Please can someone explain the difference to me and what does SLR mean? Does Digital use film as well or memory cards like compacts? Look I'm blonde okay!!!

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Digital Cameras use a silicon chip covered with a regular pattern of very small light sensitive circuits.. they are "digital"- providing a readout in numerical digits.. & do not use film, most use data cards, there a few different types of those

SLR- Single Lens Reflex

Most simple film cameras have a direct vision viewfinder, usually with a white outline bright-line frame visible in it & a fixed lens. These are fine for normal use but seldom very accurate. Single lens reflex cameras usually give the most accurate view, as you see the image directly through the lens that takes the picture.

Now there are Digital SLR cameras.. they are a bit more expensive

I would suggest googling for Basic Photography & maybe checking out a few books to learn more ;]

Message edited on: 11/02/2005 02:10

Tx :D So in the long run would a digital be cheaper? i.e. using no film and working on the same principle as compacts?

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ahhh... for me it is.. as i don't live near a photo service & would have to mail out my film nor do i develope my own.. plus with digital you can take a lot of photos, see the immediate result & erase the ones you don't want :]

cool, tx. If I ever get the money to upgrade, I'll know now :D Tx

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Attached Link: buying guide

you can get a fairly good digital camera for about $300.. wouldn't be a SLR but with the LCD screen you can see the borders of the photo to compare prices & features you can check out: www.cnet.com www.dpreview.com www.steves-digicams.com www.imaging-resource.com & here's a pretty good buying guide article at the link :]

Tx for the links. I've got a panasonic FZ5 which is US$500 if I'm not mistaken... x12 optimal, 5MP 2.5" LCD... BUt I feel like the more I learn the best and best equipment I want but that'll only be in 3-4 years... Tx for the links Having a look now...

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hehe.. you & me both ;] was just thinking.. if you haven't had a chance with a regular 35mm film SLR camera it's the best you can learn on about the basics of photography.. maybe that's getting to be old.. hmmm

Message edited on: 11/02/2005 02:41

We use a digital SLR and a simple 35mm rangefinder camera. With either one, it is the attitude behind the camera when the shutter is released. We try to think "film" with the digital, wanting the shot to be the best it can in exposure and composition. That helps me! Then, to be able to immediately see the shot on the lcd and to take many more is a delight.

Ah digital is paradise!! Go for it and have fun!!!! ;)

I wrote a whole bunch of stuff about this earlier today, and we had a disaster drill ... and I came back to a computer that had been rebooted. GRrr. Anyway, to sum up what I said earlier: I got my first SLR when I was in fourth grade, which was in 1972. I bought it for $200. It was a Pentax Spotmatic. I asked myself back then these same questions, about what's the big difference between the SLR and my Pocket Insta-matic? Two of the key differences between SLR cameras and most range-finder cameras that tipped the scales for me still are important and exist today. These differences are: 1. With SLRs, WYSIWYG. In other words, what you see through your viewfinder is essentially what the lens and film plane sees (or, in the case of digital cameras, the sensor), so you can shoot a full-frame photo and not cut off heads or left arms or whatever, and it affords you a greater measure of control. 2. Lenses can be changed to give you much more creative freedom. Extreme telephotos that are 1000 mm, three feet long and have 25 pounds of glass in them; or extra wide angle; fisheye; shift lenses; portrait shorter telephotos; fixed-focus f50 lenses; whatever. It's meant a lot more to me over the years than I thought it would back in elementary school, particularly when shooting sports and rodeos and the like. The third key difference, which is greater exposure control, really doesn't exist to any large degree anymore. Digital cameras give you all kinds of freedom over exposures that a lot of the range-finder cameras of bygone days never did. You can set f-stop and manually focus if you want to, be aperture priority or shutter priority, etc., etc., so you're going to do well with almost any decent digital in this respect. I am getting my first digital SLR this Christmas, after a long dry spell. I've had a digital, namely an Olympus c3030, for several years, and it's very cool, but I'm going to need my control back, so I'm going with an Olympus E-500. That's just my choice, and, with adapter, I'll be able to use my old Olympus Zuiko OM series lenses, so it will be a benefit to me. Plus the price is right, at about $750 for camera body and one lens. It's 8.1 MP. The new 24 MP sensor was just announced, what was it, last week? That will be amazing. There currently is a Canon that is 16 MP, but the body alone is going for somewhere between $6,000 and $8,000, I think. In conclusion (whew), I'd agree with tibet2004uk that digital is very fun, and, in my opinion, the way to go for the very reasons you yourself stated. Why pay for film and processing when you can get great digital images that will fill a poster with a beautiful image? If you're wanting to learn about the "guts" of photography, though, I'd take the hard road, as Cynlee suggests, and do it the old fashioned way: Do it with a trusty 50 mm SLR, produce your own black and white prints, and the whole works. You really learn what all those numbers mean to you as a creative artist. Otherwise, it's just a bunch of numbers and a camera that focuses for you. Don't get me wrong. I love autofocus and beautifully exposed photos with very little effort. BUT, when you want to do things that are out-of-the-ordinary, you need to know how all the components work together. Just my .02

Quote from previous post worth remembering: "You really learn what all those numbers mean to you as a creative artist. Otherwise, it's just a bunch of numbers and a camera that focuses for you. Don't get me wrong. I love autofocus and beautifully exposed photos with very little effort. BUT, when you want to do things that are out-of-the-ordinary, you need to know how all the components work together." Believe me, it took me a while to learn(again!) the importance of the numbers. I started with film, went to digital with manual over-rides but did not use the numbers as effectively as I have learned to do with my digital SLR. So, I have stepped back a bit in the learning curve, jumped in where I should have in the first place and am generally doing better photos. One thing I do like about rangefinder cameras is the extreme quiteness...not often but sometimes that is a good attribute.