Which DC for returning nature photo hobbyist?

I was an "enthusiast" who loved and knew a bit about photography when in my teens and early twenties, but that was more than 20 years ago. Now I finally have time and want to get back into the hobby. I am a tech person so I'm very excited about going digital. I've done some research and read many reviews on many sites, but still can't decide on which camera. I'm interested in a camera that performs well in simple family/home/pet situations, but my primary interests are in wilderness landscapes and wildlife closeups and I will want to occasionally make prints up to 16"x21". I would like to keep the cost under $1000 for an initial set-up of a camera, a WA lens, extra batteries and charger and a few filters. I'll add tele and other equipment later. Any opinions or experiences from nature photographers will be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

I've taken some wonderful shots with my Olympus 2100UZI. But it has limitations with megapixels -- this limiting what I can do with cropping and blowing up. I am going to get the Fuji S602Z -- written up and reviewed at this forum and others. It has a smaller zoom, but offers many more feature than my Olympus (or the Olympus 700 series). You may also check out the Sony 707 -- a great camera, but a bit heavy and bulky for me. Good luck.

Ron

Gene Soldani said:

I was an "enthusiast" who loved and knew a bit about photography
when in my teens and early twenties, but that was more than 20
years ago. Now I finally have time and want to get back into the
hobby. I am a tech person so I'm very excited about going digital.
I've done some research and read many reviews on many sites, but
still can't decide on which camera. I'm interested in a camera that
performs well in simple family/home/pet situations, but my primary
interests are in wilderness landscapes and wildlife closeups and I
will want to occasionally make prints up to 16"x21". I would like
to keep the cost under $1000 for an initial set-up of a camera, a
WA lens, extra batteries and charger and a few filters. I'll add
tele and other equipment later. Any opinions or experiences from
nature photographers will be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

Click to expand...

--
Ron

Gene Soldani said:

Gene Soldani wrote:
I was an "enthusiast" who loved and knew a bit about photography
when in my teens and early twenties, but that was more than 20
years ago. Now I finally have time and want to get back into the
hobby. I am a tech person so I'm very excited about going digital.
I've done some research and read many reviews on many sites, but
still can't decide on which camera. I'm interested in a camera that
performs well in simple family/home/pet situations, but my primary
interests are in wilderness landscapes and wildlife closeups and I
will want to occasionally make prints up to 16"x21". I would like
to keep the cost under $1000 for an initial set-up of a camera, a
WA lens, extra batteries and charger and a few filters. I'll add
tele and other equipment later. Any opinions or experiences from
nature photographers will be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

Click to expand...

You can't beat the 28mm WA glass on the Minolta DiMage 7/7i. Take a good, hard look at that camera!

Cheerio,
SJ©

Silicon Junkie© said:

Silicon Junkie© said:

Gene Soldani wrote:
I was an "enthusiast" who loved and knew a bit about photography
when in my teens and early twenties, but that was more than 20
years ago. Now I finally have time and want to get back into the
hobby. I am a tech person so I'm very excited about going digital.
I've done some research and read many reviews on many sites, but
still can't decide on which camera. I'm interested in a camera that
performs well in simple family/home/pet situations, but my primary
interests are in wilderness landscapes and wildlife closeups and I
will want to occasionally make prints up to 16"x21". I would like
to keep the cost under $1000 for an initial set-up of a camera, a
WA lens, extra batteries and charger and a few filters. I'll add
tele and other equipment later. Any opinions or experiences from
nature photographers will be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

Click to expand...

You can't beat the 28mm WA glass on the Minolta DiMage 7/7i. Take
a good, hard look at that camera!

Cheerio,
SJ©

Click to expand...

I agree with SJ. The 7/7i are great for the type of photography you mention. The Dimage5 is also excellent if you can get one without the focusing problems.

