Need to buy wedding present

First of all i do not know jack about cameras. My fiance really enjoys photography, but has nto been able to do it for the past few years. She also really enjoys the developing aspect as well. I originally was going to buy her pearls for a wedding gift, but I just decided to get her a quality camera instead because I know she would enjoy it more. I dont know if this is the right place to go so i will just try anyways. I need a camera that si no mroe than the $500ish range. I was told that there are now dual digital and roll film cameras and she really wants that. I do not really know what other things would be good in a camera for her other than a high resolution so any help would be great. Thanks!

Mike

Hi PGMike...... if your GF likes the developing aspect, I'd suggest one thing, make sure you get a camera that shoots in RAW mode, as well as other modes.. that way, she can have at least a hint of that devloping, in a digital camera... (it's the closest we've got!!).. and a really good graphics program would be good too!

I've no idea about the dual modes, maybe PhotoJohn will pop his head in here, and get that part of the question for you.

thank you for your response. what is a RAW mode?

Raw mode is basically all the info the cameras chip recorded, plus some extra info, unmanipulated by conversion of any sort (when i camera saves in JPEG, it's converting the image in many ways, and even compressing it.. which causes a loss in image quality)
when you shoot in raw mode, it's like......... shooting with a film camera, and developing it, yourself.. you can get the maximum possible photo from your shots


hope this helps, i'm not all that great at explaining things, but i did try :)

that helped a lot. i kind of lost reading this stuff and dont kno exactly what she wants. ill have to find out some slick way to figure out exactly what she wants out of the camera without being too obivous

Ok i think that she would prefer a 35mm film camera with interchangeable lenses. So do you have to seperately buy several lens with teh camera?