I have used my Bell & Howell 35mm camera for the last six years or so and just love it, has a number of "bells & whistles" and takes wonderful pictures. Ran into a problem last summer when I put a film in for developing, the pictures came back looking like they were double exposed. They showed pictures of a family vacation, a camping trip in the mountains - but not my family! My family appeared like ghosts, just faint outlines.

My camera does not allow film to be rerun through it and the store where I had them developed assured me that two films could not be run through their machine at the same time. Put it down to a fluke and continued to use the camera at my daughter's wedding-those pics turned out great, thank goodness Must have used about 20 rolls of film between summer and Christmas time.

Put a film in for developing at Christmas and another a few weeks later, had the same thing happen again to both of them. Same background as before, some other family's vacation, almost identical to the first, with my "ghosts" in the background.

The store contacted the supplier of their machine and they have no explanation, neither does Bell & Howell. Any camera buffs out their have ideas?

Guess I will have to think digital, any advice on a nice easy model will be gratefully accepted

scottie...

It is time for you to go digital! I suggest Canon.

quote:

Originally posted by Cat's Inheritance:
scottie...

It is time for you to go digital! I suggest Canon.

Any particular model? Nothing too complicated for my wee brain please

Scottie,

There are so many different choices that you much do a lot of research as to what kind of camera you are looking for. Do you want something that pocketable? Do you want manual controls? Do you want a high zoom camera?

I would suggest looking at Digital Photography to get additional information as to the type of camera you want and need. Good luck with your choice.

Jake

scottie...

Take a look at the Canon A620 and the Canon S80 and the Canon A610. There are other close Canon models that are good.

scottie...

As ClanLee mentioned, check the DP site. These days digital cameras are much better than in the past.

I can honestly think of no reason at all for using a film camera these days (except perhaps price); digitals seem to have every advantage - no worries about running out of film, you can see immediately what you've taken, easy to send to other people, easy to transfer to other media, etc etc. I wouldn't dream of buying a film camera these days.

I thought I'd be one of the few people still using film on my recent tour but I was surprised how many people were still using film. In fact, there was one lady with one of those really old cameras that you have to manually advance to the next shot. I haven't seen one of those since I was a kid!

Although my Nikon 35mm takes great pictures, I think I am going to start researching digital cameras because the prices have really come down and I can now afford to buy a really good one. I am not a technie so it will have to be one that's really easy to use.

I would have to say that a good 20% of the people on our tour were using a film camera. The one thing I noticed was how sparingly they took pictures, unlike the people with digital. I think that is one of the best benefits of digital, you can take as many pictures as you want and not worry about it. You can always delete if you don't like how they turned out.

Jake

quote:

Although my Nikon 35mm takes great pictures, I think I am going to start researching digital cameras because the prices have really come down and I can now afford to buy a really good one.

If you have a number of lenses for your Nikon, it might be a good idea to perhaps look at Nikon digital SLRs - that way, all you'd need to buy would be the camera body, rather than new lenses. Nikon make a wide range of digital SLRs, which seem to have a pretty good reputation. I have a Canon digital SLR myself, which is great. SLRs, to my mind, take much better pictures than "compact" cameras, although they are, obviously, more bulky.

One thing to be aware of, just in case you're not, is that because the "light sensor" in a digital SLR is smaller than the film frame in a 35mm camera, lenses have a longer effective focal length in a digital SLR than they do in a film SLR - normally twice as long. Thus, a 55mm lens on a 35mm film camera will, if the same lens is used on a digital SLR, be equivalent to 110mm.

I would agree, go digital. I did some years ago and my one concern then was the delay between pushing the button and the photo being taken. With my latest combined digital video/still camera this has virtually been eliminated.

I don’t know if this is the case for all digitals, but I would expect a Canon or a Nikon to be OK in this respect.

quote:

I would agree, go digital. I did some years ago and my one concern then was the delay between pushing the button and the photo being taken. With my latest combined digital video/still camera this has virtually been eliminated.

I don’t know if this is the case for all digitals, but I would expect a Canon or a Nikon to be OK in this respect.

This "shutter lag" can be an issue for "action" shots with some cheap cameras. Shouldn't be a problem with any "higher end" camera, and definitely not with a digital SLR. Good idea to try it out in the shop, however, and make sure.

Well, I am using the Olympus CZ740 and it suffers terribly from "shutter lag". Olympus claims that they have subsequently addressed this problem in the subsequent models released recently.

As Chris says, do remember to test it for shutter lag.

Reason I went for that camera was because of the 10x optical zoom and the price factor. It is not a camera for serious photographers but it can take quite good pictures I have found with the right settings, otherwise, it is a good point and shoot camera. Just don't expect it to "click" with action shots when you want it !

I learned recently that shutter lag can be caused by a slow memory card as much as by the camera itself. I recently purchased a new digital camera and I also bought a high speed card. A great combination!

quote:

Originally posted by scottie:
wonderful pictures. Ran into a problem last summer when I put a film in for developing, the pictures came back looking like they were double exposed. They showed pictures of a family vacation, a camping trip in the mountains - but not my family! My family appeared like ghosts, just faint outlines.

Have a look at the negatives. If the other family's photos are on the negatives then somehow, somone has shot that film before. Carefully consider where the film came from that you used. Did someone give you a batch of left-over film when they went digital, for example. ANY 35mm camera can have a used film re-run through it. All you need is the leader sticking out of the can and to load it. Some cameras rewind the film but leave the leader out, and there's also tools you can get to extract the leader from the cassette.

Chris.