Update: This article was written in 2005 so the advice on particular digital cameras is out of date. The basic information about digital cameras and how to buy one is still valid though.
We have a less out of date article on buying digital camera here.
If I were in the market to buy a new camera for personal use, it would be a digital camera not a film camera even though there are a lot of very good, new film cameras on the market. Here are my reasons why.
In the first place, I think the average non-professional photographer can get far better photographs of the kids, friends, vacations and most of the other subjects we all photograph regularly with a digital camera, than with film. I'll go a little farther, I think this is even true of most professionals taking personal pictures. And I'm talking about using the camera right out of the box without even reading the directions. If you can get around to reading the directions or even better, reading a good book about digital cameras, the results can be out of this world good.
Here are a couple of examples of why I personally think digital cameras are great. I've been taking family pictures since the 1950's using slide film and various hand-held 35mm cameras including very fine Nikons and Canons. Most of my pictures captured by these film cameras are good but there are few that are really great. I bought my first five megapixel digital camera two yeas ago and right away there was a huge improvement in my personal and family pictures: they were sharper, they had the proper color balance right out of the camera, the colors were better, and the even the composition was better. I attribute the improved composition to the fact that these cameras are very light and easy to use and to the fact that they can be hand held rather needing a tripod. All of this makes composition much easier. In short, my new digital pictures were, overall, far better than anything I had ever done on film. I was absolutely delighted.
Another example: I just bought an inexpensive Olympus three megapixel digital camera for my seven year old granddaughter. Right out of the box, her pictures of people were just as good as mine: all this with zero experience and zero training. Her pictures were maybe a little crooked once in a while, but the image quality was terrific. Then her five year sister started using the camera and her pictures were also just a good as mine. OK, they weren't shooting landscapes which are much more difficult, they weren't making huge prints, and they were shooting mostly people pictures which are usually fairly easy pictures to take. For the kind of pictures they wanted, the picture quality was wonderful. And the kind of pictures my granddaughters wanted to take are mostly what we all want to take: people pictures, vacation pictures, casual whatever pictures. For this sort of thing, even low definition, inexpensive digital cameras are great.
A second advantage of buying a digital camera is the obvious advantage of not needing to buy film or developing or scanning. This can actually be pretty huge if you take a lot of pictures. When you couple this to the ability to print your pictures easily on your own computer and printer, the savings can really add up, not to mention that printing your own pictures can make you feel a lot like Ansel Adams. Printing your own high quality, long lasting pictures is a lot easier than you might think. It's amazing the quality that is possible these days with a $100.00 Epson or HP printer. And with the built in color management that comes with all digital cameras and printers, perfect pictures with no adjustments at all are the standard. In fact you can usually sort the pictures right on the camera, delete the junk, and print the rest by sending them directly to your home printer without even looking at them on your computer. If you're not into printing your own pictures, it also works well to take the digital images to Walmart or any other photoprocessor and they will will print great looking photos for you.
A third advantage of digital cameras: If you are using a five, eight or higher megapixel camera it is amazing how big you can print your pictures. With an eight megapixel camera, twenty by thirty inch enlargements are definitely possible. This may take a little more software than you currently own and you will have to send the pictures to a lab for printing, but high quality, large images are definitely possible. One of the really neat things about digital images that make this possible is that digital images don't have grain like images recorded on film. This means that when digital images are enlarged, the digital pixels don't get tangled up with the grain of the film which creates all sorts of nasty problems in larger enlargement. The result is that enlarged digital images, if they are made by a good digital camera, are exceptionally clean and precise and sharp. (We'll get to which digital cameras are good in just a bit. The whole subject of enlarging digital images to big sizes will have to wait for separate article in a future newsletter.)
A fourth advantage of digital cameras is automatic white balance. Auto white balance is the ability of all digital cameras to give you clean, color-cast free photographs. With auto white balance on the job, picture grays are really gray and reds are red and whites are white and yellows are yellow. All digital cameras have this function, even though some do a much better job than others. You don't even need to think about white balance, the camera will do it for you automatically. If you really want to get complicated, you can set your camera for all kinds of custom white balances, but you don't really need
worry about this unless you are taking pictures under florescent light or tungsten light and actually not even then. All this custom fine tuning can wait for the time when you get to be a picky, finicky professional. The auto white balance that is set on your camera when you open the box works very well for almost every situation. Anyway, auto white balance is great. In the bad old days when everyone used film, pictures always had all kinds of unwanted color-casts. Probably the worst problem was shooting film under a big blue sky. Everything in every picture had a light blue cast. 
