I have 3 lenses from my Minolta XG-M film camera.

I had hoped these would fit a digital camera, but have been told previously
that they will not.  The Minolta cam is quite old.

Are you positive that they'll work ?  The XG-M doesn't have focus in the
body.  The lenses do the focusing.

How nice it would be if they'd work!

   This bears repeating, so I quoted it.  Plus look into the cost/quality
of very fast lenses (i.e. flat f/2.8 zoom or primes) for the camera body
you're interested in, and budget for it.  Maybe being an audience member
you'll have the ability to move around and set you viewpoint - this will
make a prime a very good option.

   Dave

Yes. But you can't by _fast_ image stabilised lenses as yet. Canon has
no image stabilised lens at f2.8 below 70 mm. (And the only one it has
at all, the 70-200 L IS USM, costs significantly more than a 20D body.)

However, there are a number of f2.8 zooms without image stabilisation
around, for any brand, some of them even relatively affordable. So, if
you use a zoom, you can gain at least two thirds of a stop. If you are
comfortable with primes, you can gain up to a full stop still again.

Even if Canon's noise is better than K/M:s, and the lens-based image
stabilisation more efficient than K/M:s in-camer anti-shake system, can
it really offset the advantage of being able to shoot with image
stabilisation at f1.4 as compared to f3.5?

The way I have figured, the K/M DSLR concept is strongest _just_ for
people whose main priority is to be able to shoot indoors in available
light as much and as well as possible.

In particular as the K/M anti-shake system clearly works well at the
modest focal lenghts used for indoor photopgraphy, whereas it is less
clear whether it performs as well with, say, a 400mm sitting on a 1.4x
teleconverter. (Or does for instance Alan have any more news on K/M:s
anti-shake performance with long teles?)

This is actually one of the two reasons that I have for not
pre-ordering a 5D right away. The other is that I feel that there might
be a chance that the upper-level point-and-shoots will soon become so
good that a DSLR offers no real bonus for someone like me, whose has no
AF lenses for his film SLR, and thus would have to start shopping
around for lenses even if I bought a Pentax, that could take my
existing lenses. The specs for, for instance, the Panasonic FZ30 seem
so good, and its predecessors work so well, that it really would need
only two stops more of useful ISO sensitivity for me to consider such a
camera an equal-value replacement for a DSLR. In particular as it
offers three distinct useful advantages to most DSLR:s, two of which
are entirely universal - the ability reliably to compose a picture
without having your eye next to the viewfinder, and the very discreet
shutter noise. (The third, the non-issue of sensor dust, seems to be
taken care of well also by choosing an Olympus, which on the other hand
doesn't seem to have any other advantages besides a couple of heavily
subsidised good lenses.)

Jan Böhme

Depends on timing, and what kind of pictures you want. Motion blur
restricted to arms or legs can be qiute nice in dance photography. But
you are right that one has clearly limited options shooting at less
than 1/125.

Jan Böhme