Quote Originally Posted by tlong3234
Hi! I am hoping you folks can give me some advice. Several years ago, I bacame interested in photography and bought some old, manual 35mm's to learn on. Then, I tinkered with a medium format, and early digitals. I currently use an N65 and a Canon a70. I lean heavily to the digital, though and rarely if ever use the 35mm anymore. The bottom line here is that I don't really know much about good photography-just enough to be dangerous!
The A70 used to take very nice pictures, but I think I have about worn it out if that is possible. It has ridden in my kids' diaper bag since I bought it and I have taken about a zillion pictures with it. The pictures now look flat to me and the prints are very noisy. The colors look like watercolors that have bled, instead of the sharp, saturated images I want. Have I started doing something wrong?
My main objective is to get great pictures of my kids (3 mos. and 19 mos.). If that means buying a new camera, I am eager and willing. I would like to have something with little to no lag time-the kids move fast!- a manual zoom ring, creative controls (both the pre-packaged portrait modes, etc and the shutter priority, aperture priority and manual modes), and sharp, color-saturated pictures that don't require a lot of work in a photo editor.
I love the idea of the D70 since I have a decent collection of Nikon lenses, but am afraid I would get bogged down by it and never have it handy to get the candid shots. The Sony F828 looks appealing, too. Any suggestions or discussion you may have would be greatly appreciated.

Well, the D70 is a great camera. The manual focusing ring is something best left on manual focus cameras, today's autofocus systems to a great job, and the P&S digitals really have poor manual focusing methods.

I suggest you look at the Sony F717. SOme places still seem to have a few new ones left over, or you could get used. Much trimmer than the 828 it really takes beautiful pictures. Shot with one for over a year before going DSLR.

I doubt you wore the camera out, reset all the setting to factory to defaults, make sure you have the lowest ISO selected, and then see if you are still having problems.