[RayChuang88]

Here's a follow-up article to the one I originally posted about the rapid sales of digital cameras.

I think what is happening is that with the price of digital cameras dropping fast, it's small wonder why film sales for the consumer market are rapidly falling. Note that even photo processing labs are taking full advantage of digital technology; they now have special machines that can take the stored photographs from flash memory cards, Microdrive cards and/or CD-R discs and process them into physical 3 x 5 " or 4 x 6 " photographs so you have a real printout of your shots.

[FairOpinion]

PING

[JoJo Gunn]

tech ping

[Hillary's Lovely Legs]

I will be purchasing a digital camera for Christmas. I am amazed at how low the prices are for a 5 mp with a huge screen and docking station. I can get an excellent model for $269. I am in heaven!

[Trajan88]

I'm still old school... my Leica M6 continues to perform like a champ without the help of bits and bytes.

Trajan88; TAMU Class of '88

[claudiustg]

Newspapers use little point and shoot digitals for a lot of the ad shots. News photographers get digital SLR's. The only film is the stuff the pages are printed on to burn the plates for the press.

[Max Combined]

Bought an Olympus Stylus Verve for my wife today and my daughter liked it so much she is getting one for herself.

[roadcat]

Digital cameras are great! I've used them for almost 10 years. My current model is a Canon Powershot S50 5-megapixel I bought a year ago for under $400 including accessories. I added a 4GB microdrive flashcard (yeah, 4gigabytes) for $200 (from a Muvo MP3 player). I can take thousands of pictures on a single trip and discard the ones I don't like. Rarely use my 35mm SLR anymore. And I can digitally send the pictures over the net for processing.

[FreeReign]

Okay,

I purchased a 6.1 MP 3x zoom digital camera today. I paid $375 for it. I liked the specs but I was worried of the brand. I purchased it anyway. It's a Kodak. I usually try to spend a little more time trying to figure out what the best buy is, but what the heck who has time.That's where you guys come in.

How did I do?

Anybody?

[this_ol_patriot]

They are just starting to put decent optics in digitals as far as I can see but does it make a difference yet?

I'll stick with my OM-2n, Zuikos and Tamrons

[Mo1]

I love digital camera's .. especially for the kids

So instead of wasting money on film and the processing fee .. I can just delete all those pictures of the floor or the door knobs and stuff animal pictures ... oh and let's not forget all those close ups of someones eye ball *L*

[WorkingClassFilth]

You can have the crappy digital camera. I'm getting my grandfather's vintage Atlas 10" F Series metal lathe with a mess of bells and whistles. Beats a hunk of plastic and a computer chip every damn time.

[NYC GOP Chick]

Really? I thought these are the hottest gift right now...

[Mustng959]

I had a cheap digital camera that didn't have "optical" zoom. You get what you pay for...terrible, out of focus pics.
Been deliberating between a popular Kodak CX7430 (4MP, 3x optical, 4x Digital) with a $165 price tag; and a Kodak DX6490 (4MP, 10x Optical, 3x Digital) with a $295 price tag. Opted for the CX7430 because of the price but really thought the 10x optical on the other was more versatile. Comments from anyone who has either one?

[Radioactive]

Just goes to show you.....technology is fleeting

I payed $900.00 for a Kodak DC210 ...a 1 megapixel camera about 6 years ago.

It was at the time the best one out.

Oh well.........now I can get one that is infinately better for less than a third of what I payed for my dinosaur.

[Mannaggia l'America]

I bought a Canon SD200 Digital Elph for my wife for Christmas. We have an old Olympus 1.3 megapixel that is slow as crap and bulky. The Canon SD200 was about the smallest camera I could find in the ~250 price range with optical zoom, and it had good ratings at cnet.com and amazon.com.

Last year, I got a HP PhotoSmart 145 photo printer, which has an LCD screen and card slots so she could print 4x6 pictures without a computer. One of these types of printers are highly recommended.

[SamAdams76]

My company is in the camera business and it's phenomenal how digital cameras so quickly surpassed film cameras.

I got my first digital camera three years ago. It was a 1.2 megapixel model that held maybe 16 pictures (at medium quality) before I had to empty the memory. It had no optical zoom, just 2X "digital" zoom which was kind of lousy (all it does is enlarge and crop the original picture). Still, the camera costed me almost $500.

This year, I got a 4 megapixel model with 12x OPTICAL zoom and a 256MB removable flash card that can hold hundreds of photos (you can use as many flash cards as you want up to 1GB each). The thing takes short movies too. It's a "professional" grade camera with all sort of buttons and options and only costed me $324 (employee discount).

I'd say film cameras are just about dead except maybe for the real professionals.

The only problem is keeping all this stuff backed up!

[reg45]

ping for Val

[Centurion2000]

Nice example of why I have a decent 5MP digital camera. I bought it about 14 months ago for about 450.00 with a 256MB digital card.

I have taken probably 3000 photos this year alone. I have never run out of batteries or storage space (~220 pics at 2500X1800 pixels, much more when the image is smaller).

Tonight at Christmas Eve celebration : 188 photos.

[Nowhere Man]

I think what is happening is that with the price of digital cameras dropping fast, it's small wonder why film sales for the consumer market are rapidly falling. Note that even photo processing labs are taking full advantage of digital technology; they now have special machines that can take the stored photographs from flash memory cards, Microdrive cards and/or CD-R discs and process them into physical 3 x 5 " or 4 x 6 " photographs so you have a real printout of your shots.

I know, I work in a drugstore photolab and although I still get quite a bit of film, a lot of times, it seems like there is a battle over the digital photo computer and scanner.