I've been using the same digital camera for over eight years — an Olympus D-600L.

I paid $1,000 for it in February, 1998. 1.4 megapixels was pretty hot then. I was starting up my web design business and needed a way to get customer's product onto their websites. Scanners were very expensive then. After three years I knew I needed to upgrade but I realized I was on a pretty expensive merry-go-round. Spending another $1,000 every two to three years was more than I could afford. Fortunately, in 2002 Epson came out with their 2450 scanner which did a fine job of scanning medium format negatives and I resurrected my medium format Mamiya Universal for product photography. I returned to film in a big way. The Olympus was still used when I needed a quick shot for my weblog. It's not that a new digital camera wouldn't be useful, it's just that they are a lot of money for a limited use. My wonderful half, Zoe, is disabled (fibromyalgia) and has a hard time getting out for things like shopping so she does most of her shopping online. QVC is her favorite. A few weeks ago she was watching it and they were having a special anniversary deal where everything in their catalog was available on a 5 Easy Pay plan. I looked to see if they had something I've been wanting and lo and behold! The digital camera I've been looking at was available.

The Pentax *ist DL. It has, IMHO, the best value for the money. At $600, with lens, it's a great value and a very good digital SLR. Zoe had been looking at replacing her aging Olympus C3030 so she ordered it. QVC has this great policy of being able to return anything within 30 days. So we had a month to check the little sucker out. It checks out very nicely so we've decided to keep it and split the cost and share the camera. Zoe likes to carry it around and shoot it on automatic. I plan on using it for product photography, for my websites, on a tripod in manual mode. The photographs it makes are not in the same league as those with my medium format Salut-S. but for the web the Salut-S is overkill. The Pentax is more than fine. The Pentax, with a $30 adapter, will take all my Super Takumar prime lenses for my film Pentaxes as well as the lens from my Salut-S. There is a 1.5 scale factor for 35mm lenses on this Pentax so my 28mm on the Spotmatic would be equivalent to 42mm on the digital Pentax, the 35mm equivalent to a 53mm, 55mm to an 83mm, 90mm to a 135mm, and 135mm to a 202mm. They should be sharper. I'm interested in trying them out. I see the digital Pentax being used for ephemeral photographs. Stuff like product photography which I don't need to keep around for a long time. There is no archival long term storage solution for digital images. If the image is important to keep, I will do it on film. And, while the digital Pentax is close enough to 35mm, it doesn't have the quality of medium format film, not to mention large format. People get caught up with not having to pay for film and think they are saving money. I pay less than $2 for a roll of 24 exposure Fuji Superia 500 and B&H. Development and prints is around $4. Thats around 25 cents a print. You can spend a couple of hundred dollars for a dedicated inkjet printer for printing 4x5 prints that will run you 29 cents a print. It takes two days to get my prints. I drop them off and pick them up. I spend zero time loading files and manipulating them for printing. All that being said, the digital Pentax does work great for pictures that need a quick turn around. The photograph of the Olympus was done with the Pentax. The Pentax stops down to f32 so everything is in focus and that is with manual focus. It doesn't have a cable release but it does have a 2 second self-timer mode that locks up the mirror and then, after two seconds, takes the picture. With my lighting it's a 2 second exposure at ISO 200. The Pentax was taken with the Olympus. Auto focus and auto exposure means it's not all in focus. The digital Pentax will be a worthy addition to my film cameras. And the faithful Olympus will be retired to a spot of honor.