Digital camera recommendation

I'm looking for a good digital camera. I've narrowed it down to either an Olympus c-750 Ultra Zoom, or a used or reconditioned Minolta DiMAGE 7hi. Any information or comments would be greatly appreciated.

I use the 5MP Sony Mavica 500. I find that the advantages of writing directly to a 50 cent mini CD-R disc are huge: for one thing, I was always running out of Compact flash cards and etc., and I never had the time to sit and down load them on to the computer to free-up the old cards quickly enough. With the mini CD-R, I just pop it into the drive, open whatever I want in Photoshop, and then save the processed image onto my hard drive. The camera can take 3 shot bursts and write to the disc later, so action shots are not really a problem.

The 4MP Mavica, which is cheaper, is also an outstanding camera. I've used it to take photos of the Egyptian Collection at the MMA which my daughter's college art history teacher has used in her lectures; so the images weren't too bad, I guess.

Whatever you do, recognize that digital cameras are evolving so quickly that anything you buy today will likely be obsolete next year, so you might not want to spend too much money on one right now. Personally, I am waiting for the Favon chip to become more common before I sink major money into a new digital camera. It's used now in a Sigma digital camera which sells for about $2K and has some awkward programming issues, but I think that within 2 years we'll see 20MP cameras with that chip that will rival any 35MM film camera in terms both of optical and tonal resolution.

I'm a fan of Canon and Nikon. Fwiw, Consumers Reports reviewed DigiCams a few months ago. It would be easy to dig out a copy at your local library. I will also second the recommendation for Steve'e DigiCams.

In general, I would not buy the top of the line. You know how these things are. The middle technology is currently very good, and you will want a new one in a few years.

Thanks to everybody that replied to my post. After much researching the web, I decided to go with a used Sony F717 and got a pretty sweet deal at eBay with all the accessories that I was looking for.

Being new to this or any other forum, I don't know if everybody that replied will get to see this post. Can I "reply to all?"

Thanks again for your input. Hopefully you will get to see this.

Confused about forum protocol.

Being new to this or any other forum, I don't know if everybody that replied will get to see this post. Can I "reply to all?"

No such luck. You can reply to multiple names, however, simply by separating them with semi-colons. No spaces are required.

There are some tricks you can use that make this relatively easy. One is to open two browsers and copy names from one and paste them to the other. Another is to open notepad and copy the names into that, and then copy the result back into the browser.

Good luck with the Sony!

One other thing...

There is a UseNet forum called "rec.photo.digital" where people really get into this subject. If you find yourself needing more advice or wanting to go deeper, I highly recommend it.

There is one English fellow there who mates his Nikon to a spotting scope and takes bird photos. The results are stunning.

These people know about all aspects of digital photography. Cameras, editing software, printers, and so on. They are *very* good.

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