but the D7000 provides enough range and there would be rare need to go beyond it. If required, you would get more noise, which can easily be handled with softwares like Lightroom.
This is my strong recommendation to buy D7000 instead of D5500 if you don't have any specific use-case in mind. And same 10K should be spent on better optics. Choose better lens or extra lens which can be more helpful for you. I know that lot of popular websites rate D5500 above D7000, but what is the context and who is the user. What's the %age of use-cases D5500 is solving which D7000 is not and are those very critical use-cases for a person who is investing in DSLR for home use. All these are important questions to ask yourself before making a buy decision.
Please drop you specific queries in comments or you feel that it's a senseless suggestion. Look forward to hear your thoughts on this.
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