i want a new camera and i cant decide what to get… my budget is around $650 MAX… i like hasselblad the 500CM to the 503CW and i would like on of those. i do choose i would buy it from ebay in parts meaning like body personal choice in lens and in the future a digital back from leaf or phase one.. i would like a nikon since canon, only models i like which is the t2i is too expensive.. so i would like a nikon… i like the D200 and the D300 but they are yet again to expensive.. others recommend the D3000 but i think thats too amateur especially since it has "guide mode" while the D5000 is a horrible model i have used and it has noisy images and the dropdown screen really is pointless… of course i want an SLR or of course a DSLR… if possible i WOULD definatly use a bronica because personally i love waist level viewfinders and i would love the camera to have one…. if its a nikon i prefer new but if its cheap i will take refurbished or in brand new working condition..thankis

Nikon D5000 12.3 MP DX Digital SLR Camera with 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6G VR Lens and 2.7-inch Vari-angle LCD
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00267S7TQ?tag=0891-20&camp=213381&creative=390973&linkCode=as4&creativeASIN=B00267S7TQ&adid=0W5D398350RXD19M2JXZ&

Review: I bought a D5000 locally ten days ago and exchanged it for another one three days ago.

The first thing I did was get out in the early morning light and take some landscape photos with the D5000 and my D40. Over the next few days I continued taking dozens of photos testing various settins on the D5000. I used my old 18-55mm non-VR zoom lens and the new 35mm f/1.8 lens.

Right away, it was obvious that the D5000’s image quality greatly exceeds the D40’s. First, megapixels DO matter if you want to look at your photos on a big monitor, and they add texture to the details of landscapes. Second, I don’t know what processing magic Nikon has rolled into the D5000, but it handles low light with more subtlety and predictability. Caveat: While Active D-Lighting is generally desirable, it may sacrifice contrast that you want to keep in strong lighting situations.

The one problem I have experienced is that many of the photos came with a strong yellow-ochre cast suggesting that the camera was pushing too much amber into the white balance. Green grass would turn chartreuse and blue skies would become pale. This occurred unpredictably, perhaps 75% of the time. The rest of the images would have what look to me like perfect colors–much better and more subtle than the D40, which is pretty good. (I am evaluating these photos on a calibrated color-accurate monitor.)

After fiddling with white balance settings, hue, WB bracketing, turning ADL on and off, etc., etc., I returned the first camera, only to find that the second one does the same thing. Yesterday, however, I stumbled across the fact that if you select "Direct Sunlight" WB instead of "Auto White Balance" (and you actually have sunlight) the problem goes away and the colors are perfect.

A little more research on the internet indicates that the unpredictable behavior of Auto White Balance is a well known problem on many digital cameras. Essentially the camera is trying to guess what lighting conditions apply, but most of the experts who came up in my search strongly recommended manually selecting and/or adjusting white balance. Now, I didn’t think that my D40 or the other cameras I owned had this problem, but maybe the other issues they did have were related. For instance, the D40 often put a faint blue cast into shadow areas that wasn’t there. A D60 that I briefly owned was worse in this regard.

Like the D40 before it, the D5000’s manual recommends Auto White Balance for most situations, but you may want to question that. This is a bit a disappointment, because the way Nikon has intelligently automated so many menu choices is part of the D5000’s excitement, but it seems that the Auto White Balance problem is common among DSLRs.