Newbie: Digital cameras and slow shutter speeds

[Pavel]

Forgive me if this was answered previously.
I am considering purchasing my first digital camera. I am considering
the Canon A70/75/80 with a slow shutter speed maximum of 15 seconds.
One of the things that I will be doing (or learn to do) is practicing
the art of night photography. So slow shutter speed is a necessity.
With the old SLR, I could set the aperture to say, f11 and a shutter
speed of 8 seconds for some night shots. I am hoping this camera can
do the same without shelling the big bucks on a digital SLR.

Does anyone have any comments or recommendations on this or other
digital cameras.

Thanks in advance

[Piced5]

"Pavel" <sasha...@hotmail.com> wrote in message news:<Qeu4c.38659$Up2.14002@pd7tw1no>...

I recently did some shots of lightning at night over the city.
The camera was a Canon 1d and the exposure was 200 asa,f11 @30 seconds
without noise reduction switched on.
The results were a shocker- with large amounts of noise in the form of
white pixels throughout the image..
I did some more images with noise reduction on and the results were
better.
My tip is - try before you buy- at this point you might be better
shooting film!

[plastik]

pic...@hotmail.com (Piced5) wrote in message news:<e3b9db83.04040...@posting.google.com>...

> "Pavel" <sasha...@hotmail.com> wrote in message news:<Qeu4c.38659$Up2.14002@pd7tw1no>...
> > Forgive me if this was answered previously.
> > I am considering purchasing my first digital camera. I am considering
> > the Canon A70/75/80 with a slow shutter speed maximum of 15 seconds.
> > One of the things that I will be doing (or learn to do) is practicing
> > the art of night photography.

Hey there

I took a lot of night shots with my old Fuji Finepix S304 and have
taken some with my new D70.

The hardest part of the process I find is focusing. I used to have to
trick my Fuji by pointing it at a light source, such as a streetlamp,
for it to autofocus, then reframe for the final shot. The LCD
viewfinder also showed next-to-nothing in dark conditions so it was a
matter of trial and error.

Even more frustrating was the LCD playback screen was very forgiving
of exposure and focus, so I wouldn't really know till I got home if my
shots had worked or not.

Focus is much less of an issue with DSLR or a compact with a manual
focus option so bear that it mind too.

Cheers, P