Any camera 'experts' on the forum??

Greetings

Go here for a review Steve's Digicams D30 review.

Regards

Paul

Hi Sigman ! I use,amongst others,a Canon S-70,now I believe,to be replaced by the S-80..Great lens,compact,magic quality,pocket size(almost).Lens zooms out to eq of 28mm (35mm language) which is why I bought mine.Very accurate on auto.So grab S-70 if they still have any left,or the newer S-80..I have the large digi Cams also,but use this most of the time.Takes normal cards.You'll love it..Can do all the manual stuff if req.!MPG:6!

wolfie and laurie are the experts

Brand new DSLRs perform much better than previous models and are much cheaper - have at look at what you get for under $1000 in a Camera plus Lens package.

Keep in mind the disadvantages of Digital SLRs - you get no preview on an LCD screen that shows you what the exposure will be like.

Don't assume "it's an SLR - every picture a take will be much better than from a non-SLR" - non-SLRs produce excellent pictures. I do A3 prints from mine and no-one has ever commented about lack of quality.

For $750 you can get the top-of-the-range Fuji non-SLR S9500 with 10-1 zoom - you will be paying at least as much by the time you buy a lens etc. I think you will be much happier with this.

Mike

Start pricing lens'.... Anythign worth having is $700ish.

Having just started into this crap myself in last 12 mths, Ive spent about $3k + on lens' so far.
70-200 F2.8 Sigma (canon one is $2500+)
50mm Canon F1.8 (1.4 is $double)
105 macro Sigma
17-70 Wide angle
etc etc

The Camera you have been offered, google for reviews - also try forums where real world people are using them like www.pbase.com

Reviews:
www.dpreview.com
www.google.com

Yes with these Digital SLR's the people who buy them typically already have an investment in lenses suited to these cameras. Obviously if not you have to get started with a body and camera. No doubting both Canon and Nikon lead the market and both make very good cameras. The D30 is way old and wouldn't be good value given what is available now. Not to be confused with the 30D, a new model..?

Good camera if you can buy one cheap would be the Nikon D70 or D70s or the Canon EOS 350D and similar models. It really depends on how far you want to go.

Hey Signman,
The camera you mentioned would have a full auto mode, a full manual mode and a lot of other modes in between. This equals HEAPS of freedom! A good starting point for a lens would be something versatile like the equiv. of a 28mm-80mm lens. Down the track a bit try to grab a 75mm-300mm lens for some decent zoom and maybe a 50mm Macro to play with.

Downsides to this are the bulkyness of it all. If you're lugging all this gear around it can get a bit tedious if you have to change lenses often. Hehe! Solution - get a bigegr gear bag and a coupla bodies! Now you're talking! :-D

Looks like a good camera at a reasonable price - but check out the net for good deals on new cameras. You've already got a lil point and shoot if you don't want the bother of lugging the 30D around!

Cheers
Scoey!

signman,

I own a Canon Powershot S65. A good compact digital camera which takes good quality photos. One problem I have with this unit, is red-eye, when used with the flash at night. Yes, you can edit the digital photo to remove it but still a PITA at times.

I have recently bought a Canon EOS 350D SLR Camera and the difference is definitely noticeable. My justification for buying the 350D was that I could use the lenses from my Canon EOS 3000 35mm SLR, but in practice, I have never bothered. The lens I bought with the camera has exceptional wide angle to telephoto range and image stabilising technology to reduce blurred photographs.

The real beauty of SLR cameras, is in looking through the view finder, what you see is what you will get. There is no need whatsoever to view the image on the display screen, when framing, zooming and taking the picture.

I found even with the Powershot, I rarely used the screen to view the shot before I took it. It is just not natural to hold a camera at arms length to take a picture.
Look at people when they do this. They take "5 minutes" to complete a shot. Too Late Mate. The subject has changed, or gone altogether.

Another great feature of the SLR is the multi shot mode. As long as the shutter is held down, the camera will take a series of continuous photographs, at about 3 frames per second. You just delete the ones you don't want.

The SLR cameras have many features you may never use, but are still easy to use. You just set to auto mode and everything is done for you.

If you can afford the price of a digital SLR camera, you will not be disappointed.