Picked up a new camera yesterday, the Olympus Stylus Epic QD. It's a very compact point and shoot model that I got to have for school, street photography, etc. The camera has a 35mm f2.8 fixed lens and it uses standard 35mm film. One thing that's nice about it for railfans is the weather resistant design which was tested not an hour after I left the store. The camera survived two hours of raining shooting without a hitch. So, maybe instead of giving up photograhy when the sky starts falling, you can trade your SLR for one of the weather resistant point and shoot models from Olympus or Pentax.
Not so sure about trading my SLR for water resistance. I have seen SLR's in action during torrential (read monsoonal) downpours in Hong Kong by a couple of dedicated photographers trying to get shots of water plumes from vehicles on a street corner. The camera was wrapped fairly well in a plastic bag and I am certain it was drier than the photographers were... hehe. BTW, Olympus have several water resistant models through their 'point and shoot' range. Outside the US they are called the mju and mjuII. Gary.
