Responses

1. mahesh says:
   

   September 29th, 2003 at 9:36 pm (#)

   Dig­i­tal cam­era is Cool ‚but peo­ple still like to han­dle the pic­ture rather then see it on comp ‚so If You are in posi­tion to take prints of dig­i­tal pics Go ahead get Dig­i­tal cam­era Canon is My Brand …

   If You are Seri­ous Pho­tog­ra­pher SLR is goo thing to buy ‚but After I bought my dig­i­tal cam­era I have hardly used SLR (bulky car­ry­ing lenses),airport secu­rity blah blah

   any­ways need any help drop me email … more than happy to help

2. Jag says:
   

   September 29th, 2003 at 9:49 pm (#)

   £200 is the magic price point in the dig­i­tal mar­ket. Your bud­get is around £250 — and if I was going to spend this much on dig­i­tal I would look very closely at the Sony DSC P-72 or the Canon Pow­er­shot A70, or G5 — or even might stretch to the new A80 which is just above your budget.

   (The thing to remem­ber with dig­i­tal is that you need to fac­tor in the cost of batteries/rechargeables too — which if you haven’t got already — you may need to pur­chase as well)

   The good thing about dig­i­tal is no extra cost for film — and your out­put is ready to be used in Photoshop.

   How­ever: the down­side with dig­i­tal is not really about the qual­ity I don’t think — because in your price range you are look­ing at at least 3 megapixel — which is fine for web use and for print­ing on photo paper at nor­mal sizes (which you also have to pay extra for.) — the down­side of dig­i­tal in my view is the following:

   Dig­i­tal cam­eras are not “instant-on” — so after you’ve fum­bled around tak­ing it out of the pro­tec­tive faux leather case — and then switched the “on” but­ton — and then waited for it to bootup — and then selected the type of mode you want to shoot in (which may be sev­eral menu-selections deep) it may be quite a few sec­onds — by which time the action may have gone!

   So — if you are an “action” shooter — or don’t want to spend time wait­ing for a pic­ture to be taken — then you might find dig­i­tal off-putting.

   I, per­son­ally, use a crap sub-megapixel (4 year old) dig­i­tal for ran­dom pics for screen-only use at very small sizes — like the ones you see in my blog every now and then.

   How­ever, for my “qual­ity” pic­tures instead of using a >3Megapixel cam­era liek the ones I men­tioned above (which *will* take good qual­ity pics) — I use a “crap”, cheap 35mm film cam­era — why? Because it’s instant-on — and I can just throw it into my pocket which will get knocked about — and I really don’t mind if it gets dam­aged or bro­ken or stolen etc. The film cam­era I use is a Lomo LC-A — you can read all about my Lomo at: http://www.jag.me.uk/misc/lomo/ — and you can see some of my lomo pics at http://www.etongrove.com — but Lomo is really hyped up prod­uct — I paid 150 Euro for it — when it is prob­a­bly only worth less than 30 Euro — so if I had to offer any advice on Lomo: buy it second-hand — it should be easy to pick up at second-hand cam­era shops — as Rus­sia and ex-Soviet coun­tries are full of Lomo. I love my Lomo! How­ever — do bear in mind the cost of 35mm film — and the cost of pro­cess­ing — and the cost of the scan­ning equip­ment on top (if you don;t already have it). Also — scan­ning from prints is not as good as scan­ning from film — which is what I do. Why? because the shop that devel­ops your prints applies all sorts of “cor­rec­tion” to try to make the pic­tures come out good — when they might not come out to your taste.

   Any­way — I have run out of time — must go — bye.

3. Shyamal says:
   

   September 29th, 2003 at 10:31 pm (#)

   Ask your­self, What you will do with your pictures?

   I per­son­ally think, the “hard copy photo album” days are over. Peo­ple pre­fer putting pic­tures online. If this is true in your case, go for dig­i­tal. If you do want to pri­mar­ily use prints, go for film camera.

   True, film cam­eras take bet­ter pic­tures than com­pare­able dig­i­tal cam­eras. But can you or your friends tell the dif­fer­ence? And if you are going to scan your prints for online display/transport, you are going to any­ways com­pro­mise heav­ily on qual­ity! 3Megapixel digi­cams give excel­lent results.

