Get a digital SLR camera

My first digital SLR wasn’t right for me. It was heavy and unintuitive. I thought I was a crappy photographer. I had all but given up hope that I would find a camera that I enjoyed using and made me feel like I knew what I was doing. Then I got a Canon Rebel and everything changed for me. It was the right camera for me.

Find the right camera for yourself. Hold lots of different models, look at the controls, take your own memory card so you can take a few pictures and then see the quality later on your own computer or get prints made. The right camera for me won’t necessarily be the right camera for you.

back in the fall, i invested in a small pocket canon digital camera and it re-ignited my love of digital cameras and got me way more into shooting. so now i am back looking at digital SLR cameras. i was disappointed in my nikon D70 partly because it is so much heavier and larger than my itty bitty hands. i’ve since tried out the canon rebel xt which is much smaller and easier to handle.

the prices on digital SLRs are dropping and the quality keeps growing with each new camera. film manufacturers are reducing the quantity and range of their 35mm films so its inevitable that digital may become the only legitimate option soon.

a digital SLR lets me experiment a bit more becuase i’m not “wasting film” and “see” my results right away. however, the “seeing the results right away” is sometimes misleading. looking at the little 2-inch LCD screen on the back of the camera in the middle of broad daylight does not always clearly show me that i got the correct exposure or composition that i wanted.

sure, its great to be able to download the images as soon as i get home and upload them to flickr or my photoblog but one-hour photo processing is almost as quick and most places will even scan the negatives too (and provide a CD).

digital SLRs are still very expensive and, in retrospect, it may not have been the best way to spend my camera dollars. an old manual, film SLR and a bulk roll or film (plus processing) is still probably less expensive than the digital SLR and the results may even be better.

if cost and quality is very important, waiting another year or so to invest in a digital SLR may be a wise choice. vintage nikons, canons and minoltas can be had on ebay for less than $50 and they take stellar images. digital still cannot beat film for detail and quality.

i love my digital SLR but like i said, if i had it to do over again, i might have spent that money on quality lenses, or an old rangefinder rather than the digital SLR.