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jsr
Citizen
Username: Jsr
Post Number: 18
Registered: 3-2006
| | Posted on Thursday, August 3, 2006 - 4:39 pm: | 
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Shopping for a new digital camera. Not a SLR. wishing to spend 300$. Any suggestions that people are happy with? Thanks
Jeff
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bettyspaghetti
Citizen
Username: Bettyspaghetti
Post Number: 41
Registered: 11-2004
| | Posted on Thursday, August 3, 2006 - 4:55 pm: |
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I have the Nikon Cool Pix (it is about 3 years old though). I like it though there is a delay. My SLR, a Canon Rebel has no delay but there is a big price difference. I am not sure which one in that price range has no delay. I will ask around. |
Tom Reingold
Supporter
Username: Noglider
Post Number: 15204
Registered: 1-2003
| | Posted on Thursday, August 3, 2006 - 5:20 pm: |
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I think you can't go wrong with Canon. Though we could say that about a lot of brands.
If you google "digital camera reviews" you will find a couple of sites that do exhaustive testing of cameras with unbiased reports on features and quality. I got a Canon A610 earlier this year. It's 5 megapixels. I see it's now down to just over $200. I think if I got one with more pixels, it would produce bulkier files that would be harder to handle, and I don't print big pictures, so what's the point?
Be sure to buy a memory card at the same time.
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Alleygater
Citizen
Username: Alleygater
Post Number: 2406
Registered: 10-2004
| | Posted on Thursday, August 3, 2006 - 6:34 pm: |
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and an extra battery. I agree with Tom about Canon. Can't go wrong. |
Tom Reingold
Supporter
Username: Noglider
Post Number: 15205
Registered: 1-2003
| | Posted on Thursday, August 3, 2006 - 10:16 pm: |
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One of my criteria was that the camera use ordinary batteries, so when they drain, I can buy replacements anywhere. But I normally use rechargeable AA batteries.
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jsr
Citizen
Username: Jsr
Post Number: 19
Registered: 3-2006
| | Posted on Sunday, August 6, 2006 - 2:43 pm: |
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After spending hours reviewing sites-cnet, epinions, yahoo, decided to get a panisonic lumix FZ7. Has a great zoom, image stabilization, and its not a supercompact-I don't like the handling of those things-buttons too small, doesn't feel like you are holding anything. I'll let you know how it works in a few weeks.
Jeff |
Politicalmon
Citizen
Username: Politicalmon
Post Number: 225
Registered: 9-2005
| | Posted on Monday, August 7, 2006 - 11:20 am: |
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I just bouth a Canon for my wife - I spent close to 3 months in analysis and have been watching the Digital Camera market cloesly for 3 years. We currently own 4 - 35mm cameras and (Lecia, Nikons & old German made Kodak Retina 3c) and take numerous photographs - I was waiting for the paramont shift from CCD imaging to CMOS imager to occur but it appears to be taking longer then I anticipated - I've only seen the technology in the high end professional digital cameras thus far and I wasn't about to spend 4K for a digital camera so I decided to bite the bullet and get something in the $300 range.
In my reseach I found that Canon it unique from other designs in that they couple the CCD with a computer based color correction chip (Divix) on system board. This is one of the reasons the Canon image looks so much cleaner than others - it also explains why Canon was #1 in the July issue of Consumer Reports.
I ended up with the Canon PowerShot A620 (7M - CCD) which was rated #1 and cost around $240, I added a 1GB memory card since the 32Mb of on board RAM would not hold many high resolution photographs. I looked at the A630 which has a larger 3" LCD but didn't believe the higher price was reflected in a better image but rather the cost of a larger LCD which translates to higher power consumption or faster battery consumption.
The two issues I was concerned with when shopping for the camera was the 'Purple fringing' problem that a high percentage of digital cameras under $500 exhibit and negated a number of other canditates which were more expensive yet ehibited this problem and the lens mechanics which is suseptable to problems after non ideal handling of the camera since they are mostly made of a plastic core.
For more info on the fringing problem see.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Purple_fringing
http://www.pictureline.com/newsletter/2004/july/purplefringe.html
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LilLB
Citizen
Username: Lillb
Post Number: 2233
Registered: 10-2002
| | Posted on Monday, August 7, 2006 - 11:28 am: |
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I have a Canon digital elf. Love everything about it, including the fact that it can fit in my pocket. The ONLY thing I don't like about it, is that it takes too long for the picture to actually be taken. I lose some shots that way. And, the second the battery goes a little low, it takes a while to make that shot.
I bought it a few years ago - it's the 4 megapixel model (I think it's the 410), so they may have made improvements.
It definitely takes great shots though. |
Tom Reingold
Supporter
Username: Noglider
Post Number: 15223
Registered: 1-2003
| | Posted on Monday, August 7, 2006 - 11:42 am: |
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LilLB reminds me of something, and I'd like to ask politicalmon and the other camera experts: I have read that the quality of the memory card is one of the factors in how quickly the camera can commit a picture. So a fast memory card can enable you to take pictures faster. Is this true? Most card makers don't list how fast their cards are.
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Politicalmon
Citizen
Username: Politicalmon
Post Number: 227
Registered: 9-2005
| | Posted on Monday, August 7, 2006 - 12:27 pm: |
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Good question, I know I've seen they are marketing new faster memory cards but given the kind of speeds I/O to memory chip (which are in the nanosecond range) I'm hesitant to believe that is the true bottleneck and would help only slightly with this problem and only under certain conditions.
Many of the new digital cameras do not have the serious lag time between shots that was a characteristic of the early designs and are probably the result of newer, faster processors.
Off the top of my head I thought factors which contribute to the delay of a 2nd shot were time required to process light level, focusing of the image, determine shutter speed, battery recovery levels to activate the halogen flash and then writing to memory.
I guess for starter you can run a test with a timer - lower the image resolution, turn off the flash (go outside for the shot) and try 2 different memory cards (one using the higher speed) - take the shot - time it then repear with the slower card - then go inside and increase the resolution, use the flash and try the 2 cards - this data will yield the answer to your query.
I'm betting the memory card will have a slight advantage only if you are capturing images at high resolution - indoors.
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