Most people never even notice this until they see an auto white balance picture along side a film picture. Then they are horrified at how cold and bluish and awful the film picture really is. If you look at a picture with snow in it that was taken with film on a clear blue-sky day, especially when the snow is in the shade, the snow will be an obviously blue color. No longer, with digital cameras, snow is white again. This problem of unwanted color casts in film was the whole reason photographic filters were invented, to eliminate color casts. For me, the ability to use auto white balance is enough reason, all by itself, to choose digital over film. The cleanness and freedom from color casts of digital images is so exciting to me I actually want to scream and turn cartwheels. Except that at sixty-four years old, cartwheels are not so easy, but I try.
Another advantage of going digital is being able to see the pictures right away. This is important not just because it's fun and cool, but because it makes immediate corrections possible. Blurry focus, over or under exposure, bad composition can all be corrected on the spot. And since great pictures are ephemeral things it is important to be able to make corrections right away. Once you leave that special location, or scene, or moment, the chance of capturing that great picture is gone forever. There is no going back and trying again next month after you've seen the pictures; ask me, I've tried lots of times and have never succeeded. Not so with a digital camera, you get a second chance right now. A further bonus is that being able to see pictures immediately means the photographer gets immediate feed back on how he/she is doing and thus the photographic learning experience is much easier and faster. This means that shooting digital makes it possible for almost anyone to become a very good photographer quite quickly. All that is needed is for the would-be photographer to take the time to look at the picture they just shot and if it's bad, try to improve it on the spot. Learning from immediate feedback is the best and fastest way to become a good photographer. All this was just not possible using film; almost no amateurs progressed further than taking uniformly bad pictures even after years of trying. I'm sure all of us have had the frustrating experience of taking a picture of a scene that looked gorgeous to the eye only to have it turn out awful when we got the film back a month later. No more, if you want to become a good photographer and capture that gorgeous scene as you saw it, it is far easily with digital than film, thanks to the immediate feed back.
I could go on and on about other advantages of digital cameras like how neat it is to immediately share the digital pictures you just took with far-away friends and family via the internet or how wonderful it is to organize and archive thousands of digital images using some of the new photo album programs or how satisfying to turn your digital images into photographic masterpieces using some of the new image correction programs. But I think you get the point. And, I do have plans to cover all these subjects in articles in future newsletters.
While we are at it, you might as well know some the downside of digital cameras as well. One problem is that it is a little harder to cover fast action with most of the lower end digital cameras than it is with film. This is partly caused by the lag incurred when the digital image is saved to the card. Most cheaper digital cameras need a second or two at least to save the current image to the storage card. Also, the auto focus in most less expensive digital cameras seems to be slower than in film cameras. This may be just my false imression though, as I am used to using either manual focus film cameras or very expensive auto focus film cameras, both of which are very fast. Anyway, I have a problem with digital cameras when I try to move rapidly from one shot to the next. This can be very frustrating when trying to capture an active three year old at his cutest.
Another place where digital seems to lag a bit behind film cameras is in the resolution of fine detail. This is mainly a problem in cameras having less than eight megapixels. In these lower megapixel cameras, very fine background detail in landscape photographs for instance is not as good as it is in 35mm film cameras. I'm talking about very fine detail, like low contrast detail in pine trees on a mountain two miles away. How often does the average shooter need to capture this kind of superfine detail though? Details of people and other subjects we often shoot with personal cameras are much larger and more contrasty and thus almost all digital cameras capture them easily. In fact, people actually seem to look much better with even low-end digital cameras than with film cameras. Why, I'm not really sure.
OK, so you are convinced and have decided to buy a digital camera. Now, which one of the twenty zillion digital cameras out there are you going to buy? First of all you need to understand the basic kinds of digital cameras. There are consumer digital cameras, prosumer digital cameras (part consumer and part professional) , and professional digital cameras. Consumer cameras are at the low end and professional cameras are the high end. Consumer and prosumer cameras tend to have a single built-in zoom lens and built in flash while the professional cameras are always SLR (single lens reflex) cameras and have no built in lenses or flash. (On SLR cameras, you can use any of the lenses that fit that camera and not be stuck with just one limited zoom lens. SLR cameras can be found in either the prosumer category or the professional category.) Your choice of camera depends on what you really need and on how much you want to spend. There is no sense in buying a $10,000 professional camera if you plan to use it to take pictures of the kids and your summer vacations; a smaller, lighter, more manageable consumer camera that has built in flash will do a much better job for your needs. On the other hand, if you are a professional photographer, you really need a high end professional camera that will capture very fine detail and have the capacity for absolutely clean, razor sharp images. As you might guess, professional digital cameras are worlds above consumer cameras in price as well as quality.
