James. I concur with Duncan ( yelvertoft ) and postcardcv. A zoom lens that has a 35mm equivalent of 26mm to 520 mm is being asked to do an awful lot and is not going to be as sharp as a good prime DSLR lens. You need to fix the ISO within the range of 100 - 400 at most if you want sharp pictures and once you crop them any flaws are going to be magnified. If you want an expanding system then the Nikon D40, a Canon or Sony DSLR are the way to go.
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