Thank you for straightening me out, Sherry. I thought it was just thistle. Hollyhocks are indeed lovely garden plants. And Pearly everlasting is a nice little plant for the fall. I want to put in more fall bloomers next year-asters, in particular, but also goldenrod. The ornamental grasses also look great at that time of year. I put in switchgrass this year, and I am quite happy with it. Maybe I will put in some Lovegrass-I saw it at the National Arboretum recently and I thought it was very pretty. We have to provide something for our little skipper friends!

Oh Sandy, What lens do I NOT want~tee-hee! 100mm macro right now is what I am thinking of...although I really had wanted the 60mm macro for awhile Same with another flash...have thought about getting a ring light just for macro photography but then found that it was not as effective as twin flash...ahhh, wish that I had the mooola. I have a whole bunch of different lenses depending upon what I am shooting. My fave for sports photography is my telephoto 100-400mm zoom. I had a 300mm but wasn't crazy about it. I use a 17-85mm for 'general' stuff. I have a few other lenses... Okay, what I'd recommend is a tripod or monopod and a good ball head mount. I actually have several monopods and tripods (see what I mean?) and found a ball head that I love that I mounted on this monopod that actually can convert to a tripod (go figure! I got tired of the size of regular tripods but sometimes a monopod doesn't quite do the trick). Both are by Manfrotto. I like the ball head because I can rotate and set the camera to shoot at weird angles, particularly for those macro shots, that are often a pain. I also recommend changing the strap. When you start lugging around equipment, the Canon strap doesn't cut it. The strap I have is designed to take at least 50% of the weight off so it doesn't feel like the entire set-up weights 1000 pounds. :) For someone with a bad back and neck like me, this is a god-send. Yeah, I'm a camera junkie. Don't even ask me how many cameras I've had in my life. We won't go there.

Donna - nope, I haven't yet, and our courtesy hold on our Minas will end in a few days. What to do, what to do... Karlarock - Can you tell me if your stone is oiled in the photos? I really need something that will say, "Hello, I'm a black stone, and only at strange angles and bright sunlight can you see my hidden greens." ;o) Mustbnuts (I love your username, BTW!) - we'll have white beaded inset cabs on the perimeter with *some* variety of soapstone, and carrara marble on the island. Whether the island will be stained or some other paint color (green, perhaps?) is still up for debate. Further complicating things is that I have two very different carrara slabs from which to choose - one very calm one which I have seen in person, and one very veiny one I've only seen in photos. I'm leaning toward the veiny one, but I couldn't have a very veiny Minas in the same kitchen. We got photos of some new Minas slabs this morning which have even fewer white veins than the very quiet ones we have on hold, but it still appears to have a lot of the little white "spots," and I'm not sure I want that. In all of the finished Minas kitchen pictures I've seen, the stone appears solid black with white veins, without all the splotchies. Am I wrong about this? Do you Minas owners have those little spots, and they just aren't apparent in the photos?

I realize that my comments may be falling a bit late to be of any value to okwriter, but I am sure this thread is of interest to others, and to be honest, this question has been rolling around in my head for a week, so I feel I need to interject my 2 cents worth here. While it might be possible to find a DSLR body that would accept that Konica 80-200mm in my humble opinion based upon the information in the original post it would be a fools errand to do so. Okwriter emphasized two key points, (1) he/she needs a "good zoom" and (2) he/she is not into photography and seldom tinkers with the settings. Lets begin with the topic "Good zoom". on a 35mm film camera a 200mm zoom is a 4X zoom, Handy, easy to handle and perhaps good in the context of shooting family snapshots in the back yard, but by no means a Good Zoom in the context of bird watching or wildlife photography, and for sports it is merely marginal. Understanding that Digital sensors are slightly smaller than the film format of a 35mm negative when we use 35mm film camera lenses on digital cameras there is an expansion factor which is typically about 1.5. That means that if the 200mm film camera lens is used on a digital camera it would yield an equivalent to a 300mm on a film camera. 300mm is generally considered the longest lens that we can effectively use in hand held mode, it would then be a good all around choice, as opposed to using a tripod for all the shots, however: Okwriter also noted that the Konica & 80-200mm is 20 years old and has spent most of that time just sitting in the closet, no doubt because, as Mongoct has pointed out, it is no doubt a manual focus lens and to use that camera you simply must tinker with the controls so to speak. Let us be brutally honest here, not everyone is into photography, and regardless of how great the camera is, if it is beyond the scope of the operator sadly it will be relegated to little more than an expensive ornament adorning a closet shelf. This does not even take into account the many advanced features of the modern state of the art digital cameras, which simply would not be usable with that lens on a modern DSLR body. I was professionally trained as a Still Photographic Specialist in the U.S.A.F. back in 1966 and in those days manual cameras with match needle metering was the best we had so I am very comfortable with fully manual cameras, but I am afraid even I might find it difficult to use that lens on a modern body. I certainly would not wish that on a beginner. On the other hand, out of curiosity I went to the WalMart website and did a quick review of some of the cameras they have to offer and I was really impressed. First off, I would like to express a minor pet peeve. In recent years the industry seems to have adopted the notion that the term DSLR identifies cameras with interchangeable lenses, which is not true. The term "SLR" means "single lens reflex" which means that when you look through the viewfinder by means of an internal mirror you are looking through the primary lens and you are seeing exactly what the camera is seeing, as opposed to box cameras or rangefinder cameras that had a separate optical system for the view finder. The term DSLR simply means a "Digital SLR", or more precisely, a digital camera in which the image in the viewfinder is exactly the same as the image that will be projected to the digital sensor. Back in the days of film cameras it was exceedingly rare to see an SLR with a fixed lens, but today it is common to see advanced compact cameras that have a fixed lens, yet they have the same mirror system as an SLR and the image in the viewfinder is the same as the image being projected to the sensor and although they do have a fixed lens, none the less they are in every sense of the word a true entry level DSLR although some of their features are not as sophisticated as the top end DSLR's with interchangeable lenses and accessories. Although I would not want to go on record as endorsing any camera dealer, out of curiosity I did a quick search of cameras on the Walmart website, and I must say, I was very impressed with what I found. For my search I set the same basic parameters as what okwriter was looking for. 1. easy to operate 2. good zoom 3. easy on the budget and this is just a sample of what I found: Canon Powershot 12.1mp 12X optical zoom $199.00 Nikon Coolpix L110 12mp 15x Optical zoom $249.00 Fugifilm Fine Pix 12mp 15x zoom $169.00 Kodak Easyshare 14mp 26x optical zoom $199.00 All of these cameras can be operated in a simple point & shoot mode, yet they all have the advanced user overide features found on more expensive DSLRS. While these cameras still do not have the total versatility that I have with my Pentax DSLRS, never the less, I think people such as okwriter who need a good camera, but don't want to get seriously involved in the technical aspects of photography would be well served with a camera of this type.