Here are my comments and recommendations for digital cameras that I have used personally. These recommendations are based entirely on my personal experience. My first digital camera was a Nikon 5700 which is a prosumer, five megapixel camera. The camera has an 8x zoom lens which works very well and a built-in flash. I paid around $800.00 for this camera from Calumet Photographic. I could probably have gotten it for about $700.00 at buydig.com. I used the 5700 mostly for family pictures and experimented with a few landscapes. I found this to be a terrific camera for people pictures that were printed no more than 11x14 in size; the images were just beautiful. My one problem with the camera is that when I tried to print larger pictures I ran into a serious noise problem. Digital noise is usually seen as very small red, purple, blue or yellow colored dots that are visible in the dark areas of the picture. In the 5700 images this noise was not visible in smaller pictures up to 11x14 but was very evident in larger pictures. In my opinion it ruined the pictures completely. I have read that even the newer eight megapixel Nikon 8700 still has something of a noise problem. For this reason I don't recommend the lower end Nikon cameras like the 5700 and the 8700 although I suspect that the higher end Nikon digital SLRs are pretty good. Read a review of the Nikon 5700 and 5800 by my favorite reviewer, Phil Ashley at dpreview.com.
After my Nikon 5700 was stolen, I bought an Olympus C-8080 digital camera. Again, this was a prosumer camera with built in zoom lens and built in flash. I paid around $800.00 for this camera from buydig.com. Given that this is a prosumer and not a professional camera, I am ecstatic about this camera. The image quality is absolutely superb. I have never seen any noise in any images from this camera no matter how much I enlarge the images. I have enlarged several images as large as 16x20 and 20x30 and even 30x40 and think they are pretty good. ( To enlarge pictures this much, additional software is necessary; I plan to discuss this issue in an upcoming newsletter.) I occasionally use this camera professionally to take simple landscape photographs that I don't plan to print larger than 20x30; the camera is nowhere near as good as the medium format 6x7 cm film camera or the 4x5 film cameras I often use professionally, but that is not to be expected of a prosumer level camera. I love this camera for family pictures, for scouting landscape scenes and for anything where I need a small, light camera. I recommend this camera highly. Read a review of the Olympus C-8080 by Phil Ashley at dpreview.com.
As I mentioned above, a couple of months ago I bought my seven year old granddaughter a three megapixel Olympus D-540M digital camera. I paid $139.00 for this camera from buydig.com. This is a very good example of an excellent consumer level digital camera. It has a built in 3x telephoto lens and flash. This camera has all the great image clarity and sharpness and cleanness that the Olympus C-8080 has but at lower resolutions. When taking people pictures, it is just amazing what this camera can do in the completely untrained seven year old hands of my granddaughter. The other day she took a picture of Joan and myself that I 
really think is the best picture we have of the two of us. This picture is never going to be printed huge but it makes a perfect 8x10 or even 11x14. And the camera is small enough to put in a shirt pocket and forget about until needed (or lost, if you're like me.) I recommend this camera if what you want is a small, consumer level, very easy-to-use camera for small size pictures. This camera is not a good choice if you want to take great landscape pictures or make large prints. Read a review of this camera by Phil Ashley at dpreview.com.
The next digital camera I plan on buying in the very near future is the 16 megapixel Canon 1Ds MarkII. This is very definitely a professional level digital camera that comes with the very hefty professional price tag of $8000.00. The camera comes with no lenses or flash. My hope is that I will be able to use this camera to replace both my 6x7 and 4x5 film cameras. I plan to use the 1Ds MarkII to capture digital images good enough to make razor sharp, 48x72 images with brilliant color and zero noise or other anomalies. I will, of course, have to use additional professional software to do all this. Luckily, I already have several very good Canon EF lenses that will work well on this camera. As this is a heavy camera, I don't expect to hand-hold it; instead I plan to use the camera almost entirely on a tripod. We'll see how all this works out, maybe it will work, maybe not; I'll let you know in a newsletter article in the near future. Again, read a review of this camera by Phil Ashley at dpreview.com.
You shouldn't go by my camera recommendations alone. The very best place I know of to go for independent digital camera reviews is, as you surely know by now, dpreview. Go to the in-depth review pages on this site to get very detailed, honest, independent reviews of almost every digital camera sold. I take Phil Ashley's reviews very seriously and never buy a digital camera without checking with him first.
As far as buying digital cameras goes, my favorite places are as follows: Buydig.com has very good prices; however, I've never had the need for things like returns to them, so I don't know how good they are in that department. Calumet Photographic will be a little more expensive but their service is as good as it gets. If you are a little unsure of what you are doing and need to for advice, Calumet is a good place to call. B&H Photographic in New York has a huge selection and good prices but the sales people tend to be a little unhelpful sometimes. As far as I know they are the biggest photographic outlet anywhere.
Good luck with digital cameras, new or old. If you have any questions about using them, maybe I can answer them, maybe not. At any rate, feel free to send me an email and I'll give it a shot.
