Wednesday, Oct 15, 2003 at 16:41
Lyds,
I understand what you're saying but having gone through this exercise recently I'm at a loss to see any significant benefits. My reasoning, as an an avid photographer, is this. Personally, I find the "point and click" type camera's (such as the majority of under $500 digital camera's) frustrating because of their single focal length ability, except in a few situations and as a result I rarely ever use mine.
I like to be a able to zoom in and out, changes lenses to suit the shot, vary exposure time etc. My SLR has a built in flash, auto focus with manual overide and zoom lens with macro capability which covers me for 99% of all shots, particularly when coupled with 200 or 400 ISO film. I can't get this flexibility from a digital camera unless I'm prepared to spend at least $1500+. Then, in order to get hardcopy prints (which is my preferred viewing format) I have to pay around $5-8 each to a photo
shop. The alternative is to print them myself but to produce prints of a standard that I already get from my existing set-up I'd have to upgrade my colour printer (significantly), purchase photo quality paper and ink (all of which works out pretty expensive) and spend the time actually doing it. My gain for all of this expense and extra effort...I'd save a few $ here and there on the "dud" pics that you inevitably get from every roll of film. On the few occasions that I want to have my pics in digital format I either scan them myself or when high resolution scans are required, I can get 40 pics transferred from the film onto CD for $19.95 from my local Kodak
shop.
If my current needs/wants to have hardcopy prints over digital ever changes and the price of the digital "SLR equivalents" comes down significantly, then I'd look at it again but in the meantime I can't see what benefits changing over to digital at a minimum cost of $2000+ gets me. I'd rather spend the $ travelling!
:o) Melissa
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