You replied to the effect above, but just to recap, you can't beat good glass. It just can't be understated. I would rather get good glass, and spend a little less on the body, than get ok glass and a high-end body.
I have tried my Sisters Nikon with a 28-300 lens with variable apeture. Does not compare to my 80-200/2.8. My 24-120 is variable apeture, but is a higher grade lens.
The Fuji Finepix S2 is really nice... Nikon body and mount though.
I have taken some really great pictures, especially the last few years. My wife has too. But... We burn through some film! On our Alaska trip a couple years ago, we took about 3000 frames. Out of that, we had about 300 slides we kept. But, for every "picture" we took, we shot at least three frames typically. Cneter exposure, over expose a stop, under expose a stop. Then, add taking the pictures from different angles of same subject, and working exposure, either through fstop or shutter speed. Different depth of field, ect. Angles of lighting... It's hard to get that great picture with a snapshot.
I have some full breeches of Humpback whales. But, I set my F100 on full motor drive, and shot 5 frames a second
Now, we shoot mostly slide film. Slide film has little to no latitude for exposure. Print film is pretty forgiving these days. You can be off by a couple stops and still get a good picture.
The nice thing about digital now is you can just delete the image. Shooting film, you don't know till you go through the time and expense of developing, in addition to the price of film itself. With digital, you have the initial expense of the memory.. After that, your set.
