The APhiO Paparazzi Returns ;-)
Well, I finally bit the bullet and bought a new camera! Yay! I just got a Nikon D50 Digital SLR Camera, which includes two 18-55mm and 55-200mm Nikkor Lenses. Purchased online from Adorama, a camera store based in New York City (ordered last week, just arrived today - I selected UPS Ground shipping, so it took awhile). I also got a 1 GB SD Card to go with it, plus a nice camera bag that I picked up locally from Wal-Mart.
This will actually be officially my fifth camera, though some would argue that it's my first real camera. My first camera was a Kodak 110 film (cheap) camera that I got in 4th or 5th grade. It was fun to play around with as a kid, but I didn't really get into the film camera thing (maybe developing film and paying for all the processing and stuff isn't my cup of tea), so I sort of lost interest in the whole photography thing until after I graduated from ODU (1995). About a year or two after that, I got my first digital camera, which was a Sony DSC-F1. Great little camera to play around with, reasonably good photos. I soon upgraded to a Sony Mavica, which was nice in that it used regular floppy diskettes to store photos on. Unfortunately, floppy disks ain't too big, so with the quantity of photos I started taking, I had to carry around a ton of diskettes,... In 2004, I bought a HP Photosmart R707, which I still have and use today. This camera uses SecureDigital (SD) cards, and with a 256 MB SD card, the amount of photos that will fit on it is quite a bit. Plus, my HP notebook PC has an SD card reader, which is kind of nice (no connecting the camera to the computer). Unfortunately, the R707 suffered a cracked LCD screen, resulting from banging around in my bag when carrying it - it still works, I just can't preview photos on the camera. So instead of spending $250-300 on fixing it, I figured it's time for me to finally upgrade into the digital SLR arena, especially now that there are several of these in the sub-$1,000 range.
What I really like about the Nikon D50 (so far), is (a) it uses standard SD cards, which are readable in my notebook and my R707 uses them, too (I still plan on keeping my R707, too; a small camera like that is great for things like parties and such, where you don't want to have a large, expensive camera); (b) wide range of Nikkor lenses (and the excellent quality associated with them; (c) Nikon's overall reputation in the camera business (methinks they're going to be around for awhile and not going anywhere - one can hope :-); (d) the D50 has some excellent reviews on it, particularly on color reproducing, sharpness, ease of use, and less noise at higher ISO settings, etc; (e) the D70/D70s, which is the next one up in the current Nikon dSLR lineup, to me wasn't worth the extra price for only 2-3 extra features that I probably wouldn't use anyway (stuff like direct white balance control and depth-of-field preview); and (f) the Canon Digital Rebels, despite their 8 megapixels (compared to 6 MPs of the Nikons) looked like toys in the stores.
This will actually be officially my fifth camera, though some would argue that it's my first real camera. My first camera was a Kodak 110 film (cheap) camera that I got in 4th or 5th grade. It was fun to play around with as a kid, but I didn't really get into the film camera thing (maybe developing film and paying for all the processing and stuff isn't my cup of tea), so I sort of lost interest in the whole photography thing until after I graduated from ODU (1995). About a year or two after that, I got my first digital camera, which was a Sony DSC-F1. Great little camera to play around with, reasonably good photos. I soon upgraded to a Sony Mavica, which was nice in that it used regular floppy diskettes to store photos on. Unfortunately, floppy disks ain't too big, so with the quantity of photos I started taking, I had to carry around a ton of diskettes,... In 2004, I bought a HP Photosmart R707, which I still have and use today. This camera uses SecureDigital (SD) cards, and with a 256 MB SD card, the amount of photos that will fit on it is quite a bit. Plus, my HP notebook PC has an SD card reader, which is kind of nice (no connecting the camera to the computer). Unfortunately, the R707 suffered a cracked LCD screen, resulting from banging around in my bag when carrying it - it still works, I just can't preview photos on the camera. So instead of spending $250-300 on fixing it, I figured it's time for me to finally upgrade into the digital SLR arena, especially now that there are several of these in the sub-$1,000 range.
What I really like about the Nikon D50 (so far), is (a) it uses standard SD cards, which are readable in my notebook and my R707 uses them, too (I still plan on keeping my R707, too; a small camera like that is great for things like parties and such, where you don't want to have a large, expensive camera); (b) wide range of Nikkor lenses (and the excellent quality associated with them; (c) Nikon's overall reputation in the camera business (methinks they're going to be around for awhile and not going anywhere - one can hope :-); (d) the D50 has some excellent reviews on it, particularly on color reproducing, sharpness, ease of use, and less noise at higher ISO settings, etc; (e) the D70/D70s, which is the next one up in the current Nikon dSLR lineup, to me wasn't worth the extra price for only 2-3 extra features that I probably wouldn't use anyway (stuff like direct white balance control and depth-of-field preview); and (f) the Canon Digital Rebels, despite their 8 megapixels (compared to 6 MPs of the Nikons) looked like toys in the stores.