   If you are start­ing to learn pho­tog­ra­phy, dig­i­tal is best for instant results and long term cost sav­ings. If you want to take pho­tog­ra­phy seri­ously and grad­u­ate to seri­ous pho­tog­ra­phy, get a SLR camera.

   What­ever you do, dont get a non-SLR film cam­era. Then you miss out on the best of both worlds. Cost may be a (help­ful) decid­ing fac­tor in choos­ing between a auto­matic dig­i­tal and a film SLR.

4. Sid says:
   

   September 29th, 2003 at 10:54 pm (#)

   Hokay… I’m an ama­teur pho­tog­ra­pher myself, and just bought a dig­i­tal cam­era for my folks and one for me. So I know what I’m talk­ing about.

   If you’re a pro-wannabe with digital-SLR ambi­tions, you need to ramp up the budget.

   If not, shut your eyes and buy the Canon Pow­er­shot A70. Its got every fea­ture you’ll pos­si­bly need, has great optics, is very user friendly, looks cool, and is bang in the mid­dle of your bud­get, leav­ing you with enough left over to stock up on acces­sories. Its even avail­able in India, legally, and within bud­get. Advice: buy an extra set of bat­ter­ies and a large CF card (256MB min).

   And do let me know what you finally buy.

5. Sid says:
   

   September 29th, 2003 at 11:02 pm (#)

   Btw, if you do decide to go the film-SLR route, be pre­pared to spend as much as you did on the cam­era on more lenses, etc. And ofcourse, quite a bit on film as well.

6. Amit "Netahoy" Agarwal says:
   

   September 30th, 2003 at 3:56 pm (#)

   no need to think much to decide on the type. Get Dig­i­tal. Gives u the both the hard­copy and the pos­si­bil­ity to archive. Don’t fall for Dig­i­tal Zoom at all.. its a mkt­ing gim­mick Check for high­est OPTICAL zoom u can get in the desired amt

   #2 Pre­fer a inbuilt flash

   #3 Bat­tery life is very VERY imp. Get a seper­ate charg­ing unite along with a seper­ate high capac­ity battery

   #4 Stor­age media too is imp and get an addi­tional mem­ory card pref between 64–256 mb (the higher the MP the larger the file size u wil get)

   #5 And don’t for­get the MP specs i.e. megapixel geta 2+ for good 6x4 print quality.

   #6 Choice of brands — Sony and Canon

   p.s. u have SLR cum dig­i­tal too in the mkt.. check them too for info sake!

7. Amit "Netahoy" Agarwal says:
   

   September 30th, 2003 at 3:58 pm (#)

   and yeah.. did I men­tion the print­ing cost is same as the std roll ones and at places even cheaper! :) Se that won’t keep u in dou­ble minds for much secs! ;)

8. Arun says:
   

   September 30th, 2003 at 6:50 pm (#)

   My kind of subject :)

   A digi is for:

   1. fun, time pass photography

   2. learner who does not really want to go far up the ladder

   3. eco­nom­ics. You pay more at the begin­ning but. So it depends on how much would you shoot

   4. portablity of pic­tures. Just shoot an email or upload to your webpage.

   5. Study­ing com­po­si­tions by exper­i­ment­ing. You must be super rich to do this in film­cam. I tend do test com­po­si­tions on a digi and then shoot on film SLR! :)

   6. Ease of operations

   7. For shoot­ing stuff that your stu­dio guy would not want to see!

   8. If you want to furi­ously go online with the pics. Get­ting scans from film com­pares well with hor­ror stories.

   9. Peo­ple photograhy(portrait photography).

   A film SLR for:

   1. Dead seri­ous pho­tog­ra­phy. If you want to match pros some­time in life

   2. Dead seri­ous learn­ing. You can only start with a digi but to get real hang of expo­sures, film SLR is the way.

   3, 4, 5. Qual­ity, qual­ity, qual­ity . The worst on film is bet­ter than the best on digi. They are get­ting bet­ter, but you’ll have to wait.

