Search for the holy grail

Just thoght I would post on the progress of my search for the holy

grail. I am going to buy a camera for my wife and have picked the EOS

Elan 7N along with the 420 speed light. If it were for me only I

would have picked the digital 10D. She hates digital from the Olympus

point and shoot 3040Z which I bought her a few years ago.Remember

digitals weren't all that great then with no interchangeable lenses.

I can't change her mind so my best choice is to just say Merry

Christmas and get a 10Ds body for me a bit later and I can use her

lenses and flash. In the meantime, instead of a scanner for $500

bones, Costco will develop a 24 roll prints and negs and include a CD

for a total of $8.75. Then I can mess with them on the computer.

What say you?

Ni!

" I can't change her mind..." <p> Have you shown her 10D/300D/20D results? If so, and you still can't, buy the filem camera for her.

The Elan 7 was my first SLR and loved it. My vote would be go for a used Elan 7 (original) no ECF and when she finally wants the 10D you wont have much wrapped up in the 7 body.

Sorry. Sorry. You see what I mean? I just get carried away. I'm really most awfully sorry. Sorry! Sorry, everyone.

 

Alfred,

 

Those CD's from Costco are going to be pretty low-resolution compared to the output of a 10D. You probably would be really pushing it to get more than a 5x7 print from them. Those CD's are really only designed for web-sharing of the photos, anyway, not for print output. You can mess with them on the computer, but that's about it. If that's enough for you, then you have a good plan. If it isn't, then you might want to reconsider your scanner decision. There are scanners that will do a decent job on 35mm film for a lot less than $500, BTW.

 

If the wife's insiting on film, then by all means get her the film camera. You're right about being able to use all the accessories and lenses if you later buy a Canon DSLR. You might want to have your film done at a better lab than Costco, though. I've seen too many rols of film on the floor getting stepped on, not to mention that they don't even separate their film-handling area from the store with a glass enclosure. That means every bit of dust that gets stirred up in the store can potentially land on your film. Yuck.

I second Alan. The scans that I have got from a number of retail outlets are useless from the point of doing any high quality home tinkering. You will be hard pushed to produce a beter print than the one you got from Costco in the first place. Scanner, 10D or DREBEL are the way to go.

 

Drebel, kit lens, JPEG large fine, connected direct to a pictbridge HP printer (for $150). You will be amazed at the results on an 8x11 print and that is just doing things in the bare basics.

As others have pointed out, only the output from a real film scanner will give you good enough output to manipulate and reprint. You may want to look at the cost of a film scanner vs. development by local pro-labs who do real film scanning. How many rolls do you burn per week?

Been there, done it. Been doing it for people with no other way, because they have photo's without negs from the previous century. Get the 10D, and don't bother with film. It adds an extra step to lose a lot of quality, no matter what the quality of the scan, even if it is only dust and scratches...

Hey, I love my little Elan 7E. I actually use it more than my 10D. It's great to view sparkling chromes on a light table--no post processing needed. With my 10D, it's fun but very labor and computer intentive to get a great image.

...or now... 2004

<I>...or now... 2004</i><P>How tired and pathetic...

Depends on how much she shoots. Do the math.

<P><I>How tired and pathetic...</P></I><P>How rude. By insulting someone for their

opinion you only heap dung upon your own head. Later your curse will return to you in

double measure.</P>

<i>How tired and pathetic...</I><P>...are the continuous posts of bashing digital where

it's not appropriate or called for. Aren't there enough threads bashing digital and

debating the qualities of dig vs. film? Why start the fire here?<P>

 

<I>How rude. By insulting someone for their opinion you only heap dung upon your own

head. Later your curse will return to you in double measure.</I><P> Call me rude. Heap

the

dung. I didn't insult the poster himself/herself, just the digital hate comments are tired

and pathetic.

Nothing personal towards the poster, just their comment.

I would still work the digital angle if you can. I haven't done it too often, but the scanned version of pictures I've had done off my Elan IIe to date have not compared well with the direct images taken off the 300D. I used to get my film scanned all the time before the 300D and had not done it for a while. I think I have been spoiled.

 

I a roll of Fuji NPS 160 then took the film to a local high quality photo shop. I had them scan it at the same time.

 

The prints were beautiful, stunning color, sharp as a razor. The scanned images were...disappointing. I spent an hour or two playing with my own scanner trying to get a better result. It was nothing at all like I captured off the 300D in terms of sharpness and clarity of the scanned image.

 

In the attached picture, while it's options I need to take some windex to my scanner bed, it is not so apparent just how much clarity ws lost in the scanning process. My daughter is is very sharp focus in the prints, you can see all the flyaway hairs quite clearly. In the scan, well I think mine came out better than the phot labs, but I still was not happy with the end result.<div></div>

<P><I>"Nothing personal towards the poster, just their comment."</P></I>One's

opinions are personal and cutting remarks about that opinion are seen by most as

insulting to the author of said opinion. If you don't agree with someone's opinion--no

matter how stupid according to your superior wisdom--offer your opinion rather than

slinging mud. If you really care, you could back you opinion up with documented

facts. Maybe you'd convert him to your digital religion rather than alienating him. We need

more peace makers and less mud slingers.</P></I>

Alfred, show her a nice Contax T3, or the Konica-Minolta T-C1 and she'll forget about the

SLR. The Contax is a zoom, and the K-M is a fixed lens camera, but the quality is great.

Has she been into SLR photography before? Some folks take to it like a duck to water, and

some folks are ambivalent. If she has caught the photography virus than the SLR would be

perfect, but if not get her a really nice P&S with some manual controls (like the two above

mentioned cameras). The trick is to pick one that you'd use too.

 

My wife only has interest in compact cameras. She couldn't care less about an

interchangeable lens. She does like small and durable equipment, though.

The T3 is a prime, not a zoom, and that's a feature, not a bug. It will blow almost any Canon lens short of the 35mm f/1.4L out of the water.

 

To answer the original poster's question - minilab scan quality is seldom good in the first place. Making a good scan is very labor-intensive, and simply uneconomical in a low-cost, high-volume operation like Costco. Unfortunately, fewer minilabs offer true optical printing each passing day (and many were poorly staffed or used inferior lenses even when they were widespread).

I respect your wife's wishes for a film camera. There are reasons people want film. Easy to use, less cost for the once in the while user, perhaps she dont know anything about computers nor technology. The high tech people want digital because they already have half of if down, If one is new to both photography and computers, it is too hard to learn both and will take too long. So do the film as your wife desires. but get the cheapest rebel that exists.

Alan, How many people got that? aaah, in my day people were educated properly...

<i>How many people got that? aaah, in my day people were educated properly...</i><br>

 

Some of us got it. But, then, I was raised in an autonomous collective. Now, I'm just repressed.