D Cox

The great thing is to have the flexibility. You can use the EVF at eye level for shooting sports or wildlife, and you can use the LCD at waist level for street scenes and portraits, and you can use...

With a bit more work, you could lighten the faces and still keep the blue sky.

Great shots.  It is good to see how much the colour from Sigma cameras has improved since the SD1 first came out.  I think you could use a table-top tripod for these low shots. I have had a Leitz...

It is a basic problem with all reflex cameras, whether film or digital. The focussing system relies on precise matching of the distance from lens to screen with the distance to the film or...

The portrait itself is very good, but I don't find the background helpful. How about cropping it down to portrait format ? -- basically losing all the background.

There would also be cropping if any of the multi-image modes were used - Anti-Motion Blur, HHT or HDR.

Almost any lens designed for use with a film SLR has a manual aperturecontrol ring, and most have manual focus. Could be Nikon, Canon, Olympus, Pentax, etc etc. Fully manual lenses are the easiest...

Perhaps you would be happier with a fully manual lens - that is, a good legacy lens with an adapter. No need to sell your automatic lens - there are times when they come in handy.

It seems the coating on the lens surfaces needs to be improved.

The Sigma SD1 has no usable video and specialises in very high quality images at low ISO speeds. The Sigma DP series of fixed-lens compacts are similar.

But even then, if the flower is jumping around in the wind, as they usually are, you will need a high shutter speed.

Image stabilisation doesn't help with moving subjects, only with a moving camera.

But not necessarily a DSLR. A good APS-C mirrorless with a prime lens will give the same quality with less weight. It's a pity the OP doesn't still have his Nikon lenses from the 1970s, as these...

It isn't even from MSDOS. The 8+3 format comes from cp/m. (MSDOS was basically a ripoff of cp/m.)

A waist-level camera is still very good for portraits. It is less threatening than a camera held up to the eye.

From that result, I would say the pinhole is too big and you have some stray light. It is easier to make a small hole in a bit of kitchen foil taped over a larger hole. You can use a needle point,...

As they should be, if the quality control and choice of materials are the same.

Zen and the Art of Photography.

All current "serious" cameras can give excellent results. The differences are really quite slight. So don't worry too much that you might pick the "wrong" one. Ideally, you want to handle all these...

I suggest starting with a low price model of DSLR or mirrorless camera from any of the well-known makers. The important thing is to be able to change lenses, and to be able to experiment with...