On Thu, 08 Oct 2009 10:08:31 -0700, jps wrote:

On Wed, 07 Oct 2009 13:52:25 -0500, Vic Smith
wrote:



Bigger the better. Little cameras are not good for fat fingers, and
get left on car roofs.
Yeah, I could find info elsewhere, but I'll trust boaters first.
Lots of gearheads.

--Vic

Low light requires a decent sized chip and good processing
electronics. Those are most likely found on Nikon or Canon SLRs.

Olympus wouldn't fit your fingers. You can pick up a lightly used
Nikon D200 or D300 on ebay from a reputable seller. New are just too
damned expensive. They're built like tanks using metal cases.

Shutter, apeture priority, full auto or fully manual. I use my D200
in all sorts of situations. Travel, sports, nature. Stunning detail.
The sensors and electronics on the Nikons are geared towards skin
tones, Canons sensors and electronics are more neutral. I've always
liked the look of a Sony picture, similar to Nikon sensors.

The obvious complement to either of those bodies is the 18-200 VRII.

The cheaper lenses are just that.

That's a serious setup with serious heft but a bit more than your $1K
threshhold. You would not regret it and the camera would last many
years, like they used to...

What I like most about the higher end DSLR's is
their response time and metal bodies.
Maybe shouldn't have started this, as I find myself reverting to my
old ways about wanting quality in a camera.
But when I bought my old SRT-102 and Rokkor lenses they really did get
about 30 years of use before the shutter gave up.
Probably put as much into that as a new D200 kit, but in 1973 dollars.
Now the money is the easy part, but justifying it ain't, since I don't
have the interest or another 30 years to shoot.
I do the like fast response and metal body of the D200.
Going through the Rockwell site Eddy posted (thanks, Eddy) was a kick.
Almost had me just going for a D40 until I dug deeper, and noticed he
mentions a couple times they have defective meters.
That guy gets some beautiful shots with little camera at all, and he
makes for good reading, but he's all over the place.
What I came away with is that I need to look harder at the adjustments
on my A1100 to see if it can better handle the low light
landscapes/clouds I often want to shoot at dawn and dusk.
If I'm too dissatisfied with the results I might study up and pop for
one of the higher end DSLR's. Maybe even used.
Thanks to all for your input.
I learned a lot.

--Vic