I’ve always loved being the family shutter bug and in the past have taken admirable photos of family events–weddings etc. I now have the money to invest in a decent camera and possibly some classes. I am not intersted in digital photography. I want the real deal… What kind of camera should I buy? Something that lets me take auto and manual, not too heavy/bulky. Should I sign up for classes at a community college in my area or do you think I could “buy a book” and teach myself? I do have a few friends w/ some experience to guide me, but I don’t want to rely on them/bug them.
I could rehash a lot of it here, but instead I’ll just point you to http://www.photo.net, which is the all-time best site for answering your questions about photography. I’d especially recommend any parts of the site that were written by founder Philip Greenspun. In particular, the beginning tutorial section, at http://www.photo.net/making-photographs/.
OK, a little rehash:
[ul]
[li]Don’t worry about equipment right now. As long as you get something that does allow you to adjust exposure and aperture manually, you’ll be OK. If you really expect to make a serious hobby or profession out of this at some point, go with Canon or Nikon equipment[/li][li]Carry your camera. If you’re thinking mostly about composition and lighting, you’ll want to have a camera handy when interesting subjects and conditions come up. Won’t do you any good if the camera’s at home in a closet.[/li][li]Take lots of pictures. [/li][li]Pay attention to what you’re doing. Do more of what seems to work and less of what doesn’t.[/li][/ul]
What is “too heavy/bulky”?
If a 35mm SLR is too bulky…
Otherwise:
35mm SLR with as least the following:
Autofocus
Timer
Interchangeable lenses (duh)
Programmable exposure (Shutter priority, Aperture priority, full auto, full manual)
Remote cord function (even if you never use it, this eliminates the junk sold at discount houses)
Tripod mount
Nikon, Cannon, and Minolta are the names in this arena - glass is readily available, as are flash units, aux. battery packs, specialized mirrors (you’ll get to those later), and other toys.
Since you can’t avoid them anyway, start with a zoom lens - approx 35-80mm is a good range.
Buy cheap film and shoots lots and lots of pictures (this is where you begin to think digital isn’t so bad after all 
) Use the shutter and aperture modes - see what they do (yes, there are sites which approximate the results, but this is the old “advertise how great your color TV is onTV!” - if the viewer had a b/w TV, the message was lost; if he had a color TV, the image would be no better than his set could produce. Seeing an approximation on your monitor is not the same as holding a print in your hand.
After a few rolls of print film, get smart and buy a lightbox and loupe and shoot slides - you’ll get to know which are good enough to print (at best, I get 3 out of 36 worth printing - and that’s pretty good).
You can learn the basics from a book, and you can pay an instructor to tell you “fill the frame”, “watch composition” and critique your photos - but before paying anyone, know what the camera can do, and how to get it to do the basics.
p.s. real photogs shoot b/w - throw color in, and anybody can shoot a passable pic. Black & white forces you to pay attention to light, composition, balance. (of course, getting b/w processed is getting harder, so maybe you should build your own darkroom…
p.s. Philip Greenspun is a god… read his work AFTER you’ve shot a couple of hundred rolls (OK, a few dozen) - then you’ll be able to appreciate why an ISO 50 film is worshipped (except if you are photographing people, in which case it is despised (Velvia).
Definitely take a class or two at the college. You’ll learn how to process your own B&W film, be given access to a darkroom to make your own prints, and learn quite a few things that aren’t in the books. They’ll also point you toward the best books on the subject.
Define “too heavy/bulky”. My camera is about 8"x8"x12", weighs ten pounds, and requires a bag to be carried just to hold the essentials accessories (light meter, extra film, etc). 
The best 35mm SLRs can get rather heavy, too (4 pounds-ish).
I don’t really know what’s out there in terms of modern 35mm SLRs – I use the Ancient Monstrosity* for artsy stuff and a top-of-the-line digital (Nikon D1) for work, so I’ll let somebody else make the recommendations. It would help to know how much you’re willing to spend, though.
[sub]* – In case you were wondering, it’s a 50-year-old Speed Graphic, the camera you see the newspaper guys using in all the old movies.[/sub]
If you don’t own a decent camera I would suggest that you seriously rethink your attitude toward digitals. They are very costly as a replacement for an existing 35mm SLR but as an upfront purchase they are a bargain. I have owned several 35mm Pentaxs over the years and have put many thousands of dollars worth of film through them. I resisted the urge to buy a digital because I didn’t really need one and a year or two ago it cost about $2000 for a digital with aperture priority, shutter priority, manual settings, burst mode etc.
Well last week I found a Panasonic on sale for $600 with all these features and good Leica lenses. It’s the model before the DMC-LC5K. In use it is no different to a 35mm SLR except I don’t have to print any photo I don’t want, in fact I don’t even have to keep it. I promise you that with film your processing costs will far outweigh your equipment costs.
Digital gives you control over an image from the moment it’s taken to the point where you decide to discard it. Digital images are easy to store, should last as long as the media they’re recorded on and can be sent to as many people as you want without harming the original.
