I want to publicly thank John Lam for going the extra mile and helping me out.  I sent him an email a couple days ago, asking him for some advice on buying a new camera.  I told him that I was looking to spend around $1000 and wanted to go digital.  I also mentioned that I have no real camera experience (my knowledge of disposables just doesn’t help me :).  So, if you haven’t seen his pictures yet, go have a look.  I think the detail and quality are superb…

The advice that he gave was excellent.  He basically covered all bases for where I want to go.  To start, he said that I should take a local one-day “how to use your camera” class.  He said that those types of classes are offered by a local professional and they teach you basic things like aperture, depth of field, basics of composition and how to correct light meter readings using my own eye or the histogram (feature of the camera).

Now for camera recommendations, he said that he absolutely loves his Nikon D70.  He said that it is around $999 for just the camera or $1299 for a package camera & lens.  He also mentioned that the Canon A80 is available for around $300.  He said that it basically just sacrifices “performance” features like fast auto-focus and low-light performance.  John went into a little more depth on why (mainly due to my inexperience) it doesn’t really make sense to pay more for a camera than what the D70 costs… It just seemed that I should be a professional photographer if I wanted something “higher” end…

Finally, he pointed out some places to go online to do some more research.  He pointed me to dpreview.com for reviews, etc. and to usefilm.com to see some of the results that some people get with inexpensive equipment.