On a way diff note, those in the know about digital SLR's...

[thrance]

Compared to film SLR's how is the image quality? The same, a little bit more grainy <this is something I read somewhere once> sharper?

Thanks in advance for any replies.

[duotrouble]

I like the quality of my digital SLR much better than my film SLR. Of course, my film SLR is probably 20 years old now. It still works great and I love it. I mainly use it for black & white shoots now.

[frozentime]

Digital cameras still haven't reached the resolution you can achieve with good film, and probably will not be there for some time. However, it will likely not be long before they surpass the quality of all but very expensive lenses, so it may not make much difference if you aren't willing to drop several grand on your camera. Also, the detector arrays aren't quite as sensitive to light as some speeds of film. If you push a digital SLR too hard, you can see a little noise in the image, but they are getting really close now, and this may not be much of an issue soon. In the hands of someone who has really dropped the money and know what they are doing, you still can't beat the quality of film.

Now having said that, there are several nice features about the digital cameras that make them more attractive to the average user. Many of them have stabilization capability that help compensate for a photographers shortcomings, and they can generally do some level of image enhancement. Of course, you can still do much of this compensation with film in develop and transfer, but not many of us have that kind of control, and if you scan it in to do your corrections, you haven't really gained much over one that was digital to begin with. Generally, if you aren't doing portrait size prints are larger, you probably aren't going to notice any advantage for film.... and it sure is nice to be able to take 10 experimental shots and only worry about if you will need to swap your battery at some point.

[thrance]

Yarg, this is the deal. I wish to eventualy make prints, maybe even poster size images and be able to sell them <hopefully>

Currenlty, the option I was mainly thinking was using cafepress. Scanning my normal 3x4 and 4x5 photos at around 300dpi.

Anyways, I just want to be able to take photos that can be enlarged for such things without loosing to much detail.

I figured SLR's might work, because yeah, for one I can take alot of photo's of the same thing, pick what I want, and not worry about like 17 photos on a roll of 24 being trash.

I dont know how else to even try and break in the field, not trying to do it fulltime or anything, but everytime I ask a place, they say I need to already be published. So Im thinking to myself "I cant get published if your not gonna publish me!"

Ah well, enough of my rambelings, thanks!

[RahOtaku]

You break into the field by finding something you have that people want and no one else is providing as well as you are.

First of all. Scanning regular size photos at 300dpi are not going to expand very large at all.

Get a digital camera and some good Memory sticks.

And go make some photos.

You sound alot like my friend, his trick in making good pictures is that after taking 6 pictures one of them is by miracle good enough quality.

[thrance]

Well, thats what the site said to scan em in. For small prints and postcards mine seem to be ok.

I do almost only nature photography still <just dont have the means to branch out> but I hope to expand my talents with new subjects. This where I would love a digi over film. Ah well, just gotta puts around till I can do what I want to do