Favorite 35mm Body?

[maryb629]

great question...i wanted to know about 35mm cameras as well...i have wanted to dabble in photography, but really can't afford to buy a good quality digital camera...35mm is fine with me....so, generally speaking (without too much fancy-tech talk), what is a good quality, affordable, quick (when i say "quick" i mean that it shoots instantly), 35mm camera good for a newbie?? i would like to learn manual focus, but would love to be able to use an automatic focus (you know, to catch some cool shots of my 2 year old son) [img]/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]
so, any help would be appreciated, THANK YOU!!
mary beth

[John_Chennavasin]

Actually, the Contax N Digital was briefly on the market last year, but it was withdrawn due to numerous software and hardware issues. They claimed that it was the first full-frame digital SLR, and that lenses needed to be redesigned for digital sensor--hence the oversized N-mount lenses (95mm filters for a 17-35/2.8 or a 67mm for a 50/1.4). The oddest drawback on that camera was that there was no image review/playback when shooting in raw mode (and the image-processing software software was even worse than the early version of Canon's Raw image converter).

[BarbInKC]

Joey! Excellent advice! I wouldn't trade my experience with a fully manual SLR for anything. It taught me things you just don't learn with a fully auto camera.