new to this site

[WCpilot]

Hello all. First off, I'm new to this site, so hello to you. Photography is a hobby for me, I unfortunately don't have any room in my class load to even fit an intro photography class. I've been shooting with a Canon A310 for several years and have loved it, but I'm currently going crazy with the limitations of this point and shoot. So I've decided to step it up and get a Nikon D50. It seems like the best choice for quality and not hurting my college student budget too badly. I'm a pilot and would like to eventually get a powerful enough telephoto setup to do some good plane spotting. I'm also very interested in nature photography, and shooting around town (especially at night). I've been doing a lot of reading on line and think I have figured out a decent setup to start working towards. So here it is. Please comment on any aspect of this as I basically know nothing and will probably need help. So I will start out with the D50 and stock 18-55mm lens, obviously also with a nice SD card and case. Then I was hoping to match that with the 55-200mm nikkor lens, followed by the 70-300mm ED nikkor, and the TC-201 2x teleconverter so that I have up to 600mm capabilities. Each of these purchases would be several months apart and hopefully give me time to become relatively proficient with each step up. With the ultimate goal of being nicely setup for the airshow season next summer as well as all the normal shooting I do. What advice can you all offer on these ideas? And also, what else would you suggest as far as necessities for starting off. I have a basic understanding of most of the concepts at work, but I'm sure I know basically nothing about doing all of this in a practical setting. Any help is greatly appreciated, and sorry for the short novel of a post.

[another view]

Hi and welcome - the 70-300 ED is a nice lens (I'm assuming you have noticed that there is an ED and a non-ED version of this lens) and it could be very handy for you. The thing is, it's f5.6 maximum aperture at the 300mm end of the zoom range. With a 2x converter, that becomes 600mm, but at f11. This means you won't have autofocus anymore and will have to use a fairly high ISO even in bright sun to get a reasonable shutter speed. I'd skip the 55-200 and go to the 70-300 instead of it. Having a gap from 55-70 isn't really that big of a deal IMO.

Check out Nikon School's Digital 101 or 201 and see if they're coming to your area. You'll learn a lot!

[WCpilot]

thanks for that advice! It is the end of this 'school' session for Nikon, so I'll need to wait for the next round, but I will definetly try to check it out. thanks again.