Do any of you fine artists have a digital camera?? I'm thinking of getting one (Toshiba PDR M70?. What one would you recommend??

I bought the Kodak DC280 a couple of months ago. I've been very happy with it. Eric Winemiller Digital Carvers Guild Freeware and commercial 3D extensions http://digitalcarversguild.com

I also have one. Its a few years old...640x480 res only.. :( I use it a lot. Clint

Nemisis, I bought a Kodak DC200 a couple of years ago and did a lot of investigating prior to that. Some of the things I found out to watch for are: Flash card compatability - if it uses flash cards and most do, make sure it will take geneneric cards. I had looked a Ricoh that had some great features and almost bought it till I found out that it would only use thier flash cards and they wanted $800 for a 32mb card. I can buy those all day for about $85-$100. Pixel count- Mine was a Megapixel which gives (1152x870) images. I you print this on 4x6 photo paper, you get a dpi of approx 190, not bad but a little grainy. I have used some of the 2 meg and the 3 meg pixel cammeras and they are nice but you pay more. You can get 4x6 dpi's of roughly 360 & 740. They make very realistic photos. Check the digital camera news groups for complaints. I breifly had a Vivtar camera and their support was terrible.I sent it back for a refund. I highly recommend the Kodaks, I have used several of them. The 280 is an excellent camera for the value and they have some newer models if you are looking for a higher end camerea. I know about 8 people wiht the Kodaks and have never heard a complaint. Just my 2K millicents worth. Vern

Nemisis, I have had great results with the Olympus D-340R. It cost around $300 and shoots at a little over 1200 by 900 pixels. A very solid and useful camera. Now you can buy 8 mg flash cards for about $20. They hold about 36 High Quality shots. You can also use uncompressed mode and get around 2 shots but i have not used this. Someone gave us a Battery Master CL444 by Clearline Concepts that will charge standard off-the-shelf AA batts dozens of times--no need for expensive special re-chargeables. I don't know where this is available tho. You will find the digital camera frees you from the thought of conserving film costs. It is really fun and productive! Siva

Like siva, I also have an Olympus. It's the slightly older D-320L. It has proven to be a very solid, reliable camera. The software that comes with it makes it quite easy to DL the images to a PC. The thing I like best about it is that Olympus used the same CCD that they use in their more expensive models. The CCD is the chip that acts as the film in a regular camera. It's a 'single pass' chip which means that the camera collects all the color information once rather then taking three passes as do many digital cameras. This eliminates the colored outlines you can get if your subject moves while the pictures is being taken. On thing you do want to do if you buy a digital camera especially one like this that uses a serial port to DL the pictures. Get the power adapter so you can plug it into an AC socket when you have it connected to the PC. The transfer REALLY sucks up power and can run through a set of batteries in no time.