Re: picture quality?

When my dad decided I was ready for something better than "toy" cameras, he let me use my grandfather's old Nikon, for which I had to set everything manually -- focus, shutter speed, aperture, lens, everything. It was frustrating for a while, but he figured that I'd be even more frustrated with a camera that wouldn't let me set anything myself. Once I got the hang of it, I realized he was right.
I once asked a professional videographer what the difference between professional, prosumer and consumer equipment is, and his answer was an echo of what my dad told me: Professional cameras let you set everything easily, prosumer cameras will do the same but make it harder, and consumer cameras just assume you're an idiot and won't even let you adjust the focus. In other words, some quality brainpower on your part will do more to get a better picture than any chip they could put into a camera.
What I've found digital to be handy for is taking hundreds of pictures of details and smaller objects, which I can download to a computer without running up astronomical film costs. Usually when we're on a trip together, I'll shoot digital, because I'm the rivet counter, and my dad will take a few dozen carefully planned pictures on film. Our efforts complement each other nicely, but if either of us goes someplace on his own, we have to meticulously plan out when and how to use digital and/or film. To put it another way, we finally discovered what groups like the Friends have known for years: who knew a hobby could be so much darn work? " />