FOAK: Digital SLR

Depends on the lens.

Some of the older canon zooms start to look poor past 15 MP whilst
other lenses resolve crisply way way past 21.

 

Which is when something like a Pentax becomes a liability when you find
out that the choice of lenses etc is useless compared with the other
two. Buy Nikon or Canon.

 

Indeed. Used DSLRs are excellent value. Used DSLR, decent new lens: job
done.

 

I agree with that. I bought into Olympus, which of course does have a
limited range of lenses, although what are available are of excellent
quality. Many of the additional lenses that are available to the more
'mainstream' brands are questionable anyway.

As you say though, I kind of got slightly upset by the lack of choices,
but in reality, I simply can't afford to buy any of them anyway.

FWIW, just buy *a* camera, you can make it a really cheap hobby if you
consider some of the older 'legacy' lenses. Adapters can be got cheap on
eBay, which means you can buy just about any old lens to fit any modern
body. There are still a few very good bits of old glass around - old
Tamrons, Nikkors and Zuikos are always worth looking into.

My pride is an old (like 1960's old) Soligor 300mm on an M42 mount,
which still takes pretty good pics.

<http://s926.photobucket.com/albums/ad107/wildroverandy/Soligor 300
at%20The%20Mere/>

The great things is with these old lenses, it can be very cheap to
switch body brand too, as you'd just need a new adapter.

They also mean you need to learn a bit of the old craft of photography
too, rather than just bash out hundreds of pics on Auto, hoping to get
that one great shot.

 

The Olympus E1 is a great SH buy, for example. It's only 5MP, but still
takes great pictures, and is weather proof too.

 

I suppose that's a fair comment. I daresay Canon ond Nikon after sales
service will be better at supporting older stuff, too, but then how many
people use the same camera for 20 years or more, these days?

 

Four here. I need a bigger bag.

 

LOL!

 

50ish

 

No doubt. The only reason I have Canon is because it was my first camera many
moons ago. Seemed logical to stay with what I knew.

Well, that and all the others are inferior

It can get very expensive, very quickly.

 

Steptoe.

 

Um, four here, too. And three bodies. Plus one digi compact and three
film compacts.

 

We're not there yet.
Otoh, it's not far off, if the makers keep pumping out higher pixel
counts on their sensors. The upshot will be, to do justice to the Mpx, a
new breed of very expensive lenses will be needed and will never
actually justify their cost for the vast majority of users, so much so
that only pros will buy them (and the usual wankers with more money than
sense, of course).
**** all that, there are plenty of more than adequate cracking good
lenses already on the market that will outresolve most, if not all,
digisensors made today. The sensible, physical and financial limits are
being approached in 35mm format.
The other option is to go Medium Format, where a whole new ballgame
opens up, with cameras costing the price of a car, but the enlargement
possible from them will blow any 35mm sensor away.

 

Can't remember if we did this before or not. Anyways, worth a repost:
http://gigapixelphotography.com/

 

Photoshopped.

 

The EOS 1000D is quite small. I'll tell you tomorrow when I get it.

 

That seems sensible advice, who gave it to you? ;-)

 

+1

 

#fact

 

It's getting more difficult. Today is a sad day in the history of
film.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/30/us/30film.html?_r=1

Who knows what your digital photos will be like 20 years from now?
Will you even be able to read them? I just chucked a bunch of 5 1/4"
floppy disks because I had no way to read them, and I don't think you
can buy a floppy drive any more. New computers don't even come with 3"
floppy drives any more. File formats will change and the media will
degrade. If you want to save images for posterity, better get them
printed on archival paper.