Looking for a new Digital camera
 

Tom Pfeiffer wrote:

Isn't it hard to breathe with your head down in that sand dune?

"Terje A. Bergesen" wrote in message
om...

If you want to get into, ie. learn and develop your photographic
skills, digital is not the way to go.

Why not? A camera with a manual mode, and an aperture priority
and shutter priority modes would be good.

Buy a decent used 35mm SLR
camera with a couple of good lenses and go to a photography
course. There is currently no single digital camera at *any* price
that can match pictures taken on such a camera.

I disagree. If one has a large enough budget, they can get a 14
megapixel digital slr, which would probably give results better
than most 35mm films, especially when needs to shoot at 400 ISO
or higher. For those with a more modest budget, a digital camera
will probably be much cheaper than a film camera for those who
take many photos once the cost of film and processing is factored
in for the film camera. The immediare results of the digital camera also
help people fine tune their photo taking skills.

Some people will
disagree, they are wrong.

A digital camera *can* shorten the learning curve for composition and
lighting substantially by reducing the time-to-feedback. It can also reduce
the cost of the education. Just because you didn't learn that way doesn't
mean someone else can't.

Most people also don't want to bother carrying a pad and paper and recording
all the exposure information for each shot.



For *most* amateurs, there is not a significant difference in quality
between the output of current digital SLRs and film cameras, because they
are not shooting and scanning slides, they're shooting and printing color
negatives.

Slides are much less forgiving as far as mistakes in exposure than negative
film.


You may believe that those 'chromes make your images "better"

Properly exposed Velvia slides can be great, but one often needs to bracket
quite a bit and use a heavy tripod to get great results from Velvia. All that
film and developing is expensive.


than digital ones, but the majority of mainstream photographers doesn't
(IMHO).

Tom P.

Good digital is at least as good as 35mm. I do both. Superb digital is
practically as good as 6x6 (Canon 1ds) but unless you are going to make it
pay, it's not worth it.
I find that I take better shots with film, as being aware of what it costs,
I just am more careful, and using 6x7, which I also do, I almost never shoot
a dud. I know it's psychology, but it's true.