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Re: Digital Cameras
[This followup was posted to misc.transport.rail.americas and a copy was
sent to the cited author.]
In article <9mdo9skr6aqpj72jgsfugilsm9me4heda9@4ax.com>,
aprice@mail.dotcom.fr says...
> Can anyone advise me on a replacement for my excellent twenty year-old
> German single-lens reflex camera, which has become unusable because
> the battery it uses is no longer manufactured.
>
> I had thought of purchasing a digital camera, but I was told by
> someone who bought one about a year ago that although it sufficed for
> his web-site needs, the image quality was not brilliant.
>
> Have digital cameras improved since, or would it be better investing
> the same money in yet another SLR and a slide scanner?
I would probably recommend against a digital camera as your only camera
for several reasons. 1) a consumer digital camera under $10,000 (US)
cannot compete with a 35mm film camera in terms of print image quality.
2) digital cameras require computer support or lots of expensive excess
storage cards to take more than 100 or so images 3) the amount of
control and manipulation possible with 35mm SLR cameras is greater than
digital cameras although the gap is closing.
With that said, I think a digital camera as a second camera is a superb
idea, especially for experimenting and for web or computer images for
things like insurance purposes (for example, I can photograph my entire
model railroad collection and put the images in a database). I wouldn't
want to depend upon it for publication of photos in magazines and it's a
little harder to do slide shows of railfanning trips.
For the record, I'm not much of a 35mm photographer though I do own an
SLR. I do own a digital camera (Nikon Coolpix 950) and have learned to
do things I never bothered to try with a 35mm because of film and
developing costs on the latter. I still think an experienced
photographer would end up preferring a 35mm SLR over a digital for most
work.
--
______________________________________________
Dave Bott
http://southern-railway.railfan.net/
http://smrf.railfan.net/SMRF/