Butch Davis wrote:
Wow!!! Guys, all very intereting stuff. I love it when a thread gets kinda
highjacked and the result is more and better information. You're all
forgiven. :=)

Excellent point on the photo printer. I have been leaning toward the Epson
PM280 @ $200 or so for the on board capabilities plus the ability to burn a
CD on board. Plus, it's pretty portable. Based on what you've said,
however, I'm going to try the lab route at first and see if it's not a
better solution.

As to software, I can see I need to look into that a little more. That's
just too much information to absorb immediately.

I've always liked SLR film cameras and used a wide variety back in the late
fifties and early sixties. I don't think the EVF will bother me as I used a
Rollie (2Xlens reflex) 2 1/4 X 3 1/4 with 120 roll film for a while and
liked the large image.... next best thing to a Graflex with a ground glass
back. I thought the Graflex was the absolute best and most versitile but it
got heavy after a bit of time. Add that weight to the old and enormous
Honywell strobe with wet cell batteries and the Rollie became a great
device. Assorted 35mms were wonderful, too, but the strobe was so large we
attached the camera to the flash head. I still own and use a Kodak Retina
II but it really needs to be overhauled. Where to do it is going to be a
problem, I guess.

Back then we did all our own black & white printing but the color work went
to Technicolor Labs. I used to love darkroom work and waching the prints as
they came up. Enlarger work was fun too and I became a reasonably talented
"dodger" befor joining the Army and giving all that up. I was just a kid
then and going hungry and sleeping on friends sofas didn't bother me much.
I'll tell you something for nothing.... free lance press work was a very
tough racket in those days. But, on my goodness all the girls we used to
meet.

Butch


Buy whatever sort of camera you'll use a lot. With the smaller, non-SLR
cameras, just make sure by reading reviews that you are getting a good
optical zoom lens.

We just returned from a week's vacation, and I took my wife's little
Canon A710 digital and one of my rangefinder film cameras. I left the
SLRs at home because they are big, bulky, and heavy. For a digital
camera, my wife's little Canon takes as nice a vacation snapshot as
you'd like, and it fits into a pants pocket.

Printing digital color photos is fun, but it is not as inexpensive as
having an outside service do it. A decent photo printer you use to print
the occasional print might be the ticket. I have a Canon i9900 printer,
and it does a terrific job with larger prints. It has 8 inkwells, as it
were.

Almost any software you feel comfortable with will handle 90% of your
"processing" needs. I have the latest Photoshop, but only because I can
buy the "academic" versions at a really low price. I don't doctor up my
photos much, though. I compose through the viewfinder, and if I am
taking "nature" photos, I like the photos to represent what I saw, not
what I would have liked to have seen.

Keep it simple is the best approach, at least for me.