Hey whats up everyone-not much of a regular in the Ramblings section, but thought I'd give it a try.

I'm looking to buy my dad a camera for his birthday which is coming up. This would be his first digital camera, he is NOT very technically savvy. He loves to take pictures, mostly of friends and family - usually outdoors with some simple backgrounds.
His current camera is a Minolta (i'll find out the model #)

I was thinking a digital SLR - here are the features that I'm looking for, ranked by how important they are

1. Picture Quality - He'll want good pictures, but not ridiculous professional quality or anything like that, and he will rarely be blowing them up to anything bigger than 5x7 - maybe once every 6months he might blow up something, but still only to 11x17 or something around there

2. Ease of use - since he isn't too technical, He'd need something that wasn't too complex, and wouldn't be too hard to load pictures..

3. Price - I'm looking to spend b/w $600 - $1000 (Lens+Body) preferably the lower end of that range, but I guess it depends on the camera..

Let me know your experiences and advice on which camera to get, and if you know of a good place to get the camera...

 

Going by that criteria I'd stay away from an SLR.

A Canon S3 IS may be a good place to start.

http://www.usa.canon.com/consumer/co...&modelid=13077

 

To be honest, the things you listed (first digital, ease of use, no large prints) point away from getting him a DSLR. I assume his current Minolta film camera is an SLR so that's why your were thinking of going that route.

These days, a DSLR is not really going to buy you a significant improvment in image quality especially if small prints are all that will ever likely be produced. What a DSLR buys you is creative control.

Ask yourself these questions:

Does your Dad have several lenses for his current camera? Does he use them or does he pretty much just stick to one lens?

Does your dad use his current camera in any sort of manual mode or does he mostly shoot with it in automatic?

Perhaps your Dad might be better served by an advanced point and shoot?

 

I'll agree with the other posts. If he's not playing around with shutter speed and aperture to get the exposures / depth of field / implication of motion etc. that he wants, then he's not using the features that make a DSLR special.

The Canon S3 IS is a good suggestion - I'll add the Panasonic DMC-FZ30K super zoom as well as a pretty darn nice digital camera with excellent image quality, a really good lens, and built-in image stabilization.

 

The S3 IS sounds perfect for this situation.