I have been waiting for a digital camera with the ability to change lenses like with an SLR, using my currently owned lenses. Anything likely to come out in the near future?

-- Ed Evans (papaed@earthlink.net), May 29, 2000

Answers

Ed:
Are you rich? I mean really rich?
There are a number of very nice offerings - some already available and some waiting in the wings...

• The Nikon D1 is my personal Dream Camera - and at 4999.00 US dollars it's available today without a lens! The lens will cost you at least another 600 US Dollars.
• Nikon E2/E3 - now discontinued, but available. They are not worth the price most people are asking for them as they aren't as good as the D1 - but cost twice as much when they were bleeding edge.
• The Fuji Finepix S-1 Pro - also based on a Nikon body looks good - but it hasn't hit the street yet.
• Canon has just announced a digital EOS model - also looks good, but not available yet either.
• Canon & Nikon teamed with Kodak to make some serious pro digital cameras. These were bleeding edge technology and cost several ingots (retail was in the 14-thousand US dollar range - YIKES). While one of the models was recently updated for special low-light applications this is definately in the narrow-focussed professional realm and not worth a second look to folks like you and me.
• The Minolta RD3000 - big and bulky, but gets good remarks.

There's bound to be more comming soon. There are a number of issues with converting 35mm cameras to digital - normally the CCD chips are smaller than a 35mm frame of film - so the lenses are multiplied. The D1 multiplies by a relatively modest 1.5x (so a 50mm lens becomes roughly at 75mm lens equivelent) - I'm not sure what the others do.

Des

-- Dan Desjardins (dan.desjardins@avstarnews.com), May 29, 2000.