So these are some test shots with Nikon D3

Question

Not much color correction which is what I think everyone like about the camera still has fringing but I am using a 28mm PC nikkor (shift ) lens not really designed for this camera but I think it does ok.
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<br />Not really the kind of thing I shoot but what was readily available in the immediate vicinity of my apartment.
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<br />I use to do this kind of thing before I turned professional but do not do much street stuff anymore.
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<br />But the camera is excellent and i suspect their tilt/shift lenses will fall into place as well which will make this a very fine piece of equipment to have and something a professional of any status could not ignore.

Answer 1

Ann-
I hardly know where to start, so I will break up your observations for commentary:
>It's only a humble little Canon SX100 IS PowerShot! ...I still much prefer the way that my film cameras handle (and the faster and more controlled way of working with them than the fussiness and slowness of this thing).
Correct, a cheap point-and-shoot. What we learned
i in the last century
as digicams evolved was that point-and-shoot digicams provided surprisingly good capture quality, especially for
b static
pix like macros BUT that the
i fussiness and slowness of the things
was a huge limitation to trying to capture any kind of dynamic imagery. Great for pix like flowers and lower end product photography however, and great for learning.
However, when the Nikon D1 was released in 1999 the
i fussiness and slowness
went away. We had full-on top quality SLR-type photography available with
b zero
i fussiness and slowness
(4+ fps). DSLRs have improved ever since and the US$4800 Nikon D3 is exemplary of today's state of the art.
There are now many good DSLRs as well as decent point-and shoot digicams. To maintain
i the faster and more controlled way of working with them
I would have directed you toward an Oly E-420
if you wanted a small DSLR, or to a Nikon D40 if you wanted best DSLR value at the US$500 low end
, or to a Canon G9 if you really wanted a slow fussy point-and-shoot (that shoots RAW; important). There are many good DSLRs in the US$500-$8000 price range.
>...And it EATS batteries. ...Supposedly you can run it on two AA alkalines. Sure, you can if you have enough of them to change them every hour! ...I have just ordered the nicads...
You are correct, another thing we learned in the last century was that digicams could EAT batteries. My first battery operated digicam was a Nikon Coolpix 900 and it literally consumed 2 AAs in about ten minutes; IIRC we used it mostly a/c powered. However things evolved and that problem now only exists for specific not-recommended digicams like the Canon you purchased. We also learned that alkalines were poor, evolved to NiCads and then later to
b NiMH
which are far superior to NiCads. You should cancel your NiCad order and order NiMH along with a charger specific to the batteries you order.
>...frankly, a battery-free manual film camera still knocks the socks off this electronic stuff.
Sorry, wrong. Any competent DSLR photog with any competent DSLR can run circles around any battery-free manual 35mm film camera. Unfortunately you chose to compare your SLR against one of the lesser point-and-shoot digicams rather than against one of the better DSLRs.
b Also, better digicams no longer eat batteries.
My D2x, for instance, easily gets 500-1000 pix per charge, and I have it set to leave the LCD on for 30 seconds. Without such a wasteful LCD setting I probably could get many more frames from a single charge (however I usually do subconsciously half-press the shutter after shooting to shut down the LCD, so I may already be close to optimizing battery usage). And it recharges quickly. However there still are digicams (yours is one) that have not-so-good battery lives, so one needs to do prepurchase research.