Digital camera thread

I have a Cannon Powershot A75 that cost me $200. Its 3.2 Megapixles and so far has been an awesome camera. Takes top notch pics and some really great video, even my brother ( whos really into computer/electronic stuff) said that it takes better video then his $500 5.1 megapixal camera.

best title ever? you have quite a ways to catch up to my titles

I can second the A75 as a great camera. Also uses regular AA batteries.

Gary

I've got a Nikon Coolpix 4300 and its great. I had it for about a year before I finally read all the features to it. Its an awesome camera now. It takes stills and 60 sec vids but the only downside is you would have to buy the mic if you wanted sound. I hardly ever take vids on it so it doesn't bother me too much but I dunno why they thought silent movies was a good idea.


Jeremy

Here's a good site for in depth information and reviews on digicams. Go with Canon, Nikon or Olympus and you can't go wrong. Kodak is good for ease of use. Plenty of other good companies too. Check the site for more detail that you care to know about digital cameras.
http://www.dcresource.com/

you need to think about what you are going to use it for. I got an olympus camera like 2-3 years ago and its nice just wish it had better macro. If I went with a new one it would either be an olympus, canon or maybe nikon. I have a friend with the a75 and its nice but I think I like my uncles olympus c-765. All what you have to do is read lots of reviews. That site posted above is good

Good idea about checking review sites. Here's another of the best:

http://www.steves-digicams.com/hardware_reviews.html

Gary

another vote for Canon A75, my fave camera to date (have also had Canon A20, A40, A60, A70, and A80) --dont worry, i dont pay for them! through work

Just to get this off my chest. My friend has a kodak CX 6770 I think or something and I always loved his camera. I know nothing about digital cameras but the other day I was in a rush and needed a camera so I bought that whole kodak CX 7300 deal for like $100 thinking it would be a decent camera. I was wrong. I could go on with how much stuff I hate about this camera but the biggest thing is it doesn't have autofocus it has fixed focus. So I always have problems with bluriness. I need another camera, this one pisses me off, lol.

I would look more to the professional/objective review sites (like the two listed above), rather than Epinions. Have you ever noticed how inconsistent user opinions are? I think it's because the only people who care to post a user review have a strong opinion. Either they hated the product (cause their's was the 1 in 1000 defective or for some other reason), or they really really love the product (and maybe want to counter some of the negative posts). The other 99% of buyers never post an opinion.

So, it seems you really don't get reliable information from user review. Just my opinion.

I say go to the dpreview site.
dpreview

This guy really knows what he's talking about and all of the cameras he reviews have picture samples (inlcuding the original full-size, right off camera ones).

It was the review on this site that sealed the deal for me getting my Olympus C5050Z a few years ago.

Personally, I don't like Cannons 'cause their non-slr ones white balance sux. See a sample of pics taken with flourescent light, looks like it was taken through a yellow filter.

I recently bought the Cannon SD200. It is the new genration of small ass digicams. It has roughly the same dimensions as a deck of cards. 2" screen, 3X optical zoom, and the video it takes is a REALLY nice feature. It is capabe of taking up to 640x480@30 frames per sec (as opposed to MOST digicams which take video at 15 FPS). It even has a fast frame reate mode where you can take video at 60 fps. It also has the DIG!C II processor, so the cameral is SUPER fast as far as powerup, writing to memory etc. The DIG!C II processor is also what makes the camera capable of streaming video directly to the memory card, instead of storing it on an internal memory buffer...so that means you are not limited in the length of video clip you can take...you can just keep shooting continuously until the memory card is full.

The only major drawbacks stem from the fact that this camera is so small.
First of all, the Battery is a custom sized NiMH, which is fairly small...I don't remember of the top of my head but it was only around 2000mAhrs. So it wont last nearly as long on a charge as, say, the Cannon A75, which uses 4 AA batteries.
Another drawback, is that since the camera is so thin, the actual distance from the lens to the CCD is very short, and the lens is a special aspherical design to accomodate this. The aspherical lens causes some noticable distortion in the corners of the images. 90% of the time you will not notice this, since the foucs of almost all of your pictures will be the center of the frame anyway.
If you are really into photography, then the picture distortion might annoy you enough, that you might want to go with a camera like the A75. But if you are just going to use it for taking pics on vacation and making small 4x6 prints from them, you will likely never notice any difference in piqture quality between the SD200 and the A75. (BTW, I keep comparing it ot the A75 because they are both 3MP).
The SD200 has a few different shooting modes, and a SEMI-manual mode. The A75 has full manual features, so if you are into that, get the A75. But even though I am into playing around with shutter speeds and f-settings on my old SLR camera, I find that 99.999% of the time, I just shoot it on full auto mode.

I personally would not waste money on anything higher than 3 or 4 megapixels. Mine is 3MP, and it is more than enough. Unless you are going to be cropping your pictures dramatically, you will neve notice the difference between a 3MP and a 14MP picture when printed out at 4"x6". Now, if you are printing 8x10's then of course you will notice a better quality picture.

Read up a little bit then, but don't over think it. A $200 camera from a quality company should do fine for now, just make sure to get the features you want. Then if you want a more advanced camera at some point in the future, do your extensive researching at that point.

In that vein, Olympus has some ultra zoom point and shoot cameras that might fit. Good luck.

i agree with illwook about dpreview.com, it's by far the best camera site although steves digital cameras has more in depth information.

The A75 was great, but it's outdated. why go with that when they've already made up to what, the A95? besides, there's not a lot of zoom. of course, if you don't care about zoom, sure it's a good camera (and i have used it)

I have the Canon S1 IS. It's been out for a while so i'd look at newer cams, but it's still selling in circuit city and best buy for the same price i bought it at months ago. It's got 10x optical zoom (about 200mm equivalent) and at the time had the best movie mode out of the less expensive ones (steve's digi cam review site will tell you that)

If i were to do it again, i'd go for an SLR, but i'm pretty big on taking pics. the SI IS is all I could afford at the time for <$300

Stick with Canon, sony and kodak make things "easy to use" so they bump up the price... screw that

donjohn said:

Stick with Canon, sony and kodak make things "easy to use" so they bump up the price... screw that

Click to expand...

Yeah...any by "easy to use" they mean...you put the camera in a cradle (which costs an extra $70-$80 and hit a "share" button (or "download" or whatever the hell they name the button) instead of plugging your camera into a USB port.

Scot_94GT said:

Yeah...any by "easy to use" they mean...you put the camera in a cradle (which costs an extra $70-$80 and hit a "share" button (or "download" or whatever the hell they name the button) instead of plugging your camera into a USB port.

Click to expand...

seriously though, it's rediculous... that much for a cradle when you just open the port and plug it in yourself

besides, canon's lenses are the best out of everything