On Monday, December 1, 2014 11:00:43 AM UTC-5, Robert Heller wrote:   
      
   > A very basic 35mm SLR was like $350 (camera body + 'standard' 50mm lens).    
   Add    
   > some additional lenses filters, etc. and yes, you could easily spend over    
   > $500.    
      
   And this is in 1974 prices.  Having only a 50 mm normal lens soon proves to be   
   inadequate for railfan purposes.  One also needs a wide angle and telephoto   
   lens.     
      
   Sometimes one could save money by buying generic lens (eg Vivitar).  For a   
   while, Nikon had a lower-priced line of lens, its E series, that saved money   
   but worked fine for light duty amateur use.   
      
   Back in the 1970s, a blue 80A filter was helpful due to frequent incandescent   
   lighting.  However, that also required a tripod.  A Polarizer filter was   
   helpful.  Tripods could be pretty expensive.  I have a cheap one, and you get   
   what you pay for,    
   although I use it so rarely it serves my needs.  If I used it often, I'd want   
   a studier ($$$) model.  I also used an FLD filter, but that too required a   
   tripod due to light loss.   
      
      
      
   > A good 8mm (or Hi8) camcorder cost about $1,000. (Hi8 was not bad quality,   
   > just shy of broadcast quality, and was sometimes used for low-end TV   
   > production purposes.)   
      
   These didn't exist when I started.  One could get 8 mm cameras, but their   
   quality was poor and they weren't even that cheap.  16 mm offered better   
   quality, but cameras and projectors were expensive.  (However, to this day,   
   various types of Super 8 mmm    
   movie film is still listed for sale on the Kodak motion picture website.    
   Maybe they just slit it out of other films they're making for larger formats.    
   While Kodak still makes a number of motion picture products, an awful lot of   
   stuff has been    
   discontinued.)   
      
   http://motion.kodak.com/motion/index.htm   
      
      
      
      
   > I guess modern camera phones probably exceed the quality of either 35mm SLRs   
   > or Hi8 camcorders. I am not sure where MiniDV camcorders fit in terms of   
   > quality or really what they cost. Little digital PAS cameras are very cheap   
   > and probably do at least as good a job as a good quality 'consumer-grade'   
   35mm   
   > SLR -- certainly *better* than something like an old box camera (eg a Brownie   
   > or something like that) and without the wait for film development and with   
   > models with removable (eg field replacable) SD cards & batteries, it is   
   > possible to take an enormous number of pictures, so long as you have a   
   supply    
   > of charged batteries and a supply of 'empty' SD cards...   
      
   I believe a good quality DSLR is superior to most camera phones in terms of   
   image quality and, perhaps more importantly, options for taking the picture.     
      
   A 35mm film SLR could take excellent quality pictures, and with the right   
   film, superior to those of digital--a Kodachrome slide had more pixels than a   
   digital image.  SLR's were definitely superior to than the pocket digital   
   cameras.   
      
   Digital does have the advantage of being very convenient--obviously a pocket   
   digital camera is far easier to carry around than an SLR, especially with film   
   and lens.  Also, digital has the advantage to electronically be adaptable to   
   different light    
   situations (although not 100%--the yellow sodium vapor street lights do not   
   come out well on digital, even with correction).  Also, Kodachrome was slow by   
   today's standards--only ASA 64--while good quality can be obtained by much   
   higher ISO settings on a    
   DSLR.   
      
   DSLR cameras do not seem to handle to very high contrasty scenes as well as   
   film did, with shadows going black or highlights washed out.  One must do   
   special compensation to get good pictures from such scenes.  Digital also   
   seems to have less exposure    
   lattitude than film, although the meters of modern digital cameras seem to be   
   pretty accurate, including being 'smart' enough to realize a train's headlight   
   is not part of a scene for exposure determination.   
      
   The digital storage cards can store a great many pictures, so that eliminates   
   running out of film or needing to reload film at a critical time.  However,   
   heavy camera use can drain a camera battery.   
      
      
   I don't know how the various video cameras available today compare in ease of   
   use or quality.  When the displayed movie will be only 4"x6" on a computer   
   screen, quality isn't that important, but if it will be projected to a group   
   of people, then quality    
   is more important.   
      
   As mentioned, I've rented equipment to get some videos and the quality was   
   poor.  However, for me, just getting the sound and images was enough, I wasn't   
   planning to showcase my footage.   
      
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