Totally OT - cameral advice

You've had lots of suggestions. You might also try asking on newsgroup rec.photo.digital.zlr

You can check out Canadian prices at

Since the pound is currently $2.26, dividing the pre-tax Canadian dollar price by 2 gives the approximate after-tax equivalent in pounds.

I believe you can reclaim the 6% GST on leaving the country.

wrote

Thank you for that. It is the answer I half expected.

I can't bring myself to part with them for peanuts, but I doubt if they will ever be used again.

Another David W.

Whatever else you do, take an old camera as spare on your holiday, just in case your battery runs out, or you fill the memory card at a crucial moment. It is a long way back to Canada to repeat a "missed" photo.

Bevan

I have had the Panasonic FZ30 (8.2 MP) for over a year, and it's great... in USofA it goes for about $500 (in the upgraded 10MP 1600 ASA equiv.)

David Digital SLRs are good, but I would be paranoid about interchanging lenses as dust is a major issue

Dixons seem to have them in stock for £380.00

"Ken Ward" wrote

Be warned though, the 18-55mm lens which is supplied with the 350D can at best be described as 'no better than adequate'.

John.

From experience its certainly adequate if not much more, its a very servicable lens, just not as good as some of the add on lens out there for the camera.

Have a look in the alt.binaries.pictures.rail newsgroup at the rail pictures people are actually taking. If you see some pictures you like the look of, you can then see what cameras they are using to do so by looking at the EXIF information. (Many use Canon dSLR's, but there are also Nikons, Pentaxes, Minoltas and a wide range of compact cameras.)

You could also ask the photographers there for their advice and experiences.

(Plus, if you have any pictures of your own, feel free to submit them to the group as well. New posters are always welcome, and there is a FAQ for the group at:

I have one of these and am very happy with it. As well as the two 'kit' lenses (the 18-70 is good for a kit lens, the 75-300 is excellent for its price if not particularly fast) I've got a lovely Minolta

The anti-shake is good, but not as dramatically effective as it was on my Lumix FZ-10, where it was built into the lens directly. Then again, on the alpha it works on every lens ;)

A nice comfortable camera to use, if you leave it automatic it'll give you nice results and as you learn to drive it properly you'll start to feel it working with you to get excellent results. The 'look and feel' is virtually pure Minolta, so any experience you might have of their cameras will transfer across.

pete

Shop around and you can find generic canon batteries for very cheap prices. Get em from a reputable site though. The chargers are also becoming more common.

PRAR

DERWENT Re: Totally OT - cameral advice Tue, 10 Apr 2007 20:27:32 +0100, "John Turner"

Paperweight, is perhaps a better term. I recomend spending at least twice as much on the lens as you would the body. As usual internet shopping is best.

PRAR

DERWENT Re: Totally OT - cameral advice Tue, 10 Apr 2007 16:23:03 +0100, "David Westerman"

No, with one exception for a very esoteric lens which Canon produced a bespoke adaptor for.

PRAR

"Jane Sullivan" wrote

The trouble though Jane is it's something like five year old technology and things have moved on significantly in that time. If I was going to settle for a 300D then I think I'd look around for a good used example, and suspect they're out there for around the GBP100 mark. Certainly the D30 I bought at around the same time that the 300D was released, is selling on the secondhand market for around 10% of its original GBP2,000 mark.

John.

Thats Ebay for you , The 30D sells at £680 new and £50 cash back of that too

i have the fz50 which is the one that has superceded the fz30 and it's great. one thing you havent mentioned is that unlike SLRs the fz50 or 30 both have live view on their lcds. the camera lag is much less on the fz50 apparently, i've found it's almost instant, i see from DPReview they say the shutter lag is about 0.2 seconds and thats with auto focus. put on manual and it's quicker. you can get a wider angle easily by the way by getting a screw on lens... i use one, i dont even screw it on, just hold it infront as it has a larger thread :) they cost about 50 quid from jessops and the camera even has a function that uses them automatically. here's an example of the end result -

-

I spent some idle time today reverse mounting a nikkor 50 f/1.8 to the front of the fz30 and getting real macro.

If you wanted to spend more, the (almost) same camera comes with a Leica red dot...

David

I was going to upgrade from my beloved FZ10 to the FZ30, but the 8Mp shots from it were always a bit soft and the *NOISE!* was very evident even at 400ISO. The 30 also couldn't stay Wide Flippin' Open at f2.8 all the way along its zoom, something the 10 and 20 managed.

The Leica lenses were gorgeous, and the build quality on the 10/20/30s was astonishingly good for a compact,, but I think the best of that range was the FZ20 which I'd still rate as a fine all-round camera for someone who wants a serious ultrazoom compact but doesn't need huge prints.

pete

Assuming that you don't already have lenses and so aren't wed to any particular system, then either the Nikon D70, D40 or D50 (the first of those that fits your other needs) or the Canon 300 or 350 (again, the first of them that fits your needs). While partisans of both manufacturers will extoll the virtues of their chosen system and not consider the other, the truth of the matter is that both have many good and few bad points. If you can, try both a Nikon and a Canon. The control layout is slightly different and you should just go for whichever is more comfortable in your hands.

Personally I prefer Nikon, solely because my D70 has seperate aperture and shutter speed controls whereas the Canon I tried had one control shared by the two functions. But the cheaper Nikons suffer from that flaw too, and I *think* the more expensive Canons don't.

As someone else pointed out, the best antishake device is a tripod (you

I don't believe that either company sell a SLR body with built-in anti-shake (and to be honest, I wouldn't want it - there are better, cheaper ways of achieving that), but they do sell *lenses* with anti-shake jibber-jabber in them. They are very expensive.

You'll generally get an option of buying the body with a cheap general-purpose lens thrown in "for free" (yeah right), usually an

If you've got the budget for it, buy another lens, either something around about 30mm for landscapes, or a longer zoom, depending on the sort of thing you think you'll want to photograph.

If you have even more budget, get a super-wide zoom for landscapes (Sigma do a very good 10-20mm job in both Nikon and Canon fittings) or a

Jessops is tolerable if you want to buy on the high street (personally I'd use a smaller chain myself, with less chavvy staff), but also check out camerapricebuster.co.uk for comparative prices online.

Unless you want to blow your prints up to quite ridiculous sizes, there's no point spending money on vast numbers of pixels. With 6Mp you can comfortably do 14" wide prints. What matters far more is the quality of the glass you put in front of it, and the size of the hole that lets the light in. That's why my 6Mp D70 is infinitely superior to the 10Mp piece of s*it in the latest chav accessory phone.