Anyone want to talk me into switching to Digital

[HaleyB]

My camera is kinda of big, and developing the film costs me a fourtune, but I can't seem to make the digital leap of faith. I am worried about image quality (I use a SLR now) and the cost of making prints. I also have no idea how to judge a digital camera... which one has the best optics? ease of use? what features should I look for?
Help....

 

[sissybells]

I have a digital camera and it may not be a great one but I only got it to use for EBAY mainly. As for taking regular family pictures with it I don't anymore. I find it very irritating to have to download them to my computer then upload them somewhere else. I also don't think the quality of printing them out is very good either. But like I said I don't have a great camera. My husband actually just got me a new 35mm for Valentines day that is smaller than the one I have now and I love it. I also like that I can just drop off my film and have my pictures in a few days to put into an album for people to see rather than dragging them into my computer room to show them on the monitor. I also don't think it would be worth it to have a device to print your digital pictures out because after you pay the money for the certain kind of paper and the ink to print them out I don't think that would be a good deal either. Of the pictures I have taken with my digital camera, I have never brought any of them up on my computer to show anyone. Personally I think if it's not for EBAY it's a waste.

 

[Megan's Mom]

I was a film person until Christmas. My DH bought me a digital camera and I was unsure at first. I have been playing around with it and I think I might be sold. He also bought me a memory card so I can take like 250 pictures at a high resolution. We have found that the best and cheapest place locally to develope them to be Sam's. They cost $0.17 a piece. The great thing if there is a picture that didn't turn out well you can delete it and retake the picture. Better to find out then than when the picture come back. Also you can crop and take red eye out of the pictures. I have been pleased with the quality of the pictures we have taken so far.

 

[RescueRanger]

We bought a digital camera back in 2002. It is a Sony with a 4.2 megapixel resolution. I use digital cameras at my job (I work in law enforcement) and I find that the newer digital cameras take pretty good pictures. My wife would take 12-15 rolls of film for our WDW trips when we had our 35mm camera. That is alot of money for film and developing. Alot of the pictures she took were duplicates because she wanted to make sure she got a certain shot if one of them didn't turn out. Now with digital, she knows immediately if the shot came out like she wanted. Our last trip to WDW she took almost 400 pictures. She will have the ones that she wants to scrapbook with printed out while the others are stored on CDs. If you have a laptop, digital photography is even more handy. We would download our pictures every night back at the resort and we could watch a slideshow of our day. If you decide to buy be sure to get at least one with a 4 megapixel rating. If money isn't an issue, they have Digital SLRs now. I think the Canon EOS Digital Rebel is about a $1000. Hope this helps.

 

[macs4us]

I have had my Nikon for a few years now, and I love it. On our last trip to Yellowstone, I took 1000 pictures. My camera takes black and white as well as color, so it is nice to switch back and forth without having to have more than one camera or wait until you can switch rolls out. It also has special lenses, but now you can buy ones that work with some "standard" lenses. I use Macs, so I don't mind uploading my pics (very easy and fast). When I want to get my pics printed, I either upload to a site and have them sent, or burn to CD and take them in to crop myself. Most of my photography is landscape, so the cropping thing is an issue for me - best results are floating on an 8x10 and cutting by hand. With other pics, it's no big deal.

Check out http://www.digitalcamera-hq.com/ to see what is coming out. There are quite a few cameras coming out with 8 megapixels.

 

[GAIL HAYDEN]

The pictures in my signature are all digitals.
I swear by it. No more buying film, taking it to be processed, worry about scanners at the airport, toting it around, etc.
Very easy. We upload them to our computer, burn a CD of what we want, I take them to WalMart, they print them for .26 each.
When I take them there, I have already done any corrections, so, all they have to do is print them. I also print them on my color laser here at home, but, I still cannot find laser photo paper. Ah, something to search for today. LOL.
Canon and Nikon have come out with SLR digital cameras that will accept the lenses from film SLR cameras, you might want to look at those.
I have two Nikons, one Coolpix 950 (2.11 mp) and one Coolpix 5000 (5 mp). Both are of very good quality when the photos are enlarged to 10x14, of course, the more mega pixels the better the enlargement.

 

[Gadget Girl]

I agree with RescueRanger (nice name, by the way, and I see you are from Texas, too...maybe we could hook up ) that being able to see your pictures as soon as you take them is a big plus! I'm still having some trouble figuring out how to work all the gadgets on it, though (no pun intended)!

