Camera Recommendations?

How much do you want to spend?

IMHO, I would think a little more about the possibility of going digital. I've been a professional photographer for over twenty-five years. I spent more than half a career learning the ins and outs and ups and downs of film and of darkroom work.

Film is wonderful stuff, but I won't use it anymore unless I absolutely have to for some reason. Digital photography is far superior is so many ways. And I think that is true at both the consumer level and the professional level.

As far as a camera that is both film and digital, you can get one at the upper level of professional quality cameras.  Mamiya and Hasselblad make bodies that will take either a film or a digital back.  But your talking about a camera system upwards of twenty to forty thousand dollars. 

For much less, you can get a set of Nikon or Canon lenses that will fit either a digital or film body.  But again, once most people are up to speed on digital they find very little need for a film body.

At the consumer level there are no cameras that are both digital and film. 

Twenty to forty thousand?!  No - I was thinking more along the lines of $200-300.   I would consiter digital, but my husband is set in film for some reason.  I gues sbecause with our old digital we've been so bad about getting the pictures actually printed.  We always take forever to get them onto the computer, fixed up and printed out.  I was just talking to a freind at work though and he reminded me that you can just take your memory stick to the photo place and have them do it for you.  That's no more trouble than bringing the film in anyway.

Can I get a digital that will take film quality pictures for around the same price or do the prices go way up for digital?  I'm searching on Google a little bit now but have only been looking at film so far.

Thanks for all your answers!

You can get excellent quality digital cameras in the $200 to $300 price range. Here's a good site for doing a comparison.

Taking the memory stick into the photo store is a great way to get your images printed out.

The other is to use a program like iphoto, if you're on a mac, or Kodak Easy Share on a Windows machine. Then you can upload the photos you want printed out and have them sent via mail.

I taught a beginning digital photo class this spring. I was amazed at the quality of the photos that these consumer cameras can produce.

Also, the revolution really isn't about how the image is made, film vs. digital, it's about how the images are used. Once you get into a digital workflow (how the images get from camera to final use) you'll find all kinds of new ways of moving those images around and using them. Plus, I think you'll find that your skills as a photographer will go up because you will be shooting more since you won't be worrying about film burn and how many shots are left on the roll. 

If bear was a photographer, he's say Shoot Lots!

Now you got me all excited about a digital but the nice SLR ones are too expensive!  So far it looks like they start around $500 and go up.  I guess I'd consider a point and shoot, but it looks like I could get a nicer film camera than digital for around $200-250.

 PS - Opus, that;s a nice present - it's my anniversary soon too, hint, hint.

Take a look at the Sony DSC-H2 and the DSC-H5 .  I tried a student's (think it was the DSC-H2) and was surprised by how fast it was.  The specs say that they will do continuous shots starting at 3 frames per second.

And with the $1200 savings you could always bring in a photographer for the event who loves Montreal!  

i own both.  I have a Canon EOS REBEL SLR 35mm camera and a Sony Cybershot digital.  I use my digital for the quick and dirty stuff and have gotten pretty good results.  I like the ease of changing cards and how I can see the results instantly and delete bad pics to save room

However, If i am doing serious photography, I only use film.  Film is alive, digital is dead.  There is so much more to taking photographs then point and shoot, and unless you are using real film, you miss out on that.  CCD sensitivity just isn't up to par with quality film, and to get remotely close you need to spend a few C notes on a professional body.  Yea the high end digitals mimick the features of a real SLR, but it's just not the same.  So while I am looking at buying a digital body to match my 35mm, I will always use real film.  Digital will never replace film just like photoshop will never replace skills in the dark room.

 anyway.... the real question.

I really like my sony cybershot.  It's small and compact, 4 megapixel with a 3x optical zoom.  When looking at cameras remember that optical zoom is where it's at.  Digital zoom is crap.  All it does is shoot the image at high res and crop it down to "zoom" in.  You're better off shooting unzoomed at high res and cropping it yourself at home.  Anyway, the cybershot allows for basic point and shoot operation as well as full manual settings, which is nice even though you are limited to 2 F-stops.  You can also buy several different lenses to add to it so you can get the slr effect in a smaller, cheaper package. 

