Barry Bean writes:

I posted recently asking for suggestions for a first digital camera. After
researching the issue, I'm looking ay:

Olympus E1
Canon 20D
Nikon D70
Nikon D100

My budget is $2000 for body, basic zoom to cover range from wide to short
telephoto, and adequate memory for 50-100 shots at max resolution.

The one caveat is that I have a very thorough Olympus manual focus lens
collection, and either the Olympus or Canon would allow me to use many of
my existing lenses.

Evidently with the E1, if you call up Olympus they will send you an adaptor for
your OM lenses. I haven't done this yet, but others have. You need to use
them in stop down metering mode, and manual focus, but that presumably isn't a
problem for you. Do remember that on the E1, the focal range doubles (ie, a
50mm lens gives the same field of view on the E1 as a 100mm lens would on a
film camera).

Assuming by "max resolution" you mean RAW mode, you will need roughly 1.5
gigabytes of compact flash (figure about $100/gigabyte for the fast memory), as
I can get 34 shots of RAW+JPG on one of my 512MB cards. If you were to shoot
JPG at the least compression, a single 512MB card will hold roughly 128
pictures.

I bought my E1 for roughly $2k at the local shop (E1, 14-54mm lens, 2 512MB
Sandisk Extremem CF cards, 67mm multicoated UV filter), and I suspect you could
probably do better than that if you searched around for a good reputible
internet dealer.

--
Michael Meissner
email:
http://www.the-meissners.org