I know I'm beating a dead horse, here, and I promise I'll go away and shut up after this post.

The point I am trying to make that I just haven't been clear about, is that unless someone carries around a bag full of lenses, he cannot take some of the pictures I can. Yes, no question about it, if he does have the bag full of lenses, he will get better quality pictures than I will, but without those extra lenses he won't get the picture. Sometimes a lesser-quality picture is better than no picture at all.

The rock climber pictures were snapshots. Attached are a set of pictures shot with more care, hopefully of better quality.

The first picture is no zoom at all, 35mm (35mm equiv.) focal length. If you look carefully, you will see the church tower in the middle of the picture.

The second picture is the maximum I can reasonably zoom my camera before getting ugly defects. It is about a 750mm focal length (35mm equiv.)

The third picture is the "desperation shot" that is (maybe?) better than no picture at all. Yes, it's ugly and noisy, but you can make out a good bit of detail. You would need a 3000mm lens on a DSLR to take that shot. Well, no, not really -- I imagine DSLRs have digital zoom also, don't they? So you'd need either a 750 or 1500mm lens (assuming 4x or 2x digital zoom) to duplicate that shot. But not too many people carry around a 35-750 zoom lens.

Keep in mind that my camera is old. FWIW, the lens is made by Leica. There are newer cameras with more than twice my zoom range, but they lack some of the features my camera has that I consider to be essential.

Anyway, all this dead horse beating is to say that DSLRs, while providing better image quality, lack the convenience, versatility, and [some] features of my camera.

So there!

tanstaafl.

I attached the pictures, and they're not there. ?? I'll add them to another post, I guess.

db