I have yet to buy a lens or filter set for it, but it does take nice shots.  Not quite the color saturation of Fugi 200, but for something I can go click off a few hundred shots with and not be worried about processing fees, it's pretty nice.

that is, until they stop making the stuff.

Already has, for many professionals

only for the media who need fast and cheap shots that will be printed at crap resolution anyway and for portrait photographers at malls who don't have the time to send film out to the lab.

For portrait shots and lanscapes, film is far superior.  it's all about the highlights.  When you hit regions of high brightness that tend to wash out the picture, film responds in a much more natural way that mimics what our eye would normally see, where as digital hits the 255 barrier and crashes.  You get aliasing and bleed over that makes those slightly overexposed areas look like crap.  Film is also MUCH higher resolution.  Quality 200 speed or lower film will give you higher resolution then a 4 megapixel camera.  You just never see it because you rarely blow up a film picture past a 3x5 to where the grain starts to show.  If you are never in that situation, or the benefit of quick and dirty processing outweighs the quality issues, then digital is the way to go. 

The only issue with film for the common user, besides developing and printing time/cost is that the processing is subjective.  You never get the prints back looking how you imagined they would because you were there to see the true color contrast, where as the machine developing the prints just sets the exposure based on a set table or algorithm.  Even good labs which hand develope never get it perfect.  Using slide film sort of solves this problem, but you have to find a lab that will process prints of slide film.

So film will never die, it's so different from digital that you can't really say one is better then the other.  They both have their place in the world.

EDIT:  I found a site a while back that explained the difference in some detail and I just found it again:

http://www.kenrockwell.com/tech/filmdig.htm

but anyway.....  back to the point of the origional question.  You won't notice the diff between digital or film.  I just like the flexibility with film, but I use digital as well.  Either will suit you well.

I guess the bottom line is to use whatever helps you realize your vision. There is no right or wrong where that is concerned.

I do profoundly disagree with you about this

The level of quality in certain 35mm format chips has gotten to the level that in most respects it is superior to film.

The blown highlight question is a non-issue now. If you are using a body that shoots in Camera Raw, and if the chip has enough bit depth, and if you process the file correctly including using ProPhoto RGB color space, then you are going to have a file with essentially the dynamic range of a low speed print film or better. You would have to really try hard to blow out the highlights.

If, on the otherhand, you are doing in-camera jpeg conversions, then yes you may have problems with blown highlights. But if you're interested in quality for professional or fine art reasons, then you probably should not be doing in-camera jpeg conversions.

Either way, the blown highlight problem is not new to digital. The best film ever made, and now no longer made - Kodachrome, had the same problem, as well as every other transparency film. The dynamic range was small, just a bit over 5 zones from textured shadows to texured highlights. So you had better know what your doing when you use these emulsions.

Typically, for photos in controlled situtations, you would do a test shot with polaroid, which itself had been tested and matched to a particular transparency emulsion. This would help you zero in your exposure. At that point your could make your photos. Then you'd take the film to a lab and have them process the first six inches or so of the roll. Then you'd take a look at that and from the "clip" determine what the final processing time should be. Sometimes, if the shadows were blocked up, you would have the lab tech, who you made your best friend because of the wonders that he could pull off, flash the exposed film with a bit of light which would fog the shadows and help bring out detail.

If you didn't go through all of that, then you could very easily end up with blown highlights.

You're correct about film, even 35mm film, yielding a higher resolution image than most chips. But my Nikon D2x renders beautiful prints, of certain subjects, up to 30" long. If you need to go larger than that, and I sometimes do with my fine art prints which I print out at around 28"x42", then you should keep using film.