Well, technically, don’t ask, traditional film images last as long as the media they’re recorded on (or longer - there are photos still around of which the negatives have been long gone - if properly processed a gelatin silver print will last 200 years or more, long after the digital format of the day has become inaccessibly out-technologized), and you can send copies of them to as many people as you want as well without harming the original unless making a print from a negative causes the negative to magically disappear. Plus, a standard filing cabinet holds umpty-billion 35mm negatives, and the resolution is higher. You don’t have to print any photo you don’t want with film, either, if you have darkroom access and/or a lightboard to review your negatives before you have them printed.
I’m not saying this to argue that digital cameras are bad, because I’m perfectly willing to admit that my preference for film cameras is due to a dedication to tradition (that’s my man up there with the 50-year-old behemoth, and we’re two of a kind). I just wanted to point those things out.
I would love to do both (dig and 35 mm). But I really want to learn more about the skill of taking photos. I know I am going to waste a TON of film learning about f stops etc. But I need to find a place to start and a way to remember how I took each photo. I guess I’m going to have to carry a notebook w/ me so I can remember the decisions I made on settings w/ each photo I take. I live in Bethsda Maryland near D.C., so I have a ton of opportunities for photos ops. Esp w/ fall coming up!!!
Well your point is well made and personally I doubt whether Ansel Adams would go digital in a hurry if he were alive today but I think for a learner photographer digital should be great. You can shoot a dozen frames of whatever you like and review them on a TV to decide what’s good and what’s not. It just seems to me like the best possible training ground. In 2002 it was reported that 82% of professional photographers were using digitals.
I’ll end the hijack soon, I promise, and I apologize to Nevermind for being off-topic: I guess I have this dichotomy in my mind where film cameras are for artsy photos and digital cameras are for work and home - newspapers and magazines use 'em because layout is mostly digital now, too; your average snapshotty consumer uses 'em because it makes it faster to send pictures to Cousin Mabel in Iowa. Maybe I’m a film snob. And that’d be damned amusing because I suck at taking pictures - I leave that to Gun, the professional.
Yes, take a notebook - a steno pad is great - record roll number, film type/speed, date loaded - then, for each frame:
shutter speed, aperture, anything of note - time of day comes to mind - I have a gorgeous shot of an old wooden church shot just before sundown - the trick to that shot was waiting 3 hours for the sun to get in the right position. Once the film is processed, place it and the notes together in some sort of order - after a while, you’ll see which settings produce what results. If you use mounted slides, you can transfer the exposure info to one side of the slide (and, after you build that darkroom, you use the other side for printing exposure info (paper, print size, aperture, time).
p.s. - gorgeous subjects are nice, but are likely to distract from the photo (it’s hard to take a bad shot of a red-gold sunset - but it is possible to take an even better one). The classic student photo assignment was to photograph an egg. If you can photograph an egg in a way noone else has ever photographed an egg, then go read Greenspun.
What kind of photography interests you most? A few specialities can shade the equipment decisions, but very few.
PEOPLE!
And colors in architecture. I know that sounds weird–but if you have ever been to Venice…
Well, that leaves the selection pretty much wide open (unless you want to get REAL serious about architectual photography - then you get into large format, adjustable gear to get the building to look “normal” when a 35mm SLR will make it look tapered toward the top (at least from ground level)).
Even if that IS your goal, get the SLR - the film you burn through is a lot cheaper that the 4"x5" film used for moderately serious architectual work.
Again - slow down. Learn how to take a good shot before rushing off to some gorgeous scene - a good photo can be greatly enhanced by a beautiful subject, but no subject can make a truly bad shot look good - I was in a serious photo shop in SF when a fellow started showing off his latest project - an attractive young woman, nude, on the Mt. Tam overlook of the GG bridge, with the SF skyline in the background. With those elements, he really should have been able to produce at least a few good frames. He didn’t. The sky was overcast, the model was cold, the posing was clumsy, and the film was dull and lifeless - he really needed to either re-schedule the shoot to get a decent shot of the model and the background, or at least bring serious lighting and an assistant or two to hold reflectors and get a passable shot of the model against the sky/ocean.
p.s. - keep models warm and dry - if you must have them get cold or wet, keep them toasty until the second you are ready to expose the film, then get them bundled up again - they will love you, and, unless you are going for misery and/or loathing, you will get a better shot.
Everything here says “digital”. Digital cameras record all the circumstances of the picture taking along with the photo. So you don’t have to rely on your note-taking ability – you can look at the data and see the f. stop, shutter speed, ISO, and even zoom setting (as well as the date).
With digital, you don’t have the delay between taking a photo and processing it before getting feedback. (And you don’t have to wait to finish a roll.) You can check composition instantly. The non-existent cost of processing means that you can experiment the hell out of any given subject. As a tool for learning photographic techniques, you can’t beat digital.
There are some subtle differences between digital photography and film (e.g. depth of field, shutter speed response, and noise considerations), and it is true that film still offers a higher resolution, but with a good 5MP+ camera, you can get outstanding results.