--
Russell
http://homepage.ntlworld.com/russell.whyman1

Gene,

You want a camera with good wide angle for landscapes, super telephoto for wildlife and super resolution for 16x21" prints. Your budget is too low. The Dimage 7 goes wide (28mm equiv) and long (200mm) but I'm not sure if you will get the print size you want from anything short of a top of the line SLR ($$$).

Sean

Gene Soldani said:

I was an "enthusiast" who loved and knew a bit about photography
when in my teens and early twenties, but that was more than 20
years ago. Now I finally have time and want to get back into the
hobby. I am a tech person so I'm very excited about going digital.
I've done some research and read many reviews on many sites, but
still can't decide on which camera. I'm interested in a camera that
performs well in simple family/home/pet situations, but my primary
interests are in wilderness landscapes and wildlife closeups and I
will want to occasionally make prints up to 16"x21". I would like
to keep the cost under $1000 for an initial set-up of a camera, a
WA lens, extra batteries and charger and a few filters. I'll add
tele and other equipment later. Any opinions or experiences from
nature photographers will be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

Click to expand...

Looks like you need two cameras. I have both an Olympus 2100 and a 4040. The 2100 gives me the ability to shoot at 2.1 MP from 38 mm to 380 mm with image stabilization. It can be bought for $500. The 4040 is 4MP for the lanscapes. I got it for $460 used. I can interchange my .7X WA, .42X Fish eye and 1.7X telel conversion lenses between the two.

Gene Soldani said:

I was an "enthusiast" who loved and knew a bit about photography
when in my teens and early twenties, but that was more than 20
years ago. Now I finally have time and want to get back into the
hobby. I am a tech person so I'm very excited about going digital.
I've done some research and read many reviews on many sites, but
still can't decide on which camera. I'm interested in a camera that
performs well in simple family/home/pet situations, but my primary
interests are in wilderness landscapes and wildlife closeups and I
will want to occasionally make prints up to 16"x21". I would like
to keep the cost under $1000 for an initial set-up of a camera, a
WA lens, extra batteries and charger and a few filters. I'll add
tele and other equipment later. Any opinions or experiences from
nature photographers will be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

Click to expand...

--
Les

I would second that choice of a Fuji S602Z, as it fits neatly within your budget.

The next step up, would possibly be a Canon D60. But then, you'd have to be a very keen photographer to justify that sort of expense.

The Fuji 602 will not be available for a few weeks, but it improves in some very useful ways, upon their 4900/6900 that are acclaimed to be fine amateur photographers' cameras.

It should be a very long time before you grow out of this camera, for uses that span point&shoot through more sophisticated wildlife & landscape.

--
batty.

Huckleberry said:

Ron

Gene Soldani said:

I was an "enthusiast" who loved and knew a bit about photography
when in my teens and early twenties, but that was more than 20
years ago. Now I finally have time and want to get back into the
hobby. I am a tech person so I'm very excited about going digital.
I've done some research and read many reviews on many sites, but
still can't decide on which camera. I'm interested in a camera that
performs well in simple family/home/pet situations, but my primary
interests are in wilderness landscapes and wildlife closeups and I
will want to occasionally make prints up to 16"x21". I would like
to keep the cost under $1000 for an initial set-up of a camera, a
WA lens, extra batteries and charger and a few filters. I'll add
tele and other equipment later. Any opinions or experiences from
nature photographers will be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

Click to expand...

--
Ron

Click to expand...

Gene Soldani said:

I was an "enthusiast" who loved and knew a bit about photography
when in my teens and early twenties, but that was more than 20
years ago. Now I finally have time and want to get back into the
hobby. I am a tech person so I'm very excited about going digital.
I've done some research and read many reviews on many sites, but
still can't decide on which camera. I'm interested in a camera that
performs well in simple family/home/pet situations, but my primary
interests are in wilderness landscapes and wildlife closeups and I
will want to occasionally make prints up to 16"x21". I would like
to keep the cost under $1000 for an initial set-up of a camera, a
WA lens, extra batteries and charger and a few filters. I'll add
tele and other equipment later. Any opinions or experiences from
nature photographers will be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

Click to expand...

