Spending more on equipments doesn't guarantee better pictures, it merely allows you more flexability with focusing, shutter speeds etcetera which in turn can (and when used correctly) lead to far superior photographs.

Well said MK - just as spending more money on your wardrobe does not mean a person has more taste, spending more money on fancy cameras does not mean a person will take better pictures.

leonberger, my apologies for my ambiguous statement. When I wrote "you," I meant people in general and not you specifically.
You also make an excellent point about one advantage of the regular film camera vs. digital, i.e., the better quality of prints, especially enlargements.
I know there are many great advantages to using a digital camera and I've seen friends become better photographers since they started using them. But for old fashioned me, well, I'm more comfortable with my two old fashioned ones....at least for now. Maybe some day.....

"spending more money on your wardrobe does not mean a person has more taste"

Let's see their wardrobe before we judge them....

PS: If anyone's interested in seeing the prizewinner taken with my little old Canon point-and-shoot, check out:
http://www.wyomingcompanion.com/photo03/p03best.html

A very atmospheric photograph, I'd be interested in what its appearance would be in monochromic tones.

Howard - what a beautiful photograph - very soulful, full of passion and warmth.

Thanks for sharing

I prefer the smaller 512mb cards as oppossed to the 1-4GB models. If your card fails you've lost too many photos.

Plus, the 512mb cards fill up a CD-R perfectly.

HowardR,

I agree, a bit of thought could make a good photo great.

I was just being picky with words.

Jim, I'm curious. Have you had failures with the Compact Flash or Secure Digital (or other) cards?

My experience with such things (although not with digital cameras, since I'm new to them)is that they are extremely reliable.

My husband and I did talk about the "putting all your eggs in one basket" risk of using large drives, but decided to do it anyway.

I'd love to know your experience (or others, of course, but you're the one who mentioned this issue).

Thanks!

Gayle

Gayle...the CF (and other cards) are extremely reliable. That said, I had a Lexar 1-gig card that would not re-format after I used it a few times.

I prefer to use smaller cards (512mb is my choice) because they create a nearly full CD-R which lets me edit and view images by CD, instead of scolling through several hundred (or thousand) images on a large card.

I also make a portion of my living shooting travel stock and simply can't take the chance of a 1-4 gig card failing or locking up. If one of my 512 cards fail, I haven't lost the entire shoot.

I carry 6 SanDisk Ultra 512 cards. That provides me with just over 400 images per day (if I shoot that much), shot in the "raw" format. I burn CDs as I go using an Apacer portable CD burner.

I just returned from France & Italy and this system worked flawlessly.

Your 4-gig card will probably never give you a problem, but, personally, I'd be more comfortable with smaller, multiple cards.

Thanks, Jim.

Good thoughts, and some good ideas as well.

I've done some reading about the portable CD burners and suspect that we'll end up with one of those before too long.

I appreciate your insight.

Gayle

Saw the discussion of CF reliability and had to join...

You won't hear about others problems...until you have a problem. I used a 2G card on a big trip...worked fine throughout the trip. Got home and tried to download. Nothing there! Card was corrupted somehow...went to my local photo shop. And THEN I heard about the problems others have had with losing photos on corrupt cards. It's rare, at least 3 people in the store had some type of serious compact flash problem at one point or another. And the photorecovery services wouldn't be in existence if there wasn't a market.

After too much time and several different photorecovery programs I managed to recover about 60% of the photos.

Then I met a techie who said matter of factly "no surprise". I'd never buy any card larger than 1 G.".

I now believe that 512K cards are a robust choice. You get plenty of shots...and you can burn them onto 1 cd when you download.

stupid Q, but what is 'raw' format? the highest resolution?

flygirl: Not a stupid question at all. Yes, RAW is a different format, at extremely high resolution. The advantage of it over JPEG (or similar) is that it doesn't lose any resolution, even when being cropped and "saved" repeatedly. JPEG-type files compress each time they're saved, which is actually a slight loss of pixels. Over time, this could result in less sharp pictures.

However, RAW takes up so much space that few (except professionals) use it. My camera's memory card will do about 1/4 the photos in RAW that it will do in JPEG fine, so we'll use JPEG fine unless we decide that one photo opportunity is really begging for "the best."

I hope that helps.

Gayle

There's actually a number of different formats for RAW files as well. I know several manufacturers of digital cameras use different formats. Nikon uses .NEF

One downside, as Leonberger mentioned is that RAW files can be really big in file size in order to hold all that information about each pixel - color, saturation, intensity. Another downside is that they can't be displayed on the web as a RAW file. They must be converted to a JPEG or GIF or one of a couple of other formats. These formats automatically look for ways to cut down on information in th file, using compression formulas to keep track of pixel information.

An upside though is that when printed, as long as the printer has the capability to intepret raw files, and that it's a good printer to begin with, you can get better clarity prints. Also helps if you're going to do after-work in editing software such as Photoshop, to have as much "raw" material to work with as possible.

thank you! you guys must have really powerful computers. that would drive me insane - on my work one anyway, my home one (desktop) is pretty dang zippy - all new insides as of last month. (my work one is a brand new laptop but it's a PIG).

Howard, I viewed yourphoto. What a serene,peaceful and quiet picture.

Thanks wombat7 and robbiegirl for the kind words. I think it's one of the best--if not THE best--I've ever taken. I took a few years ago. We returned to the site in the Teton last August and were very saddened when we discovered that those items from the past were no longer there! I felt like I lost some friends. Happily. the picture still lives!

wombat7 and robbiegirl, thanks for the kind words. I think that photo is one my the best--if not THE best--one I've ever taken. I shot it few years ago in the Teton. We returned to the site last summer and were saddened to discover that those relics of the past were no longer there. We felt like we had lost a friend. Happily, however, I still have the photo to capture our special moment.....and that's what taking photographs is all about.