Jim Spencer wrote:
Hi. I am planning to purchase a Minolta Maxxum 5 body and would like
advice on what lens to purchase. The camera will be used by my wife
to take snapshots of our children (probably using the auto mode
exclusively), and by me to learn photography (my only experience with
an SLR is from high school yearbook, 15 years ago.) We would like
the
lens to be zoom. Our budget for body + lens is $200 or less.

Goto groups.google.com and type "John Doe Maxxum 5" in the search box.
Click on the first link that leads you to a post called "What lenses
for Minolta Maxxum 5". Should be useful.

See www.keh.com for used cameras and lenses.

Even if you buy used, a good condition camera body and a zoom lens will
exceed US$200, IMHO. Anyways, I am posting the prices I found on
www.keh.com for used lenses.

$119 Maxxum 5 Date Body (New)
$30 50mm f1.7 (Used)
$60 28-85mm f3.5-4.5 (Used)
$100 70-210mm f4 (Used)

Add another $50 for some decent Hoya/B+W filters.


What are the relative advantages/disadvantages to buying a
refurbished
body or lens?

Shutter life?


My humble advise is to go digital. I did about a year back when I
started with a digital P&S (Olympus C-750) and I learned a lot because
I could afford to shoot tonnes of photos with digital, something,
atleast, I couldn't have afforded with film. A decent prosumer class
digital will cost you more initially ($300-$500) but offers lots of
manual controls like shutter, aperture, focus, white balance, ISO etc
and most have a good lens (Panasonic uses Leica lenses). Infact a few
lenses you find on prosumer digicams would cost a bomb if you bought
the same spec-ed lens for a SLR. And when you calculate the cost of a
film SLR don't forget to add the cost of a good film plus processing.

And when you have outgrown your digital P&S come back to usenet for
advice (as I did) ;-)

Cheers,

Siddhartha