 

[Muushka]

My honest oninion? Here it is. I have an old (1972!) SLR that is totally manual. I mean everything. Takes great pictures, but is heavy and large. 3 years ago we finally broke down and got a digital camera. I thought I would never get used to it. I felt like I had no control over it-until I started to fool with it. My digital has many manual over-rides. And over-ride them I do! It takes a little more time, but the pictures are worth it. I like to take evening/night shots without a flash. My digital does great. And the best thing about it is that I can tell right away if it did good or not. With my film I had to wait to find out, and then the chance to get it would be gone.

My dream? To get the digital SLR. In my opinion it would be the best of both worlds. I would be sure to get one with as as many manual over-rides as possible. We don't print large pictures, so 5 megapixel is enough for us. Maybe next year!

Here are some of my digitals:home page

 

[battricia]

I have a sony mavica cd 500. It IS a little on the large side. but here's the great part about it. It burns pictures on a mini CD, which means it can burn about 85 pics at best quality (5mega pixel), and then the pictures STAY on the cd forever. I bought 100 discs for 30 dollars at amazon.com. That's probably my favorite feature of the camera. Most digital cameras have some sort of memory card, that can hold a certain amount, and then you either have to empty it or have another card. These cards can cost from 20 to 300 dollars, depending on how much memory you want.

As for print outs, I get my pictures printed @ snapfish. The cost is about 24cts per print, but you can pre pay and then I think they cost about 19cts per print which is still a bit cheaper than getting film printed out. The prints come out perfect, you can't tell they're digital at all. And the thing that's great about this is that they actually print your picture on photo paper, the same exact paper you would get your regular film developed on. The image is projected onto the paper and the paper is processed and developed like normal, so it's not coming from a printer. HOWEVER, if you wanted to just print out a picture on YOUR printer, it would still come out excellent, because the image is great quality.

and finally I'll post some pictures that I've taken with my camera. I hope that's ok.

tricia.

 

[CarolA]

I have a Canon SLR and a Sony Digital
I JUST this weekend upgraded to the Canon SLR digital. I will be honest... It costs a fortune. However, it takes my lenses and has all the features I am used to.

However, I am going on a two week trip to Europe with my Mom this year and a three week trip with the Girl Scouts next year. I average one roll of film per day.... Do the math... LOL.

I would caution you. I got Photoshop Elements 2.0 thinking I could burn the photos to CD and mail the CDs to my family.... That was NOT a good move. Now the photos are in there and I seem to have NO way to burn them to a photo CD. I can do great video CDs however!!! I am investigating other options. (My life is a little more confusion since I have an external CD recorded that Micorsoft wants to ignore! LOL!)

 

[GAIL HAYDEN]

Originally posted by battricia
I have a sony mavica cd 500. It IS a little on the large side. but here's the great part about it. It burns pictures on a mini CD, which means it can burn about 85 pics at best quality (5mega pixel), and then the pictures STAY on the cd forever. I bought 100 discs for 30 dollars at amazon.com. That's probably my favorite feature of the camera. Most digital cameras have some sort of memory card, that can hold a certain amount, and then you either have to empty it or have another card. These cards can cost from 20 to 300 dollars, depending on how much memory you want.

As for print outs, I get my pictures printed @ snapfish. The cost is about 24cts per print, but you can pre pay and then I think they cost about 19cts per print which is still a bit cheaper than getting film printed out. The prints come out perfect, you can't tell they're digital at all. And the thing that's great about this is that they actually print your picture on photo paper, the same exact paper you would get your regular film developed on. The image is projected onto the paper and the paper is processed and developed like normal, so it's not coming from a printer. HOWEVER, if you wanted to just print out a picture on YOUR printer, it would still come out excellent, because the image is great quality.

and finally I'll post some pictures that I've taken with my camera. I hope that's ok.

tricia.

Any photo processing lab can put your pictures onto photo paper, and it is printed via a printer, just like the negatives from film cameras. This is nothing new.
As to extra memory, must be some fancy card for 300.00 A 516 mb card is running about 169.99 at my source. A 16 mb card is 12.99.
Frankly, I like to pick and choose before I burn it to a non rewritable CD. With a memory card you have that option:with your camera you are paying 3.33 per cd, there are there, and who really wants to walk around with a bunch of mini cds? I can fit at least ten in the space it takes for 3 of your cds.

Having said that, your pictures are very nice, and of the same quality I get from my Nikon coolpix 5000 (5mb all the time).
To each his/her own and whatever you are comforatble with, I am thrilled for you.

