Looking For A Good Digital Camera ?????

[billt]

If you wait until around Thanksgiving, you can get some incredible deals. I priced out the package we bought as individual items and the total fell in the area of $1400 or so depending on where you bought from. We paid $550 via Amazon.

That's most likely what I'll end up doing. Or else wait until after Christmas, when all of the after holiday sales are everywhere. Black Friday is a good time.... I just can't take the insane crowds.

[Timothy]

We shop one or two weeks into the next year for anything we're planning for December.  Saved thousands over the years!

[Big Frank]

That's most likely what I'll end up doing. Or else wait until after Christmas, when all of the after holiday sales are everywhere. Black Friday is a good time.... I just can't take the insane crowds.

2 words of advice: Cyber Monday. Relax and take your time. There aren't any crowds to deal with.

There's a big shopping mall a few miles outside of the city limits here that I haven't been to in a couple of years. The main road to the mall has traffic backed up about 3 miles most days from Thanksgiving to New Year's. I avoid that road as much as possible during that time. I can find most of the things I want at amazon.com anyway. And it pays to compare other sites too. I bought a super heavy duty padlock to replace the one I broke a key off in. I found it at amazon.com for around $35 and at the place I bought the original lock from it was about $130. I got shafted big time on the first one.

Anything you want from amazon.com you can get at https://smile.amazon.com/ and support your favorite from among nearly a million charities. I'm currently supporting The NRA Foundation, Inc.. They get 0.5% of the purchase price on everything I buy. It doesn't sound like much but as of May the total given to all charities is over $54.5 million and over $62,500 went to The NRA Foundation,Inc..   

[PegLeg45]

2 words of advice: Cyber Monday. Relax and take your time. There aren't any crowds to deal with.


Anything you want from amazon.com you can get at https://smile.amazon.com/ and support your favorite from among nearly a million charities. I'm currently supporting The NRA Foundation, Inc.. They get 0.5% of the purchase price on everything I buy. It doesn't sound like much but as of May the total given to all charities is over $54.5 million and over $62,500 went to The NRA Foundation,Inc..

+1

[Big Frank]

I can't always remember the exact address for the smile.amazon website but if you search for amazon smile it comes up right at the top of the search. I don't always remember to go there but I'm getting better. I've gone there for 4 orders. Everything is exactly the same as amazon.com except you get to support a charity at no additional cost.

[Sponsor]

[BAC]

No love for local camera stores?  They are disappearing faster than local gun shops, and for mostly the same reasons.  They are a valuable source of information and training, just like the local gun shop.

Also, keep in mind that most, if not all, the camera companies have strict Minimum Advertised Price (MAP) policies.  If you see an online price significantly below MAP, you're probably looking at grey market goods (not meant for sale in the US and not imported by their US subsidiary).  If you have a problem and send your grey market camera back to the manufacturer for warranty repair, they're going to laugh at you, and then charge you a lot of money.

Just a couple things to keep in mind.

[blackwolfe]

Nice pictures Brian, Peg, and BillT.  I especially like the Colt.

No camera stores locally or nearby anymore.  Had one here for decades, but it closed before the net took off.

I would suggest getting a couple of smaller memory cards rather than one large 128GB.  All the eggs in the same basket thing. 

I just bought a Pentax DSLR with crop sized sensor and haven't even used it yet or finished reading the owners manual.  I was torn between that and an Olympus micro 4/3 camera.  In the early 80's I bought an Olympus OM-1 SLR and three prime Zuiko lenses, and later a Zuiko telephoto zoom lens, used.

Had to do a lot of brushing up on the digital stuff, and have lots more to go.  What I liked about both the Pentax and Olympus cameras I was looking at was that both had Image Stabilization (IS) built into the camera body instead of the lenses.  Additionally both had some weather resistance built in and weather resistant lenses are available.  Both had an operating range down to 14° F whereas many digital cameras are only rated down to 32° F.  Weather resistance (WR) and colder operating temperatures may not be a factor for you in AZ, but dust might be. In Michigan the WR and lower operating temperature makes sense to me.

On of the reasons I wet with the Pentax over Olympus is that the Pentax is a SLR with an optical throug the lens viewfinder as well as a screen.  Some cameras do not.   

Additionally virtually all older Pentax K-mount legacy lenses will work on the DSLR Pentax cameras.  They won't work in a fully automatic mode, but will work in manual mode.  I think the only way the legacy OM Zuiko lenses will work on the current Oly camera are in manual mode with an adapter that Olympus no longer makes, but third party and aftermarket adapters are available for OM series Zuiko lenses to Micro 4/3 and OM to Pentax K-mount.

I may still get an Olympus micro 4/3 camera also.

 Brian, what are your thoughts on the different sensor sizes, FF, crop, 4/3, etc. and using legacy lenses with adapters?
   

[Big Frank]

No love for local camera stores?  They are disappearing faster than local gun shops, and for mostly the same reasons.  They are a valuable source of information and training, just like the local gun shop.

Also, keep in mind that most, if not all, the camera companies have strict Minimum Advertised Price (MAP) policies.  If you see an online price significantly below MAP, you're probably looking at grey market goods (not meant for sale in the US and not imported by their US subsidiary).  If you have a problem and send your grey market camera back to the manufacturer for warranty repair, they're going to laugh at you, and then charge you a lot of money.

Just a couple things to keep in mind.

I live in a decent size city of 100,000 people and I haven't been able to find a single camera shop anywhere in the city. The Dive Shop which is very close by has pictures of 2 underwater cameras on their website but they aren't among the 6 things they sell there.

I found one camera store in the county online. It's almost all freeway driving to get there so it's only 20 minutes away according to Google maps and it's only 1.3 miles past a gun store I'm familiar with. Among other things they do repairs, have a photo lab, and can transfer just about anything audio or video to CD or DVD. I might visit sometime just to look around.

[BAC]

I live in a decent size city of 100,000 people and I haven't been able to find a single camera shop anywhere in the city. The Dive Shop which is very close by has pictures of 2 underwater cameras on their website but they aren't among the 6 things they sell there.

I found one camera store in the county online. It's almost all freeway driving to get there so it's only 20 minutes away according to Google maps and it's only 1.3 miles past a gun store I'm familiar with. Among other things they do repairs, have a photo lab, and can transfer just about anything audio or video to CD or DVD. I might visit sometime just to look around.

What store?

[Big Frank]

What store?

Billmeier Camera shop in Fenton, MI. I never heard of it before but it's so close to Guns Galore that I should visit both of them one of these days.
https://fentoncamera.com/
http://gunsgalore.net/