If you were recommending a camera type and features to your best friend,
what would you advise and why?

20 responses total.

the disposables, they are cool, require good technique, depend on the
photographer, and once developed, force you to pick a new flavor to try
the next time. I am fond of the panorama jobs.

I agree & have shot the panorama jobs.  (During a balloon flite!).  The 
panaroma shots are really expensive though.

the panoramas are OK for certain specific shots (very good, actually) but not
for general picture taking.  the "weekend" camera has a plastic housing and
is _great_ for the beach, pool and under water up to 9' deep!  takes good
pics with good color, especially in a _clean_ pool with lots of sun.  It
also floats, in case you drop it.

For best photographic effect I suggest a SLR of at least 35mm format.

I just did a whole lot of looking/shopping and finally got a new Canon EOS
ElanII E (the E stands for 'eye controlled focus).  This is a full featured
SLR for a serious amature (or low-end professional) and the eye focus is
cool.  You calibrate the thingie to your eyeball, and it bounces a beam off
your eye while you're looking through the viewfinder to determine where you
are looking...then it focuses on the nearest focusing point to your subject.

Only had it a couple of weeks now, but the fotos are _great_!  My previous
"good" camera was/is about 20 years old.  What a difference new technology
makes!
]

I think theElanII E is probably the best one to get for the serious amateur
(If you can set aside that kind of $$$).  

How expensive are these newer cameras like the new Canon EOS
ElanII E?

I think the camera body is in the $700 range, but I have not actually priced
them.  The lenses are sold separately and can run from reasonable to REAL
expensive.  I have a 35-135 f4 zoom and it is great.  I think this was in the
$200 region.  I also have a 20-35 zoom and a 75-300 zoom.  All three get used
a lot.  If I had only one, it would be the 35-135.

I bought an EOS ElanII-E with the data back and 28-105mm (1:3.5-4.5)
ultrasonic autofocus lens just before the new year.  Add a lens filter, really
cool and well padded bag, some film and a couple of other accessories and I
spent below $1k.  I think the camera, lens and filter were in the $800 range
if I'm not mistaken.  Next option I'll buy is an extra battery pack which is
also a vertical handgrip/shutter button.

I've been very happy with this camera, even though I'm not yet comfortable
with all the "automatic" capabilities.  Sometimes my pictures don't come out
as well as my old manual camera took them...I'm trying to get the feel of what
each automatic mode actually does.

Have fun playing with it!! That's half the fun, learning all of the
new things you can do! I bet your pictures will be back up to standard
in no time.

Rickyb - do you have the "bar scanner" option with your camera?  I have it
and it is sort of gimmicky, but it works real well.  

This is a light pen and a booklet of difficult picture types.  Each pictured
"difficult" type of photo has a bar code.  YOu scan it with your pen, and
enter it into your camera and it automatically shoots for the same effect as
in the booklet photo.  I used it to take a picture of a white painted brick
house with a white door and two pots of red flowers either side of the door.
The booklet was a picture of a white cat on a white chair on a white porch.
Worked fine!

No, I passed on the bar code scanner.

I work with barcodes for a living, so if anybody is interested in trying to
decipher what those barcodes contain, I can help.  I can also print barcodes.

I've been having a lot of problems with my Nikon [I think it was a 400 zoom].
I had brought it maybe 5 years ago for about $150 or so...  And until a
year or so ago, it took consistently decent pictures. But then I started
noticing that the pctures weren't coming out as sharp... And I had loaned
it out to a friend for atrip to Australia and N.Zealand and his pictures
didn't turn out too clearly either.  And there was a problem with the film3
not 'catching' some of the time when I tried to load it. So I finally took
it in and had it cleaned and fixed. Well, I STILL continually had problems
with a lot of the pictures being out of focus [this being an auto focus
camera] and I was getting tired of it. So I brought it in to a couple places
including to the guy that originally worked with it... And he still couldn't
see anything wrong with it...  

Well, to make a long story short, I'm not interested in using that camera
at all any more. And since this particualr camera store buys and sells used
and new equipment, he brought this camera from me for $85 and I brought a
new autofocus camera, a Pentax IQZoom 90WR camera.... Granted, some day I
still want to get a supernice camera but in the meantime, I hope that this
one will suit me well.  Are any of you familiar with this camera??  I hadn't
taken any time ahead of time to do any kind of research on it before 
buying it [because I'm going back up to MI for a family reunion and
wanted *something* to use!!]

I am aware of two Pentax IQZooms which were nice cameras but failed early.
One belonged to my daughter and one belonged to a guy at work.  They both
failed by an apparant "jamming" of the zoom mechanism.  I took my daughter's
apart and found a tiny Delrin gear cracked neatly into pie-shaped segments.
I am familiar with failure in plastic mechanical parts and I believed this
to be due to stress (pressed on a shaft) in combination with lubricant oil.
(Environmental Stress Cracking).

I wrote Pentax and told them I believe the failure was due to design 
(stress cracking) and asked if they would stand behind their product for 
quality.  They returned a  letter which said they stood behind their 
warranty and this was out of warranty.

I am told by the owner of a local camera store that the best (Lowest) 
warranty performance is (1) Ricoh, (2) Samsung, and (3) Olympus.

By the way, did you ever get a shock from the strobe flash in one of these
cameras - HOO BOY!

That's a lot of power in those little capacitors, isn't it?  I saw some
electronic project that used a couple of those.  I think 330 volts is the
usual.

After experiencing that, you won't be sleepy for a few hours.

My sister-in-law also has one of these Pentax zoom cameras like the one
I just brought--and she's had problems with hers, too. For example, it goes
through batteries fast AND one of the button thingies on top broke off.
And reading about some of the concerns here in this item, I'm seriously
thinking about returning this camera when I get back to NC later in the
week. I still have the receipt and have had it for only
a week--so they should take it back. There was another camera I was also
looking at--it does the zoom, the wide angle, and the panerama pictures
all on the same roll of film... Do any of you know how good these panarama
pictures are??

There is a discussion about this type of camera and film in item #29 in this
conference.  It apparantly is pretty good and has some distint advantages.
Type "R 29" at the ok prompt to see it.

How many of you are using digital cameras now?? Sometime in the near [I hope!]
future, I'd like to get one.  What are some recommendations? problems? Etc?

It depends on what you want.  I wanted a small point-and-shoot digital 
camera to carry in situations where my 35mm SLR was too bulky.  I 
bought a FujiFilm FinePix 1300 and I've been quite happy with it.  The 
menu system is a bit unintuitive, though.

Incidentally, for people looking for a manual 35mm SLR, I recommend 
looking for a used Canon AE-1 or AE-1P.  They're very nice cameras, and 
the lenses are extremely plentiful on the used market now that all the 
pros have switched to the EOS system.  The AE-1 does have a shutter-
priority semi-automatic mode, and the AE-1P has a full programmed 
exposure mode, but both are basically manual cameras otherwise.

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