Buying a Digital Camera

[Lusankya]

My sister isn't what you'd call "a responsible person", and now the family's digital camera is nowhere to be found.

To prevent a repeat occurence of this nature (and so more piccies of yours truly can be provided to SDNet), I've decided it would be best to just buy my own digital camera that I never have to let her use, and I what would constitute a good value digital camera. (I may be clueless, but I'm not silly enough to go and buy the fisrt thing that shines prettily - not all the time, anyway)

[BoredShirtless]

The Canon PowerShot S410. Best camera in the whole wide world.

[darthdavid]

My family uses an Olympus C5000Z. It's great. You can see some pictures I took with it on my Deviant art page ( http://darthdavid.deviantart.com (yes, I know, shamless site pimpin'. ))

[Dead_Ghost]

Well, the Nikon Coolpixs cameras are quite nice. The latest versions, 8800 and 8700 are quite the power-up. Mine's the 5400 and it even lets me make movies . Of course, there's also the D2X. While I don't know its specifics, I heard it's one of their best digital cameras.

[JeanLucPicard]

I have a Sony DSC P-92 that I got for about $320. Has a fast startup, is high res (5mpx), easy to use controls, and very good consumer reviews. Of course the Fujifilm A320 is also a pretty good buy if you don't want to spend over $160 for a good camera.

[Elheru Aran]

I recommend most Olympus cameras. Pricey, but I've never had mine go wrong. Pretty easy to use too... just open and you're ready to go, pretty much.

[Kenny_10_Bellys]

Specifics? Nah! Here's a guide from a photographer for the beginner...

1. It must be rechargable, they eat batteries
2. More Megapixels the better, but dont let it rule. Anything over 2 Mp is fine for most stuff.
3. Optical zoom is best if you can get it, digital is not
4. Lot of memory (or expandable) is good.
5. USB2 links are good, proprietary cables are pants.
6. Preview screens are great if you can get them, but eat batteries (see 1)


If you're buying point and click stuff then go with a decent name at a price you can afford, Nikon, Fuji, Olympus and Kodak all make fine point-and-click cameras for the average user. If you want an SLR digital camera then you want the Nikon F70, as it's somewhat better than the current Canon EOS verion. That's £800 though, probably about $1200-1500 and only for semi-pros.

[Robert Walper]

Given Lus's popularity, I'm surprised no one has offered to buy her a camera.

[GrandMasterTerwynn]

Specifics? Nah! Here's a guide from a photographer for the beginner...

1. It must be rechargable, they eat batteries

Yes. If you get a camera with a proprietary sort of rechargable battery . . . buy a couple extra battery packs.

2. More Megapixels the better, but dont let it rule. Anything over 2 Mp is fine for most stuff.

Definitely. For most uses, a 2 - 3 MP sensor is really what most people need to produce pictures that'll make neat photo prints, and look good on one's computer desktop.

3. Optical zoom is best if you can get it, digital is not

Agreed. Stay far, far away from digital zoom. Insofar as all digital zoom is is the equivalent of opening up the image in MS Paint and clicking the little magnifying glass icon. The results, as one would expect, tend to look absolutely horrible.

4. Lot of memory (or expandable) is good.

Expandable memory is definitely good. At even 2 - 3 MP, the paltry 16 - 32 MB internal memory that many cameras come with is going to be eaten up surprisingly quickly.

5. USB2 links are good, proprietary cables are pants.

Definitely agreed. Being out of town, and realizing you want to download some nifty pictures onto your laptop tends to blow when you just realized that you left your camera's distinctly non-standard data cable at home. (Personal anecdote.)

6. Preview screens are great if you can get them, but eat batteries (see 1)

While they are nice to have, they're not essential, and tend to not quite have the resolution needed to let you see just how badly you've mangled your shot. And a nifty backlit, color LCD display eats up batteries (this is the main reason average laptop [which also come with backlit color LCDs] battery life has remained more-or-less constant for the last decade or so.)

[Tsyroc]

This year for around a $100 US I bought a 3.1MP Hewlett Packard digital camera.

The internal memory is rather light so I bought a 256mb memory card that fits into it and now it can hold more pictures (~200 on the average setting) than I'd likely take at one time.

It does stills, video clips and I think it'll even do stills with audio (not a feature I was interested in).

It does have a 5X digital zoom.

It uses two AA batteries and yes it eats them pretty quick between the flash and the view screen, especially the view screen. The view screen can be shut off during normal opperation but it does come on after you take a picture to see if you want to keep it.

I mainly got this camera because I have an HP scanner/printer so I knew they'd be compatable. Plus it was in the price range of what I had to spend. I'm not a big on photography so I was only looking for a decent digital point an shoot and this seems to fit the bill.

It has some settings involving mostly the flash that I haven't gone into detail about but if you're looking for something to get started with that you won't be too upset if it gets broken or swiped by your sister then I think something along these lines might work out for you.

[The Cleric]

I JUST bought a Kidak CX7300 for $100US at Sears. It's 3.2MP, LCD screen, standard Firewire port, and fits SD memory cards (64mb card was $18US, and will hold about 50 pictures). I love it already.