Getting into photography

[EXreaction]

Right now I don't plan on buying a camera for a while anyways, unless, I can find one at a steal of a price, at least 1/4 off of what they are listed as.

[J1mmy]

Well, have you considered eBay?

[EXreaction]

I've looked.

eBay is getting worse all the time, rarely do I see anything more than 5% off of the retail price. I've seen the price on used items sell for more than they cost new off of amazon quite often.

[ShuckyD]

If you want to check out some nice camera reviews and hear about upcoming cameras, etc. I would suggest Digital Camera Reviews and News: Digital Photography Review: Forums, Glossary, FAQ as I have used them as a reference many a time and also wrote a few reviews over there at one point or another.

[DoubleK]

Janesville Ex, you can always come on over to our overpriced best buy

I am starting to notice that most smaller ticket items are around 30% more here.

[EXreaction]

Janesville is probably more like 90 minutes from here, I live 60 minutes north of Milwaukee.

That dpreview site is very nice.

[butch81385]

I second DPReview for reviews.

I would suggest you look into Digital. While a film camera is a cheaper initial purchase, it is much, much more expensive to operate...

Think about it this way: Practice makes perfect, so you are going to want to do a lot of practice.... And that is a lot of film... and the same amount of development....

When I studied abroad in England (and traveled Europe) I took about 8,500 pictures.... Obviously buying that much film and getting it all developed would be ridiculous. However, with a DSLR you don't have to worry about getting the shot perfect the first time.. you can take a shot, look at it, and adjust your setting and retake it... Some more serious photographers that I know take it one step further... They love their film camera and developing their own stuff, so they use a digital camera (most of them have some money so they still use DSLR) to take proof shots until they found the settings that they wanted. They then transfer those settings over to their film camera and take (hopefully) the perfect shot on the first try.

As for the DSLR, if you are just getting started, I would say that you don't even need to go as high as the D40 in price... I personally use an Olympus E-500. I was able to get an open box from a store (still new, just opened packaging) for around $400 with 2 lenses... The downside is that while it is much cheaper for getting a simple set-up, adding more lenses will be more expensive since they aren't as popular as a Nikon or Canon.

Here is the camera that I own:
Olympus E-500 (EVOLT): Digital Photography Review

Also, since you will not want to carry around a big SLR (digital or film) everywhere, I would suggest in also getting a point and shoot that has the features that you need but is still cheap for when you out doing something where you need to be able to toss your camera into your pocket.

This is what I use for my point and shoot: The Olympus Stylus 725 SW
Olympus Stylus 725 SW: Digital Photography Review

I managed to get one of the very few that was made for the US market (It was originally designed with the "Stylus 725 SW" engraving instead of the mu character which is the European counterpart, and was sold to me by Olympus as a refurbished).

On your way to becoming a great photographer, I would suggest checking out DPChallenge - A Digital Photography Contest They have weekly free challenges to compete in, and you can get critiques on your ideas as well as technique. There is also a paid section which gives you more challenges and access to sell on DPC Prints! - Buy Prints, Photography, Artwork . My stuff is at Available Prints by Bill Buchko - DPC Prints!

Hope that helps.

[EXreaction]

Thanks for the info. So far I am really liking the looks of that Sony, but I'll have to try it out some time (hopefully they have one at BB or some other localish store).

[KarmaKiller]

I'll throw out another suggestion.
A couple of months ago we were looking for a nice camera, and ended up with the Panasonic FZ-18.
Might check into it. It's full of options, and I mean FULL. And they are pretty fairly priced. This thing does any and everything, plus with a couple of perks that DSLR's won't/don't do.
Panasonic Lumix DMC-FZ18 digital camera specifications: Digital Photography Review

[EXreaction]

I went to Best Buy yesterday and gave a few of them a feel.

Wow, the Sony fit my hand perfectly. The D40 seemed a bit on the small side to handle very well, and the Canon Rebel was a little better than the D40, but the layout of buttons wasn't as nice as the Sony.

I also have looked into lenses a bit for the Sony and Minolta lenses are supposed to work on them. So I took a look around ebay and lenses could be gotten for pretty cheap (some times you could even find older Minolta SLR's with lenses for less than the cost of the lense).

But right now I don't think I'll need much for lenses. The only thing I think I may need/want is a macro lense, but I'll have to try the kit lense with macro first and see how well it does.

After trying out the a300 though I am debating on getting that over the a200. The only difference AFAIK is that the a300 has a live view mode for the LCD as well, which looked really nice because you could tilt the LCD up and around a bit for shots that would otherwise be very difficult or impossible. I am not sure if that is worth $100 though.

The a200 would cost $400 and the a300 would cost $500 off of the Sony website (they give $100 off on the first purchase). So that appears to be the cheapest that I can find it anywhere.