I am a multimedia student who is considering buying a camera to collect images for my multimedia projects and my portfolio. I am not sure whether I should buy a small 35mm camera and scan all my images from photographs or to buy a digital camera instead. My budget is about $300. What advice can you give me?

-- Lee Beijer (lbeijer@yahoo.com), September 02, 1999

Answers

Long before I bought a digital camera, I was using my old 35mm SLR and scanning. You can buy an excellent used 35mm SLR and nice lenses inexpensively. Even a new 35mm zoom point-and-shoot for about $100 gives wonderful results. Scanned 35mm photos have higher resolution than current digital cameras. I used both the Kodak PhotoCD process and print scanning on my personal flatbed scanner with excellent results. The PhotoCD's are 3072x2048, plus 1/2, 1/4, and 1/8 that, at about $1 per scan. The primary issues to weigh in my mind are the turn-around time, quality, and cost (which depends on the number of photos you need). Another issue is obsolescence. The digital camera you buy today for $300 will depreciate rapidly in value. A used or point-and-shoot 35mm will not depreciate much further, but it will always cost you money for film and time for film development and scanning. The more photos you take and the more selective you are about the ones you keep, the more it makes sense to go digital. These are some of the trade-offs. Good luck with your projects!

-- Jim Popenoe (popenoe@humboldt1.com), September 03, 1999.

Unless your primary purpose is posting 640 X 480 images on the web and/or manipulating them in photoshop (sure doesn't sound like it) I strongly advice you to go with old fashioned film for your purpose. The quality difference at this price range is extreme. You can do so much more tweaking with a film camera at this price range too.

For $300 price range I recommend pentax ZX-M and a 50mm prime to start. I have this set up plus 70-210 A lens and 24mm prime. I got the lenses on ebay for dirt dirt cheap. :)

-- benoit (foo@bar.com), September 03, 1999.

Digital is great - but if you want detail for $300 - go with film. I'll assume you want a camera and a scanner...
- stick more money in the scanner then the camera. Spend maybe 200 dollars on a scanner and $100 on a camera. Even the gnarliest brand- name (nikon, canon, pentax) film camera can turn out better resolution than most any digital at this time. You may need to look at the capabilities of the camera to judge suitability of purpose. Multimedia Projects covers a lot of ground. If you need lots of special features (exposure control, macro, wide variety of shutter speeds, etc) your budget may be a bit tight. Don't spend too much since you may want to replace it with a digital one down the road.

If, however resolution isn't a consideration you may be able to get a 640 X 480 digital camera in this price range. Don't misunderstand - even with the modest resolution of 640 X 480 pixels, you'll get some good images from a decent, low-end digital camera - but don't expect to print a magazine quality 8 X 10. If you're going to view them on a computer - then it will do nicely.

Good luck.

Des

-- Dan Desjardins (dan.desjardins@avstarnews.com), September 06, 1999.