On Friday, Feb 28, 2003, at 12:02 US/Pacific, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
Am I the only one wondering when $2k became a budget camera? If I was goingI'm not so sure about $2K, but given where I am right now (more on that later) I'd certainly find a $1K DSLR tempting and a bargain.
to spend $1500 right now [forget $2k] I'd be trying to decide between the
Pentax 6x7, the Mamiya 645e and the Fuji 6x9 and not really thrilled with any
of them. I wouldn't be looking at a camera that on a good day might equal a
spotmatic in quality.
I've only been taking photos at an appreciable rate for the past year or so, and right now I'm starting to feel the itch for more control over the end result than I can get by having color (or b&w) print film developed by a lab for me.
If I go the slide film route, I'm going to need to get a light table, loupe, projector, spare trays for the projector, and slide scanner. That's gonna set me back about $1K. A DSLR means buying flash memory, color printer, CD burner (which I'm probably going to have to get anyhow), and color printing supplies, but a few years of avoided film and lab costs would probably be more than enough to make it pay for itself. And I'd get immediate feedback, the ability to change the ASA equivalent whenever I want (instead of being forced to change the ASA speed on 12, 24, or 36 exposure boundaries), and do things like custom white balance.
Assuming I don't do a lot of travel (I wouldn't trust a digicam with un-backed-up copies of hundreds of photos, which means lugging a laptop and CD burner along, no thanks)[1], that makes digital seem a very attractive way of removing the lab's printing process from the equation. And regardless, I'd still keep the ability to shoot film for things like night photography and situations where I can't easily recharge batteries.
But right now, $1000 buys an awful lot of Fuji Superia 4-packs and 1-hour processing at Fred Meyer, so I don't see digital in my immediate future unless I win the lottery.
-- David Barts Portland, OR
