AmbergrisCaye.com Home Forums Talk Belize Photographs Chat Shopping for a new camera your recommendations?

Just make sure you have a good UPS to protect said hard drive. I've lost several HDs here to BEL, including one expensive firewire one on its first use in Belize. The power went off when I was using it, then came back on less than a second later with (probably) an immense voltage surge. Bye-bye hard drive.

I now only use self-powered USB drives which seem to have plateaued at 320 gb. Maybe anything larger would demand more power than USB can provide. So I have a couple of them, and may get more as the need arises. Combined with a laptop, which of course has its own in-built UPS, my hard drives are fully protected.

I also use 16gb USB flash drives, which cost me US$18 each.

My reflex lens had/has a fixed aperture of f8 so it's only suitable for hand-held use outdoors in daylight, not that hand-holding a 600mm lens is particularly easy. This is decades before anti-vibration technology.

All my early photography was with a Zeiss Contina, a very simple but high quality viewfinder camera with absolutely everything manual and no automatic advice. Nonetheless I got some pretty good results. I recall taking it to a "specialist" camera shop to have the focussing recalibrated as infinity no longer seemed to be at infinity, and that was the end of the camera. They gave it to the Saturday morning help to work on, and he totally destroyed it internally.

I also loved using a little Minox 35mm camera, which did have auto-exposure but nothing else. Oh, and a superb lens and very good shutter. That could also produce wonderful results (especially in low light) and did for several years until I was relieved of it by muggers in Johannesburg!

Since I first got the Minox, at around the same time I bought the A1, I've always had a good but bulky camera plus a pretty good pocketable one. If that was good enough for Patrick Lichfield (famous English photographer who was related to the Queen) then it worked for me. My pocket camera now is a Samsung Digimax L85, bought for just over $100, which produces results often indistinguishable from my 5D. Just a small difference in price though!

On my DSLR I'm moving more and more towards using primes rather than zooms. Although in theory a zoom should increase your creative capability I find it works in exactly the opposite way. Instead of studying the scene and positioning myself where I'd get the best shot, I tend to stay where I am and think "zoom". That may work for Mazda but it gets me into an automaton mood and kills creative thought. And of course, zooms are generally far slower than primes. I've gone back to keeping a standard 50mm lens for "walk-around", and I'm finding I'm getting better pictures. A lot depends whether a camera is an adjunct to other activities, or whether the purpose of going out is to take photographs. I take my SLR (and all my lenses) on trips whose sole purpose is to take photographs, of whatever may appear in front of me, whilst if I want to go out and do something and have a camera with me "just in case" then I just take a compact.

yes,, good points about BEL and the 'limited' potion of their name!
we do keep everything on a ups. i wish i could get one big huge one and put it right after the meter!
i too am using externals. i have 3-250s. two are redundant with photos and music, the 3rd is Mrs. Barns for business crap.
but when this particular buddy of mine offers up a 'deal', it is going to be a good one. we call him "Re-bate".
he is so good at sniffing out good deals, that allot of the time after he sends in whatever coupons are connected, he comes out money ahead!
so when he said he found some good, brand name drives and he would bring us one,, hell yea!
also he tossed in an internal card reader for the new computer.
said it will be around 100 bucks, including the reader.
even with all this inside, i will still be using the externals for more back up.
thanks for reminding me,, i should do a back up right now!

i also am in the prime is better way thinking. the next 2 lens on the list are also a 50 and some flavor of wide angle. for the last 15 years, my 'walking round' lens has been a 35-70 2.8. it has been the bread and butter lens the whole time. but now the small sensor effects it. bummer for the wider end!
could be good, or bad, have to see, but Mrs. Barn is wanting to upgrade from her canon S-5 to a dslr.(that's the good part). that means nikon and that she will be digging around in my lens cases.(this is the scary part!) but, when this happens, we will add on one of those 2 lens! or both!!

If there are any more HDs at that sort of price please bear me in mind. I do need another drive pretty soon.

If you folks are shopping for lenses and stuff now, there is an incredible eBay rebate deal going on in conjunction with MSN Live Search, 30% off a seller's buy it now price. The link below will get you started. This is not like the SB proponents' posts, I really don't have a horse in this race. Although, in Microsoft's case, I liked the product so much I bought the company!

30% eBay rebate with MSN Live Search

Are you sure this "30% rebate" isn't a scam?

I have the Canon 40D, I like it, although it is being repaired right now due to an error 99 (which means anything) The repair shop said it was probably the shutter which is weird because after breaking a shutter last year cleaning my Canon XT Rebel, I don't mess with anything internal anymore. Plus, I don't handle my equipment rough and keep it in the case when not in use. I guess it was justone of those things. There is a Canon authorized repair service in Merida Mexico also, FYI.

That's good to know, because the LCD screen on top of my 5D doesn't work properly.

Peter, it's a Microsoft site, and Microsoft is known for not scamming.

Wait a minute. I forgot about Vista.

OK, 1 scam.

Seriously, it was for real, and for months. It's at like 8% now, but likely to go back to 25-30 closer to Christmas. I made several purchases, rebate went into my paypal account instantly.

Thanks for the info on the repair shop, ccc.com

I bought the G9, but the prices of the 5D are plummeting with the mark II's debut, so I'm going to get one of those for my main out-of-the-water camera.

If you're thinking of a 5D, look up and follow http://photography-on-the.net/forum/showthread.php?t=462416&page=348. It's a thread dedicated to the 5D, with most contributions by pros.

Thank you, Peter. That's a fun thread. And what great images. Well, I'm getting one, but I'm going to be patient and let prices dip some more. The person in that thread who claimed to have picked one up for $750, now that would be sweet.

I wouldn't mind a refurbished one at that price, as long as I knew for a fact that it was refurbished by Canon. I've learned a lot in a short period of time here, and as you say, it's the lenses that'll get you. Gonna need the L lenses I can see. Or rather can't see, I probably won't be able to tell a difference but it will be in the back of my mind if I don't have the lenses everyone says you need to make the 5D perform to it's best.