First Digital Camera, a little lengthy.....

Shutterbug Strasse

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Back in Oct. I posted a request for info on a recommendations for a
cheap digital camera for mostLY ebay stuff and email.
Well, that started a bit of an odyssey into the world of digital cameras. Whew, lot of info out there.
Thought I'd share my thinking and purchases with those of you that are
totally new to digicams.
After looking for cheap digicams, I just couldn't spend $300 on a
"cheap" camera that I would outgrow, just as I started getting familiar with it. lol.
So, I ultimately decided on the Nikon Coolpix camera. The current
model is the Coolpix 995. It can be bought on the web after Nikon's
rebate for under $600. After researching for countless hours, I decided on a path less traveled and decided to go for the Nikon Coolpix 990, which is the model that the 995 replaced. The 995 has
a 4x zoom, whislt the 990 zoom is 3x. The software for the 995 is
a bit more sophisticated and it samples a bit more on metering. But,
the clincher for me was the camera body. The 990 uses a magnesium
body and the 995 a plastic body. Frankly,I'm tired of a world of
plastic crap. But, really, the reason behind my searching out a
factory refurbished 990 for about the same money as a new 995 was
stickly the magnesium body. As I learned more about the Coolpix line,
it became obvious that they excelled in two areas: Macro and Digiscoping. Digiscoping is the mounting of a camera to a spotting scope or telescope. The Coolpix is the preferred camera for this due
to it's swivel style body and it's resistance to vignetting on digiscoping.
All my life I've been fascinated with long distance photography. I was never willing to shell out the bucks for a great long lens for a
35mm SLR.
With the new digicams, esp. the Coolpix, it is relatively easy to mount them to scopes and take pixs with the equivalent of 1000mm to
6000mm lens.
Towards this end, I purchased a Celestron C5 Cat scope on Ebay (yesterday). I will mate it with a Williams optical Coolpix telescope lens adaptor. This should give me the most bang for the buck in the
world of digiscoping. I'm hoping to see results with this that would
go head to toe with the Leica 77 APO spotting scope with advantages
of going very long for astrophotograpy with different lens arrangements.
Also, another great plus for the Nikon Coolpix is the number of web
resources for this camera. Great discussion and personal web pages
on using the camera and digiscoping.
Of course, as I stated earlier, the macro capabilites are simply amazing as well.
One final note:Batteries.
All rechargeable batteries are not the same. You'll need to buy
1800mAh batteries in order to be happy.
These are available on Ebay for about half the price I can find locally.
Also, it would seem that a digital wallet is the way to go after
buying two CF cards. They can be downloaded easily and it makes
more sense than buying more CF cards.
JRM

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Topic - First Digital Camera, a little lengthy..... - Jelly Roll Mozart 09:31:25 12/06/01 (1)

Re: Accessories will kill ya! - Rod M 19:27:31 12/13/01 (0)

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