I am living in Vietnam. I travel a lot to Singapore and probably will buy a didgital camera there - unless I resort to USA mail order.

I want a good camera with the ability to produce excellent printed images up to 13" by 20" as I have seen in a recent Epson (1270) exhibition in Saigon.

I really want at least 28mm wide angle and would love zoom to go up to a minimum of 135mm or 180mm. An all-in one camera with a decent zoom range would have been perfect as I already have a Minolta 9000 with a heap of lenses and I can't be bothered carrying it about. The Sony DSC D770 looked perfect (I need eyepiece diopter) .... but why in Gods name did they limit such a potentially fine camera to 1.5 Megapixels??? ...... Then make the F505, which everyone complains about because of no viewfinder a 2.1Megapixel unit. Very strange!

I wwould really like a good digital camera that will produce big prints ..... but without having to pay Nikon D1 price. Can anybody advise a newcomer?

Many thanks, John McMillan

The Sony DSC D770 looked perfect

-- John McMillan (mcmillan@hcm.vnn.vn), April 16, 2000

Answers

You will be hardpressed to get highquality prints from a 2 to 4 megapixel camera beyond 8x10 prints. Look at shelling out 10 to 20 grand to get good quality large digital prints. If you really want the excellent quality large prints, look into a Medium Format Camera, NOT a digital camera. But then again, you might end up spending 10 grand for the medium format camera anyway. sorry.

-- David Erskine (derskine@visteon.com), April 17, 2000.