Digital Cameras

mine is three years old – an Olympus 1400L and I’m still very happy with it… i bought as expensive as I could afford at the time and the Olympus was widely hailed as the closest to an SLT for under 3k… i paid 1200 quid for it

it will take around 130 640×480 shots on the smallest 8mb card….. and around 26 of 1280x 1024 on the smallest 8mb card which is grand for nearly anything unless you’re doing billboards….

nearly all the photos here are taken with either it or my trust Minolta SLR…..

I’m a bit out of touch what the current market is like except if anything happed mine, I’d replace it with the current top of the range Olympus although a lesser model would probably do….

general advice I cam up with after rewing a range for dot.ie magazine two years ago is stick with a traditional camera manufacturer…. lenses and usability tend to be of a much better quality than say with a camera from Epson or Hewlett Packard

Also try and buy one with a treaded outer edge to the lens so you can fit a UV filter just to protect the lens from scratches etc…

Canon have a new model out which offers the capacity to use existing Canon fit lenses and is somewhat cheaper than earlier attempts to merge conventional lenses and digital backs, I think the model reference is D30.

It scored well in some recent tests.

the current high end of the Olympus range allows lenses from the slr range to be attached as well afaik.

At the other end of the cost spectrum – the Kodak 3800 offers a very compact, minimal moving parts [digital only zoom], flashcard compatable, 2.1MP camera. Comparable to the renound analouge Olympus Mju-1 in features and design beauty.

I can’t give up my SLR for hi-end images, and extended travel. Digital film [flash card] is still expensive and battery charging tedious when abroad.

The Kodak 3800 compact digital is ideal for site photos, model and drawing photos [it has a macro setting], and of course happy snappys.