   6. Cost: cost of cam­era body. Costs only 25% of digi equivalent.

   7. Plan­ning to do any pub­lish­ing in print? A digi may not scale.

   8. If you want to cir­cu­late prints for peo­ple who are still liv­ing in the past.

   9. Guar­an­tee against get­ting obso­lete. Film SLR cam­eras have sat­u­rated. All improve­ments hap­pen only with lenses. So you can just get the new lens keep­ing the same old cam. Dig­i­tal? Next year you’ll see a new cam twice bet­ter at half price.

   For me, a film SLR is a nat­ural choice over digi. A digi serves me only as a sec­ond fiddle.

   If you are buy­ing digi:

   Canon is good at the SLR space but I dunno at the lower end. They say Canon and Fuji are bet­ter than Nikon in gen­eral. Bet­ter to go for some­thing that is 4 megapixel and more. At least you can get 12x8 prints on that.

   film SLR:

   The cheap­est, fea­ture rich and pretty good pro­sumer SLR is Canon EOS 300. Should cost exactly in your budget(15 to 20K in India, $220–250 in US). It was a rage when it was launched(3–4 yrs back) and still is. As you go up Nikon rules the mar­kets. But low end Nikon SLRs(N55, N65) are noth­ing great and lack fea­tures. Best basic Nikon is N75 which has almost same fea­ture list as EOS300 and costs like $350.

   More:

   1. I shall be at your ser­vice for any queries.

   2. photo.net may help to some extent.

9. britt says:
   

   October 2nd, 2003 at 12:42 am (#)

   i’m going to get a dig­i­tal today hope­fully, you can usu­ally find good deals if you keep a watch out, this one is $200.00 (i hate to say it, but for once in my life i actu­ally said “two hun­dred dol­lars is CHEAP”)

   if you have a scan­ner, go ahead and get a reg cam­era, but with dig­i­tals, you can forgo the scan­ner (which is great for me, cause mine just broke ;) )

   and don’t for­get to research, read reviews, etc, some­times the cheapo cams have some major short­com­ings. :) good luck!

10. aby says:
    

    October 2nd, 2003 at 4:26 pm (#)

    Go digi. Have fun, and do the stuff that you dont want the stu­dio guy to see.

    You will regret if you buy a film thing. You will not regret if you buy a good digi thing. trust me, with­out going into round and round argu­ments, tho some of the guys above have made really good points. Just one thing, don’t get too blown by the “pro-quality” shoot­ing with SLr bit. It’s like aim­ing for the star and he moon and the sky. Most will never get thr, unless ur a great hobby-ist. Like learn­ing the gui­tar, or mebbe tougher. every­one would like to do it, but very few do.

11. anupriyo says:
    

    October 3rd, 2003 at 3:10 am (#)

    I’ve got a Canon Pow­er­shot S40. It’s 4 megapix­els and I’ve got great results with it. It fits into my pocket and for me that is a big advan­tage since when­ever I think of tak­ing a pic­ture my cam­era is always around.

    Don’t go below a 3.2 megapixel.

    How­ever, if I bought one today, I’d buy one even smaller. Some­thing like the Minolta Dim­age Xt, the Sony DSCP32 or the Canon Pow­er­shot S230.

12. anupriyo says:
    

    October 3rd, 2003 at 3:14 am (#)

    BTW. dbre­view has great reviews.

13. Kewl Blogger says:
    

    October 3rd, 2003 at 4:34 pm (#)

    Hi Anita,

    Please take a look at http://kewlblogger.rediffblogs.com/

    and see if you can spread the word around. Dont want peo­ple to get conned.

    Thanx

14. Quizman says:
    

    October 4th, 2003 at 3:21 am (#)

    You have to remem­ber that tra­di­tional film cam­eras have a three part tar­iff scheme. You pay money for the cam­era, the film and the pro­cess­ing. You have to add up the three costs while com­par­ing it with a dig­i­tal cam­era. In other words, do not com­pare the costs of the two cam­era types alone. In the long run, imho, Dig­i­tal cam­eras are cheaper.