If, on the otherhand, you're working with prints in the 5x7 to 16x20 range, then there will be absolutely no advantage to using film.

I spent a lot of years learning to master the black and white print. I think I had it down pretty well. Then I took a workshop with John Paul Caponigro . His father, Paul Caponigro is undoubtly one of the greatest fine art photographers of all time. In the workshop, John Paul said that a great way to make black and white images is to shoot them in color. It took a while to register, but then it became clear that he was right.

The traditional way of photographing in black and white often required the use of filters on the camera in order to modify the color of the light falling on the black and white emulsion. In this way a yellow filter, for example, would help clouds to stand out from a blue sky because the yellow would block the blue light in the sky making it darker while allowing the yellow light coming from the clouds to record them as bright.

Well, by using color film to shoot a black and whte image and then scanning that color emulsion and getting a digital file, you now had a virtually infinite number of filters to use for manipulating the effect on the final black and white print.

When I saw that, and tried that, I closed the door on the darkroom and haven't looked back. The number of tools at hand in order to get just the right subtle tonality in a black and white print was exponentially greater than through a wet process.

Of coarse, the scanner and printer necessary to do that were really expensive and could only be justified if you were making money from it.

But now, seven years later, the price point has come down. Really high quality digital capture is available to the serious amateur, and the quality of printers like the epson series that use ultrachrome archival inks is reamarkable. Truly better than a c-print.

But again, if your vision requires film, then use film. If your personal process of making an image requires film, then use film. If you really love the darkroom, then use film (myself, I still would love to make platinum prints just for the pleasure of it.)

Seriously though, the "quality" won't be better. And yes, film will always be around as long as people buy it. But people stopped buying the Kodachrome, the best film ever, and it went away. If film stays around, it will probably be because the fine art market is supporting it's production. But that market is tiny.

Of course, we will always be able to make our own emulsion, pour it onto a piece of glass and then use the our 4x5 or 8x10 view cameras. I won't ever sell my 4x5 view. It's too much of a pleasure to use.

Sorry, didn't read the whole post.... couldn't get past the crap comment.

I agree with Don.  Most of the covers of dive magazines these days are shot digitally.  Covers don't go for crap media, especially in the dive media.  The winner of the British National History Museum's vaunted Wildlife Photographer of the Year was shot with a Canon D60, 6 MP digital. 

And for amatuer shooters (not the OP), you can get 12MP for not that much money.  Of course, if you can't take a pic with a 3 MP camera, you won't be able to take one with a 12MP camera.

For the OP, a 4 MP to shoot snaps and print at 3 x 5 or 4 x 6 works just fine 

there will always be filmosaurs, just like people that prefer vinyl over CDs.

So I still don't know - can you get a digital that is equal to a film camera (picture quality wise) for around the same price?  When I looked yesterday it seemed like the "good" digitals were way above my price range (they were more like $800 vs. the $250 I want to spend)

If it helps, I would be taking pictures of my kids, hopefully me doing tris if I ever get back to them and your typical vacation shots mostly I guess.  Nothing fancy, although I'll probably want to take some of my kids playing sports someday.

For some reason my husband is still set on real film but he said he'd listen to whatever I learn from you guys before we make a decision.

I agree with Chris and Don.  What on earth are you talking about Vortmax...what world are you living in!?!?  Living here in Japan, arguably the home of cameras, I can tell you that while there are film cameras available here, they are ONLY high end.  Almost every camera, in what are probably some of the biggest camera stores in the world, are digital.

However, I do understand where you are coming from as I too once thought as you did about 5 years ago.  But since then I have purchased two digital cameras.  I have a Canon point and shoot which is great for parties and things, and I recently purchased a Fujifilm S9000 which is absolutely awesome.  If you saw some of the pictures I've taken on this, blown up to A4 size and printed from my very own home printer, perhaps you would start to be a believer in digital cameras.  They are awesome.

