Day: June 25, 2008

Hey, I’ve got a Minolta Maxxum 7000 film camera which my Dad gave me when he bought a brand new Minolta 7D, and it’s a pretty nice. And I’ve got three lenses for it, one good Minolta one and a couple of cheap-ass Sigma Tek ones I bought on eBay. Now that Minolta is no more, Minolta 7Ds are pretty cheap on eBay. Do you think a used Minolta 7D would be a good option? I have no doubt the Minolta lens would work with it, but I wonder if the Sigma Tek telephoto will auto focus?

I can’t find my Nikon Coolpix 8800. I’ve looked all over the house and the garage for it, and I can only assume that the underwear gnomes took it.

So, assuming I was to buy a replacement, what should I get? Things I liked about the Coolpix 8800:

• SLR form factor
• 10x optical zoom, from 35mm equivalent 33 to 330mm
• 8 megapixel

Things I hate, hate, hate about this camera:

• Fake SLR – when you look through the eyepiece, you’re not looking through the glass, you’re looking at a tiny low resolution LCD.
• When you depress the shutter half way, it will lock in the focus or the exposure but not both
• It utterly failed horribly to focus up close. You’d frame the picture, make sure everything you wanted to be in focus was in focus, click the shutter, and then it would whirr as tried both extremes of the focus, and finally take the picture when absolutely nothing in frame was in focus.

So, is there any point at looking at anything other than the Digital Rebel XTi?