[402368]

Hello everyone, I need some advice.

I bought my A70 last year and shoot over 7000 pics, mostly my new born baby. They look beautiful on LCD, very good on monitor and not so great on print (worse than my old auto p&s). Then I learned to tweak them in Photoshop and is ok now.

One day, my father showed me his over 20 years old Nikon FE2 with a 50mm lens and told me to shoot with reala 100. It's amazing, much better. But it's not convenient, and when I shoot outside one day, a guy with a 300d look at me in disgust.

Then I downloaded samples of 300d and d70 and print them. They still need tweaking and not any better than FE2.

I think the problem is I like to see photos on print.

Any advice from you experts? Thanks.

[Excalibur0991]

I am not an expert, here is what I think about this issue.

1) How big are your prints?

2) FE2 might be considered as an antique, but don't let this bother you. A 50mm prime lens mounted on your FE2 gives you much better quality than the 300D with that cheap zoom lens that comes with the package.

http://www.photo.net/equipment/beaters/

This is a good article about "old beaters" that will probably make you proud of your FE-2

Happy shooting!

[tunster]

It could be your monitor that is not calibrated to the printshop's colour profile. If you are referring to colour issue...so you have to actually get a printout and compare with the original digital image and set your monitor.

Some of the labs are no good in printing digital. eg. Kodak (very unsatisfactory). Maybe you can try those labs equipped with Fujifilm Frontier machines. Those are really good.

[Martin@SEPHIROT]

In general, film is better than digital. Unless you compare with those top of the line DSLR which gives similar quality to film.

reala film is one of the best ISO 100 negatives I ever used. So if you compare it with entrence level DSLR, film is of course better.

Please don't mind how other people's looking at you. The camera, in simple, is just a black box with shutter, springs and mirrors etc. All you need is an eye of photographer to "see" beautiful things around you and technique to capture what you see with your camera. Only good equipment alone won't produce great image.

For development, better get connected with a good one and maintain good relationship with it. As this relationship is built, you can place your custom order like"please do not alter my exposure and color".

No matter what equipment's in your hand, please remember to enjoy photography.

[402368]

Thank you to you all.

I think both film and digital have their advantages, and I agree it's the photographer not the camera who take great photos.

Another problem comes up. My boy starts to walk and run now, it's very difficult to use the manual focus FE2, A70 even worse. I tried my friend's Nikon F65, the AF is hit and miss, I don't know it's me or the camera. Asked my father how to shot moving objects back then without AF, he said "手動跟蹤對焦".

Does it make sense to buy a film AF SLR now?

[tunster]

402368, In that case you need a DSLR, like a 300D or above equipped with USM lens.

[Martin@SEPHIROT]

If you are not satisfy with digital quality, please stick with film machine.

There's a point of tunster's suggestion as entrence level DSLR is not too good physically, a non-body dependent focusing system is need (ie. focus speed is depend mostly on lens, not the camera). In this case, Cannon will make a good choice.

But still the same word, 300D can never match film quality. If you think film is of better quality, and the conveinence of digital is not a must, it is still sensible to buy a film SLR.

If you need a good, fast SLR with reasonable price, and if you prefer Nikon, go for a F80. Of course, if you have more budget, F100 should be better.

If your main reason of buying a new SLR is to photo your son, I'll suggest you buy a digital one. As capturing kid's movement and expression can take quite a number of shots to get small amount of good print, using digital can save you a lot in film and develop. Of course the memory is expensive, it is always reuseable.

Better consider the main use of your new camera before going to camera shops.

Enjoy photography!