Another reason I think you should go with digital MomX3 is as Don said, one of the best ways to get better at photography is just to keep shooting.  I have never taken any formal lessons in photography, however people often comment on the quality of my pictures, and I can tell you that I put it down to 1% natural talent and 99% experience.

Now, your problem however seems to be that you can't find a good digital at a price point that fits your budget.  But I just did a quick search on Amazon and found this Canon SD550 7.1MP camera for under $300.  My point and shoot is 5MP and it is OK, but my Fujifilm is around 9MP and I can tell you that it makes a HUGE difference.

Just for comparisons here is a Sony that I found that is also in your price range and looks pretty good to me.  Sony point and shoots have some of the best quality lenses in the world (Carl Zeiss).  The only problem I have with Sony digitals is the fact that they use a memory stick that basically only works in their products.

Check out the link to the Canon I posted above your last post.  I also don't like Sony digital cameras for the reason I stated above.  I think if you're going to get a digital you still have to make sure that the lens quality is good.

Therefore you can't really go wrong with a Canon.  However Nikkon also make some good compacts and I recently saw an Olympus that wasn't bad when I was shopping with a friend for a present.  However, even on that day, we still ended up going with the Canon.

even though magazine covers are really "clear" and shot with high end digitals, they are still printed at less then "high" resolution.  Take a look at one under a magnifying lens, or even just look closely at one.  That kind of resolution is not hard to reproduce.

Yea I know digitals are becoming higher quality and that in the sense of normal picture taking, the quality is about the same, I still much prefer the flexibility of film, especially the ability to manipulate it and get really high class results without buying 20 grand in scanners and printers.  Then again that also assumes you know how to use, and have a dark room (which costs well less then 20 grand for an enlarger and a few buckets of chemicals.).

We have a cybershot that my wife uses for family snapshots.  Very happy with it. (forget which model it is.  I agree with Traveski that the memory stick issue is a drag.  You need to buy a Sony memory stick to go with the camera.

Again, here is a great website for comparing digital cameras and reading reviews.  

For MomX3, the link that don gave you for a 7 MP camera is pretty good.  If all you are doing is taking family snaps, printing them at 4 x 6, etc, 7 MP is more than enough.  You can even do 8 x 10 and I bet 99% of people wouldn't be able to tell it's digital

As for shutter lag, that is the bane of point and shoot digital cameras.  As I understand it, it's cause primarily by the interaction with the LCD on the back.  It's REALLY frustrating taking pics of moving fish underwater with shutter lag :^.  Lots of fish butts.

Some point and shoots are getting better, the hot camera to house underwater is the Fuji F810, I think, pretty low shutter lag.  You can also avoid it by prefocusing and then shooting when the composition is right.  the only way to REALLY get rid of shutter lag with digital is to go with a digital SLR.

I 100% agree with travis - the only way to get better is shoot til your fingers bleed   Plus storage is easier, and you don't have to print them all, but you can also find web servers with free picture hosting, can share pics around the world with family etc.  Really easy to upload them.  PITA if you have to scan them first.  And the long run is much much cheaper. You can get a 2 gig compact flash for what, $100 these days?  that will last several years, you can put several hundred pics on it, upload them, fill it up again.  No film or development costs.  From a $$ standpoint, it just makes sense.

The only thing that would keep me from Sony is if they are only memory stick compatible.  The future of digital storage (at least the near future) is hi speed compact flash, which are getting really cheap, and most computers now come with CF ports.  I don't think they come with memory stick ports......

And vortmax, I understand. I admire the underwater film shooters that are good and the skill that's involved.  it's very difficult to do.  Digital has changed that world completely.  for the record, I have a few albums that I prefer the LP to the CD

Thank you everyone!  I'm going to look into the digital Canon that was linked and I'll search around some more.  I was hesitant to get a point and shoot because in high school I took photography and really loved it - I was hoping to get back into it someday so I thought I should go with an SLR.  I guess by the time I do that I can always upgrade my camera.