What camera do you use and what do you like about it?

I use a Minolta X-500 35mm film camera with an assortment of mainly Tamron lenses. I only changed last year to the X-500 from my X-300 that I've had since 1983. It's lightweight and easy to use while still giving full access to all manual functions.

I'm looking to change in the future to a DSLR and wondered what features of your camera you especially liked.

Thanks,

Ian

Thanks Jackal

I haven't had my new camera long enough to go into a lot of detail about it's features.

I have an Olympus SP550-uz. It's compact digital camera rather than a DSLR, but has many of the features you'd get on an SLR. It has an 18x optical zoom and macro and super macro modes. You can choose to shoot in a fully Auto mode, or choose from a selection of scene presets, but you can also choose to have Aperture priority, shutter speed priority or manual exposure setting. You can Auto focus in several modes too, or do that manually.

I love being able to control my depth of field (how much is in focus) and being able to zoom right in on things.

I also particularly like how the controls of the camera just fall under my fingers. It seems to be the perfect size and layout for me, which is a little surprising as I have small hands even for a lady. I took it out in the garden to "play" last weekend and some of the better results are in my gallery.

Jackal, your run down of your cameras features is brilliant - thanks for going into so much detail.

We just got a Fuji Finepix S700. Great camera for cheap. Less than $300 at Dell. I used to know what to look for in a camera in my teens. I will have to relearn everything to get anything more technical than that or else all the features and reasons to buy a better camera would go unused.

Six months ago I bought the Nikon D40 which is the intro level for Nikon DSLR cameras. It is 6 megapixels and has small footprint in your hand. There are a lot of settings you can change to set up the camera to shoot the way you like.

It is a great introduction to DSLR shooting. You can pick these up for around $500 as a kit with a lens included.

After these 6 months I've been completely hooked back into photography, (I started with a brownie box camera and used to have my own darkroom for processing). This past week I bought the newly released Nikon D300, all the glass I have will interchange between the two cameras. This will make the D40 the backup and go to camera for anything I have to shoot way over my head on a tripod, and the D300 which has a much bigger footprint in the hand will be the work horse.

I'm still working my way through the manual and finally attached a lens today and did a few test shots. (I've been very busy this week).

I wouldn't recommend going straight to a high end camera like this, but I would recommend the D40 as one very sweet camera to own and shoot.

Thanks for your replies.

Dave, you have been very restrained to have only just attached a lens to your new D300. Thanks for your recommendation; I did look at the D80 and D200 a few weeks ago and will try to make my mind up for my best long term option when I've saved my pennies (and pounds). The D300 sounds great, but definitely out of my league. I used to develop and print b&w when I lived at my parents', but haven't for about 20 years.

Ian

I have a Fujifilm Finepix 5600. It is an SLR-like camera. Let's me use auto features and learn the more manual features.

I've had it two years now and LOVE it. I'm still working on learning more about aperature, speed, dof, etc but can at my own pace and still grab photos I love in the mean time.

About a week ago, my willpower failed and I have now got myself a Nikon D80 with the 18-70 kit lens. I'm very happy with it so far, and am getting out taking photos again, so that's good. As I found when I tried it out earlier, it fits my hand very well and is easy to use. I'm looking forward to experimenting in the future.

I was given a new camera - Panasonic Lumix DMC FZ50 - and I am really looking forward to the better weather to get started with it. It is the big daddy of the one I have, but it can do so much more for me.

I have a Pentax *ist DS (DSLR) for colour and a Pentax MZ-3 (SLR) for black and white as I still like to use Ilford film for black and white even though I have had reasonable results with turning RAW images into black and white with help of Photoshop. My first camera was a Pentax ME as I liked the aperture priority functionality it offered and, in fact, I still use my DS and MZ-3 in Av (aperture priority) mode.