15. Matrix says:
    

    October 4th, 2003 at 7:55 am (#)

    Hey,

    Sim­ple and sweet, after these long (though use­ful) com­ments: go for a film cam­era. Much bet­ter con­trol and also hard copy snaps great feel­ing than watchin them on screen. U can always scan them later ;). Have fun!!

16. Anita says:
    

    October 4th, 2003 at 12:37 pm (#)

    Mahesh: I wouldn’t call myself a seri­ous pho­tog­ra­pher, but I would like to pick some basics. I have been think­ing of tak­ing up a short time course to brush up on the fundamentals.

    Thanks Jag! That is a lot of information :)

    Shya­mal: Thanks for the advice. I like the pic­tures you take. I’d like to put up my pic­tures online. But I still have a soft cor­ner for actual hard copy photographs :)

    Sid, thanks. Will keep the Canon Pow­er­shot in my list.

    Thanks Amit!

    Arun: I must men­tion that I love some of the pic­tures that you’ve taken on your site. What sort of cam­era do you use? And thanks for all the infor­ma­tion too.

    Thanks for the advice, Britt!

    Anupriyo: Sid’s men­tioned the Canon Pow­er­shot A70. Would there be a big dif­fer­ence? All these As and Bs tend to con­fuse me. Will check out dbreview.com

    Matrix: Thanks! As I men­tioned before, I do like the feel of brows­ing through pho­to­graph albums. It’s not quite the same thing brows­ing through an online album!

17. megan says:
    

    October 5th, 2003 at 3:46 pm (#)

    well what can i say after all those expert com­ments but igno­ra­mus moi would go for a dig­i­tal cam­era. Cheers!!

18. Ridhish says:
    

    October 7th, 2003 at 11:44 am (#)

    Anita, I use the Sony Cyber­Shot Digi Cam, does the job for me, Infact i might add, its pretty awe­some, its got a night vision, which is sim­ple out of this world…:).

19. Neil says:
    

    October 7th, 2003 at 6:41 pm (#)

    I need an answer to that exact prob­lem myself! :( I have been break­ing my head on it for quite some time.. The only prob­lem is that I keep think­ing and some­thing turns up that just wipes out my bank bal­ance and I start sav­ing all over again, until I reach the moment when I go back to the choice :P

    btw.. I read ur red­iff diary post­ings.. lovely read those! ciao

20. Anthony says:
    

    October 10th, 2003 at 4:49 pm (#)

    Hey Anita A Sony Cyber­Shot Digi Cam is a good one.. i have used it.. The fea­tures are faboulous and will come to the neigh­bour­hood of your bud­get.. and no has­sles of going to the foto­fast out­lets.. It gives good enough pictures..even bet­ter than any good SLR if you are not a pro..or even an ama­teur.. i have a Canon and yet My fren’s Sony gives a sim­i­lar pic any­day as I am not even an Amateur.…

21. BT says:
    

    October 13th, 2003 at 7:03 pm (#)

    If it is not pro­fes­sional pho­tog­ra­phy, I vote dig­i­tal camera.

    1. U can shoot 10 pic of the same scene and choose the one you like the best.

    2. Eas­ier to send it to peo­ple around the globe

    3. Easy stor­age on a cd — I have boxes and boxes of prints I dont know what to do with.

    Just make sure you buy some extra mem­ory and go for a decent pixel rating.

    I have a kodak and it even records small movies with sound… I find it the best value for the GBP200 I spent on it.

22. business grants says:
    

    May 20th, 2004 at 12:42 am (#)

    I have always looked for a pos­si­bil­ity to find infor­ma­tion as quick as I can. Now there is the inter­net. And I really appre­ci­ate peo­ple like you who take their chance in such an excel­lent way to give an impres­sion on cer­tain top­ics. Thanks for hav­ing me here.

    busi­ness grants

23. ram says:
    

    March 22nd, 2006 at 3:29 pm (#)

    Hi
    I am plan­ning to get a SLR film cam­era. first instru­ment i am buy­ing. want to start with a stan­dard (FM series maybe) and then much later upgrade. main idea is cause i am inter­ested in pho­tog­ra­phy and so plan­ing to indulge in it. please advise. and no, i am no going in for a dig­i­tal. strictly analog

    thanks

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