I also print them at home with our color laser printer, after doing my corrections (if any), cropping and image erasing with Microsoft's Digital Image Suite 9 (great program, I love the smart erase feature).

 

[HaleyB]

Thanks everyone. It is good to hear there are digital cameras w/ manual over rides. That was one of my concerns. I wish Nickon would hurry up and get a consumer slr on the market... since I have nikon lenses I don't want to switch to the canon (also don't care for the Rebel because it lacks depth of field preview).
I think I may buy a point and shoot digital in the mean time, I always carry a back up when I use a film camera, and I guess digital is the same.

 

[battricia]

Originally posted by GAIL HAYDEN
Any photo processing lab can put your pictures onto photo paper, and it is printed via a printer, just like the negatives from film cameras. This is nothing new.
As to extra memory, must be some fancy card for 300.00 A 516 mb card is running about 169.99 at my source. A 16 mb card is 12.99.
Frankly, I like to pick and choose before I burn it to a non rewritable CD. With a memory card you have that option:with your camera you are paying 3.33 per cd, there are there, and who really wants to walk around with a bunch of mini cds? I can fit at least ten in the space it takes for 3 of your cds.

I wasn't saying the technology was brand new, and that you can't get the service other places. The OP wanted to know about digital imaging, so i offered my 2 cts. And now for arguments sake, since it seems that's what you want; for your $169.99 you got a whole 516 MB. I got 21,000 MB for $30. (and by the way, that's only 30cts per cd). On top of that, the cds are only about 3 inches across which means they're not much bigger than a credit card. You can easily stack the discs one on top of the other. When I'm going out (when i went to disney for instance), I'd pack 3 or 4 discs in a small ziplock bag, and throw it in my bag. This took up a whole 3"x3"x1/3rd" in the bag (and that holds 840mb, which cost me $1.20). Infact I stored the discs in the small zipper pouch that is usually put in purses for change, and I carried a relatively small bag along with me.

tricia.

 

[GAIL HAYDEN]

Originally posted by battricia
I wasn't saying the technology was brand new, and that you can't get the service other places. The OP wanted to know about digital imaging, so i offered my 2 cts. And now for arguments sake, since it seems that's what you want; for your $169.99 you got a whole 516 MB. I got 21,000 MB for $30. (and by the way, that's only 30cts per cd). On top of that, the cds are only about 3 inches across which means they're not much bigger than a credit card. You can easily stack the discs one on top of the other. When I'm going out (when i went to disney for instance), I'd pack 3 or 4 discs in a small ziplock bag, and throw it in my bag. This took up a whole 3"x3"x1/3rd" in the bag (and that holds 840mb, which cost me $1.20). Infact I stored the discs in the small zipper pouch that is usually put in purses for change, and I carried a relatively small bag along with me.

tricia.

No, I don't want an arguement at all, I was pointing out the differences. The difference between your 21000 mb and my 156 is that I can reuse mine, can you? And, I do apologise for my math error.
As I said, your pictures are lovely and you seem to love your camera and really, that is all that matters.
As to the printing of images. It is actually done on a big printer, nothing fancy (except we cannot get them). This is what I used to do for a living. I was something I loved to do, miss it, but cannot deal with the public (it drives me batty).

 

[GAIL HAYDEN]

Originally posted by HaleyB
Thanks everyone. It is good to hear there are digital cameras w/ manual over rides. That was one of my concerns. I wish Nickon would hurry up and get a consumer slr on the market... since I have nikon lenses I don't want to switch to the canon (also don't care for the Rebel because it lacks depth of field preview).
I think I may buy a point and shoot digital in the mean time, I always carry a back up when I use a film camera, and I guess digital is the same.

It's out there. http://www.nikonusa.com/template.php?cat=1&grp=2 Nikon D100. or the soon to be marketed D70.

 

[LADDER286]

OLYMPUS,OLYMPUS,OLYMPUS

I guess because I work there. I work in the repair dept and a majority of the repairs are for the cameras that are dropped or abused I rarely see a manufacturing problem.

 

[GAIL HAYDEN]

Originally posted by LADDER286
OLYMPUS,OLYMPUS,OLYMPUS

I guess because I work there. I work in the repair dept and a majority of the repairs are for the cameras that are dropped or abused I rarely see a manufacturing problem.

I love the Stylus Digital, great little point and shoot camera.

I cannot complain about my Nikons however, only one little problem which was fixed in no time.
Bet you see a lot of Kodaks and HPs, right?