Hi all, When choosing a digital camera, you need to be aware that the top of the line digitals are just as complicated and just as powerful as top of the line film cameras. If you don't know what an f-stop is, if you don't understand the relationship between f-stop, shutter speed, and depth of field, you will have trouble with a high-end digital. My favorite camera (film) is a Nikon FM2 single-lens reflex (SLR) shooting 35-mm film. It can be operated in fully manual mode. My digital camera is an older Olympus D-620L single-lens reflex, through-the-lens viewfinder. It does not have adjustable f-stops/shutter speed, so I cannot control depth of field. It has automatic focus, so it sometimes focuses on the wrong part of the picture. Still, I can get by with it's 1.4-Megapixel image and some of the shortcomings. If I want a top quality picture, I use the Nikon FM2. I have a slide/film scanner, also from Nikon, that can generate a digital image of 1800 X 1200 pixels (2.1 megapixels) from a 35-mm slide or film image. This image is larger than the usual PC monitor screen at 1260 X 1024 pixels resolution. As a TIFF file, it takes up over 3 MB of disk space. Do you really want a 5-megapixel digital camera? If you are a point-and-shoot film camera photographer, you should probably start off with a point-and-shoot digital camera. For purposes of web pages and e-mail sharing, my 1.4 megapixel images have to be trimmed down drastically. Still, digital photography is the wave of the future. Traditional film is an endangered species. Whether you use a film camera or a digital camera, you need to match your needs and your skills with the camera's features and capabilties. A mis-match at either end will result in an unhappy photographer and unsatisfactory pictures. Best wishes, Jim Shields in central Indiana (USA) ************************************************* Jim Shields USDA Zone 5 Shields Gardens, Ltd. P.O. Box 92 WWW: http://www.shieldsgardens.com/ Westfield, Indiana 46074, USA Tel. ++1-317-867-3344 or toll-free 1-866-449-3344 in USA