Thanks Susan, I consider that a serious accolade, having seen your own paradise. We'll be visiting George again next month. Perhaps we can meet up? Joanne, this is the climber, under constraints, she wants to be over the house and back and I wish her to remain a bush, or sort of. Rose wars. Carol knowing your roses, I have no fear Buff will be pounding the roof in no time. And yes the front is always behind the back, less early morning light, but you'll note that green bush between the Golden Celebration and Ulrich Brunner fils with two blooms? That is Grosse Choux de Hollande already finished by the time the others got started. la

You express your needs very well. The key issue with digital cameras, is the mega-pixel value. The higher the mega-pixel value, the better quality picture you will get for the most part. But, the important determining factor most people use, is whether or not they plan on having prints made and what SIZE. The size of your prints AND their quality is largely dictated by the mega-pixel value. In short, if you only require prints no bigger than wallet-sized or slightly larger, a good 5 mega-pixel camera will suit your needs very well. If you intend to make prints of a size of 8 by 5 and larger, I would recommend a higher megapixel value than 5mp. The reason for this, is that with, let's say, a 3mp camera, and you have 8 by 5 prints made, the prints will come out sort of blurry and lack the crisp & clear details you need. The term for this defusion is pixelation. What that means, is that the lower mp camera cannot "capture" the large amount of detail & crispness that you may want for larger prints. A lower mp camera may take pictures into the camera at a size of 900kilobytes, which does not translate well onto a larger print. Of course I am speaking of generalities here. Many of the folks here in the forum probably learned the hard way by buying a cheaper camera & then regreting it later. The quality of many/most of the pictures here are for the most part excellent! Prices on digital cameras have fallen dramatically in the last few years, so you should be able to obtain a good camera for your needs. Another issue that is sometimes completely overlooked, is what program to use to adjust your pictures to their best appearance AND SIZE. A quality program makes this task a great deal easier. This can be seen by the time your have some super shots in your camera, and then after being reworked, they look really bad. A reasonably good program can be found from several companies. Myself, I have been using Adobe Photoshop Elements 2.0. It can be obtained for a reduced price and has filled my needs very well for processing pistures of coins which I take through a stereo microscope! Stunning pix can be obtained with a rather easy learning curve. If you want the Cadillac of photo editors, Adobe Photoshop is one of, if not the best of the many offered. But quality comes with a price, So don't waste money on a secondrate editing program, or you will not realize the results you desire! Another issue that many overlook, is the "size" of the picture when it is taken into the camera. For example, my primary digital camera is a 5.0mp Kodak. The "raw" piture inside the camera is over 12 megabytes! Much too large to email easily for all parties! Unless you have a special reason to distribute the pictures in their original size, it is redundant to a degree. My own formula for resizing pictures out of the camera, is to touch up anything like focus, brightnesss & contrast AND reduce them down to a much more managable size of 400 - 450 kilobytes. The reason for this reduction, is to make them more managable for emailing and storage in your computer. If someone sends you a picture, which do you appreciate the most, one or more that just take a few moments to download into your email at a smaller size like 400kb, OR a piture that has not be reworked at all and takes 10 minutes just to downlaod into your computer...in short, downloading a 12mb picture on a dialup, 56k, computer can take considerable time waiting for it to download. Large pix of 12mp for example usually take up the full screen and sometimes even more. The bottom line for this is that you should rework the original pictures from the camera to obtain the best appearance AND reduce them to a size that are easily managable. I am sure others here can recommend a couple of excellent cameras at your price range and advise you on the minimum mp value you have to buy to maitain your standards of quality. This interaction/cooperation of forum members is invaluable and can save you money! best wishes & good luck! I hope I answered some of your questions. And thank you to all of you who post such beautiful roses! : ) Sincerly, "Smitty"

In my opinion, go for what you can afford. If you can get one that "isnt for beginners" now, you won't have to buy another body when you "outgrow" that one, and you can spend that saved money on a lens! :) Since I'm a Canon guy, I'll talk Canon...:) If you can afford the 40D, and it feels good in your hand, go for that one. From what I have seen/read, if I (an XTI owner) could have afforded that one, I would have got it. i do LOVE my xTi though, and would certainly choose it above the XSi for a few reasons, mainly being that the added cost is more than the new features are worth IMO. Also remember that bandhphoto.com and adorama.com are your friends! :P Check their prices before you buy at a store.

Hi there Carla. When I saw this topic, I couldn't believe how up my alley this question was. For the last five years, I've been working in selling cameras while going to school. Our store stresses superior product knowledge and I pride myself in keeping up to date on the camera market. Basically, I'm familiar with about 90% of the non-professional cameras on the market. Anyways, sorry for tooting my own horn there. The Yashica T4 is an excellent camera (I own one!). Lore hit the nail on the head in that it's all in the Zeiss lens. The T4 Super Date should run you around $200, about half of it's value being in the lens. The only other P/S camera that might come close to it is the Olympus Stylus Epic (make sure it's the one with NO zoom, and an f/2.8 lens). We did a side by side comparison of the two when the Olympus first came out and we couldn't really tell the difference. You may also want to consider upping your price range to get yourself an SLR camera. While spending more money doesn't GUARANTEE you better pictures, SLRs do tend to do a better job than P/S's. Lastly, Consumer Reports is probably one of the worst places to do research on cameras (though they did rate the T4 #1 for like 4 years straight). The problem is that they rate a small sampling of the cameras on the market and definately miss out on many models, both good and bad. Second, they rate cameras every 2-3 years, while in those off years, just reprint an old report with the updated models and just assuming that the new models are EXACTLY like the old ones. Good places to look are in photo magazines, though they don't "rate" as much as they just list them all and describe them. You kinda have to dig to find the actual tests they do. I'll try to dig up some URLs for you. I hope that helped for now... :)