I want to say
cheapest and best 35mm autofocus SLR, but my knowledgeable friends would no doubt descend and tear me apart like a Thanksgiving turkey on prom night. So let's say best "cheapest : best ratio"- the most camera you can get for the least amount of money. What I use is a 1990's
Nikon N90S with a
28-85mm f3.5-4.5 AF zoom lens (as you may be aware, an SLR is a component camera- you need to purchase a body and a lens seperately). It's bulky and noisy, with questionable styling, and it takes gorgeous pictures. Though it was eclipsed by the F100 and is utterly out of favor now, in the '90's you would've seen a whole lot of pictures taken with an N90S if you looked at a little magazine I call National Geographic. The lens is an utter pig, and ancient- manufactured from 1986-99- but also happens to remain one of the best Nikon lenses of its class.
My reasons for choosing Nikon over the other brands were mainly: 1)
their metering system, which makes getting an excellent exposure nearly idiot-proof- it's much smarter than most photographers. And 2) their lenses- with digital things have changed somewhat, but basically every Nikon lens works on every Nikon camera ever made. People also say they're the best lenses in the world, so there's that. Nikon is by no means
the only option- Canon is reputed to have better autofocus, for example.
