Bobspez Loc: Southern NJ, USA

I started a few years ago with the Nikon D3100. There's a lot you can learn with your D3200 camera, especially when you start to shoot manual and set your own iso, aperture and shutter speed instead of letting the camera select it for you. My advice for a beginner is to go cheap until you have a reason to feel you need better equipment to do something your existing equipment can't do, be it a different body or different lenses. That can easily be a few years from now, at which time anything selling new now would be available at a big discount used, or new equipment would be better and more advanced at that time.

Unless you have a few thousand dollars to spare I suggest getting the following three lenses. I bought my Nikkor AFS-VR 55-300 lens used on ebay for $260. I bought my manual focus used film lens, the Micro-NIKKOR-P f3.5 55mm macro lens for $75 on ebay and the matching Nikon M2 2x extender for $25. The extender turns the 55mm macro lens into a 110mm macro lens with no loss of light as there is no lens in the extender. With macro you will want to focus manually anyway. For macro you need to carefully line up not only the focus but the plane of your lens to match the subject, as the depth of field is very thin. If not using a tripod, the easiest method is to get a rough focus with the lens, then move the camera to get the best overall picture in live view. Finally for wide angle you can get the Nikkor 18-55 zoom lens used for about $100 on ebay. Some will advise for full frame, but full frame isn't advantageous for wildlife, because your DX crop sensor will make the 300mm lens equivalent to a 450mm lens, so most people shooting wildlife without lenses that cost more than one or two thousand dollars, prefer the DX sensor for the extended reach.

I have bought all my lenses and dslr bodies on ebay from top rated sellers at discounts of 30% to 90% of what they cost when new. If the lens or camera is not as advertised, Paypal refunds your money. I bought one lens on ebay that was not as advertised, and Paypal refunded my money and shipping both ways within 10 days. (Best to deal directly with Paypal rather than with the seller if you should get a bad lens.) In the last 5 years or so I have bought 7 used cameras on ebay and 10 or so used lenses and were satisfied and still have all except the one lens I returned.