pictures? We have an Olympus IS-1 (film camera). It started leaking light and is having problems focussing. I bought it in 1992 so it's probably had a good run. It took excellent pictures though and I really liked that the zoom went from 35-135mm. We've barely used it during the last year because of it's problems. Last summer our video camera broke too so we bought a digital video camera that can take pictures. It doesn't have a flash though and I don't think the pictures will print out that well. When I realized digital cameras print out horrible pictures is after my dd was born. We didn't get the pictures printed right away but when we did most of them were highly pixelated. These were pictures of her birth and shortly after. We borrowed my grandma's digital camera that uses floppies and the company (PhotoWorks) that printed them for us said that you can't expect good quality pictures from a camera that uses a floppy but my sister has a $3000 camera that saves directly to cd and I only thought her prints were ok, not as good as film. So we do have the one camera that can take some quick digital pictures for us if we would like so I think I really am leaning towards a film camera. I can probably spend up to $500 but a little less would be better too. So give me ideas for great film cameras and if you have a digital that produces great prints I would like to hear that too. Digital is more convienent and it seems what everyone is using but I know not all of their pictures have to look bad when they bother to print them out. Also, I really want to know if they look good. My family seems to not notice the pixelation and that looks as good to them. TIA.

If you go with film, the canon rebels are really nice, and could probably be bought with that price range.

I had a digital canon that took beautiful pictures, and thye looked great on film too. IT was a powershot s200. You could get a 4mp canon powershot with that amount of money. Mine was a 2mp and my pictures looked just as good, if not better then my brothers 5MP Sony, unless we blew them up really big. 4 MP will print up to 8x10 though and look great.

If you decide to go digital, look for a camera with the optical zoom and not just digital. Digital zoom will make your pictures look more grainy..

Here is what I would get with $500 if I was going to buy a new camera.

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B0001G6U5W/qid=1110470542/br=1-1/ref=br_lf_p_1//102-5566836-0795326?v=glance&s=photo&n=3017951

Then I would go for a nice big memory card, and an extra battery with the money leftover. :)