Hi Gene,

Obviously, you will get many ideas from a variety of users who have had various experiences with different equipment - so I'll just throw a couple things to think about in here.

First, if you want good wide angle, it helps to start with a camera which has decent WA to begin with. That in itself narrows the field a bit. As mentioned, the Minolta or Fuji are possibilities. At the other end of the spectrum, you want something which either has, or is amenable with good telephoto. Several things come to mind. The Canon Pro-90 has a 3.3 megapixel sensor from which they get 2.6 megapixels of useable resolution. Coupled with the 10X stabilized optical zoom, that gets you about 370mm native. Very similar to the Olympus C2100UZ, but with a tad more resolution. Capable of excellent 8x10's and with good interpolation can go 11x16 for many subjects. Also, like the C2100UZ, it works well with the B-300 Olympus 1.7x zoom to get you out to reasonable telephoto range.

Not to sell any of the above short, but if you really want extreme telephoto range (digiscoping) you will be limited to only a few choices - all Nikon. The CP5000 has a 28-85mm native zoom. 5+ megapixels resolution and lots of manual capabilities. You can hang a 5x Eagle Eye OpticZoom and a B-300 on it and get 722.5mm with good results. This is a bit more than the 629mm you would get with the Canon Pro-90 and B-300.

The BIG plus with the Nikon is that if you decide you want to get some serious telephoto capabilities, you can buy a quality spotting scope - either a terrestrial type (Swarovski, Pentax, Leica, Kowa, etc.) or a celestial type (Meade, Celestron, etc.) and shoot through the telescope's eyepiece for incredible quality at ranges from 2000 to 6000mm (this is not a mis-print). The tiny lens on the Nikon CP series works wonderfully with the spotting scopes (or microscopes on the other extreme) to allow you to do long range tele for birding, etc., which you can't match with the best 35mm film or digital SLR's.

There are many possibilities, and making your decision isn't going to be easy because you really need to consider what you intend to do "most" with your camera. No single camera is best for all the various jobs you might want to do, but if you can prioritize, you may limit the choices to those which are best suited for the majority of what you want to accomplish.

Best regards,

Lin

http://204.42.233.244

Well point one is that you wont get interchangaeble lenses.. cameras with that function still cost huge amounts in digital cameras....(we are talking minimum 2000-2500+$) so most hobby photographers like me dont afford it, specially when the tech is advancing and a new digicam every now and then is the must for the person who wants to allways have the best....

but, id recommend the minolta dimage 7i for you, its got great zoom, 28 WA and takes 5 MP shots... 16"x21" with a digital camera is VERY hard... since that would on 5 mp result in about 120 dpi... wich isnt really photo quality(has to be above 200 for photo quality) but with interpolation and a bit of tricking youll get almost poster quality.

the price of the dimage 7i is around 1000$ and then theres the older model dimage 7, that is considerably cheaper... but that has some bugs that are corrected in 7i.

Then youll need some extra gear to like alot of storage (5mp pics arent small) tripods and NIMH or lion batterys(that is a must with the dimage 7 since its a very wellknown batteryhog) and external flash, and bags etc.etc. will land you somewhere a bit under 1500$ with a good deal....

But digishooting is worth all this

good luck with your new hobby!

Gillis

Gene Soldani said:

I was an "enthusiast" who loved and knew a bit about photography
when in my teens and early twenties, but that was more than 20
years ago. Now I finally have time and want to get back into the
hobby. I am a tech person so I'm very excited about going digital.
I've done some research and read many reviews on many sites, but
still can't decide on which camera. I'm interested in a camera that
performs well in simple family/home/pet situations, but my primary
interests are in wilderness landscapes and wildlife closeups and I
will want to occasionally make prints up to 16"x21". I would like
to keep the cost under $1000 for an initial set-up of a camera, a
WA lens, extra batteries and charger and a few filters. I'll add
tele and other equipment later. Any opinions or experiences from
nature photographers will be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

Click to expand...