frolickingbits

Last spring-still around freezing here in Maine.<div></div>

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The only things I really really want at the moment are a 28-70mm f2.8 and 70-200 f2.8 for my *istD, a good flash and the battery grip, but if money were truly no object, I would probably get a few different systems:

Nikon D2H, 17-55 f2.8 35-70 f2.8, 80-200 f2.8, battery grip, speedlight and other goodies.

42mm and 75mm Pentax Limited edition lenses for my *istD

Hasselblad H1, 210mm, 150mm, 80mm, 35mm

8x10 field camera, plus several years to hike around with it.

I have an *ist D, and I love it. It's extremely fast and responsive. As far as using older manual lenses, if you install the firmware update from the Pentax site, you can acutally use the old K series lenses in arpeture priority mode, but for best results, shoot in manual mode, and press the little green button to meter.

White balance can be easily overridden with a manual setting-just have a piece of paper handy to set it with.

As far as quality, I've printed up to 10x15, and the prints look as good as anything I've ever printed from my K1000. ISO 50 film would still give you slightly better results, but all the prints I've made have looked great.

Ditto what everyone else has said. My K100 takes exceptional photos, and has lasted close to 30 years. In 30 years your EOS500 will probably not be working at all. The lens is also a big part. The low end Canon 35-80 is much lower quality than a Pentax 50mm f1.4. And rarity is also a factor-there are way more point and shoot SLR's out there than vintage manual SLR's, so the old ones will sell for more.

I own a dimage5, which is basically the 7hi with a lot fewer

features. I absolutely love my camera. It's a bit large, but the

manual zoom lens is great, as is the nice 7x zoom. It's very

comfortable in my hands, takes excellent photos and looks

proffessional. My only issue is the battery life, which is probably

also a problem with the 7hi. It's really not that big a problem for

me, though-I have four sets of rechargeable batteries for it, so I

can shoot pretty much a whole day. If you're really worried, $50

will get you an external battery pack too. Overall, I'm very pleased

with my dimage5, and since it is so similar to the 7hi, I would

reccomend it.

As far as quality goes, I've noticed that most of the dSLRs

provide very good, and very similar results. I would say that if

you're buying a nice dSLR, it would be pretty hard to go wrong as

far as image quality goes. Try to pick one that has the particular

features, build quality, ergonomics, etc. that you want. I would

say that personal preferences would probably be the most

important thing in choosing your camera.