I Got a Nikon Camera, I Love to Take a Photograph: After threatening to for ages, I finally stepped up. I upgraded from my ancient Kodak point-and-shoot. The Kodak served me well and I was able to take some good pics over the years, but its limitations got too, well, limiting. It fails miserably at night pics. It has a pretty narrow angle, so all my landscapes had to be made by stitching together multiple snaps in Photoshop which has its own pitfalls. It was a great starter camera and it served me well, but it was time to move on. I splurged on an SLR.

Actually, an SLR wasn't my first choice. My top pick was a Sony DSC-R1; a very SLR like camera but with a fixed lens. The main reason it was so attractive was the lens itself. It could go from a very, very wide angle to a 5x zoom. (I find zoom overrated and wide angle underrated for my needs.) A similar lens for an SLR would have cost more than the entire Sony camera.

The problem was that these models have been inexplicably discontinued by Sony, in favor of their own line of SLRs. The only place I was able to find these cameras was eBay and as usual, some sellers were fairly sketchy in the feedback department and digital cameras and supplies are a notorious playground for scam-meisters.

Instead, I began researching SLRs with the understanding that I wanted a kit lens that had a big range, since I really don't know where I'm going to go with this whole photography thing. I plan to spend some time learning the ways in which this camera lets me be creative, but there's the outside chance that a good deal of the time I'll just use it in automatic mode, meaning the lens that came with it had to be as versatile as possible.

Also, I was unconcerned with megapixels. Unless you are going to print huge prints -- and I have never made a print, just posted to the web -- you really don't need more than 5 or 6 megapixels. At 6 megapixels you can create a 7x10 print at 300 dots per inch; that's an exceptional quality print. And you can even get a perfectly satisfactory looking (say 150 dpi) 11x14 if you want. Now, things like cropping come into play (I tend to be a cropper) as does original image quality, but on the bottom line, I would economize on megapixels.

Well, I ended up with a Nikon D70s. It has a pretty good range -- excellent wide angle, only so-so zoom (around 4x equivalent), but it was a little more versatile that other SLRs I looked at. I saved a bit of money by buying the D70 which has been superceded by the D80 which has 10 megapixels vs. the D70s 6, and a few other advantages that weren't worth the extra money for me. I ordered from beachcamera.com which had the cheapest price coupled with the most reliable rating at pricegrabber.com. Of course, I subsequently went out and bought a 2gig memory card and carrying case. (The spending never ends, does it?)

I've only started to learn how to use it, but you can expect to be inundated with photos over the coming months and years.