MexicanOnABike

hey everyone! I plan on going on vacation this summer but I need a camera that will capture some amazing shots of w/e I see.

Right now, I have a toshiba 4300 (4mp) and my gf has a sony cybershot dslP41 (4.1mp).
these were both great cameras but right now, i need something that will give me a much better picture and contrast overall.

I have been looking at canon for possible cameras.

My needed features are:
-preferably SD and SDHC cards so no sony or olympus.
-I would prefer AA batteries instead of the other options unless theres a major advantage to it.
-I don't really need SLR but it needs to take good quality shots in almost all settings.
-compact is not that important but it would be nice to not have to carry a huge camera bag whereever I go.
-ZOOM is really important to me. 3-4x is not enough. I'm looking for more around the line of 5-10X.
-and of course, price. under 200$ but i'm willing to go up to ~300$ if the camera is incredible.

So, TFP, can you help me?!

edit: I have been looking at this camera for a while. I'm not sure if it's too basic or not yet.
http://canon.ca/english/index-produc...23&gid=2&ovr=1

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Craven Morehead

You don't mention megapixels. You should consider that as much if not more than zoom. If there are enough megapixels you can crop and enlarge a picture to blow up the specific portion of the picture you want. Unless you are printing it in poster size, most cameras today have more than enough resultion for even 8X10 prints

Here's a great site w/ forums devoted to specific camera models
http://www.dpreview.com/
http://www.dpreview.com/forums/

If you go Canon, check this out
http://www.usa.canon.com/dlc/

Good luck!

MexicanOnABike

I don't really ask about the MP because they're now almost all 8mp or higher. and I do plan on printing my best pictures in 4x6 and possibly getting bigger sizes done if they're worthy.

thanks for the links CM. I tend to always go to steve's digicam reviews but they always sound like good cameras in all his reviews. I guess i need more honest reviews?

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allaboutmusic

Megapixel count is not be-all-end-all. The chip sensor size is more often than not an indicator of picture quality as it has lower noise... some of the older top-end 2mp digital SLRs take sharper, cleaner photos with better colour and contrast than modern 10mp point and shoots as they have larger sensors less susceptible to noise etc (especially when coupled with a good lens). I'd say anything above 4mp is more than fine. I use my digital SLR, and keep it on 3mp for regular use such as shooting pictures for eBay listings etc (which I then downsize further anyway).

Craven's dpreview site recommendation is a good one, I used to spend hours on that site.

ngdawg

I got my daughter a Canon SX100IS for $249. It's a great little camera, has the flexibility of using settings plus aperatures and she gets great clear shots. The reviews for it have been decent.

Redlemon

I just ordered a Panasonic Lumix DMC-LZ8, which sounds like it fits your needs completely. About $150 at Amazon, 5x zoom, AA batteries, SD card. I was pleased with my previous Panasonic, until I dropped it on the lens.

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blahblah454

If you don't want to spend the money on an SLR and being compact is not a big issue then this is the best camera out there. Its pretty cheap for what you get. It is currently on sale at Futureshop for $370 Canadian right now.

Here is what the propaganda website has to say about it:
Sorry I never saw your price range. That A series camera you have picked out is alright. I currently own one and I find it to be slow when taking indoor shots with the flash. If you use it outside when it is bright then its great, takes great pictures and it is fast. But indoors it will just leave you frustrated, especially if you are taking pictures of moving targets.

Good luck on your quest!

MexicanOnABike

Thanks to everyone's input.

To be honest, I really don't have any price point. I just didn't want any recommendation in the 2000$ price mark. Just think of it as: I want something to take amazing point and shoot pictures but that also has good to great zoom and i prefer the SD and AA format. If something is better, then please educate me. every camera i check has good but bad features so I don't know...

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Fotzlid

I've got a Cannon Powershot SD600. It does a good job but anything above the optical zoom, which is only 3X, is very grainy. It does take decent point and shoot pics and has some manual settings (which I don't use often).
Uses SD cards and has a rechargable battery that has gone 250+ shots before needing a recharge.
I posted a few pics in a Las Vegas thread a bit back if you want to see how the pics look.

edit:
found it http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showthread.php?t=132071

i must have taken a few off but there are still 3 there.

blahblah454

Personally I think that the Canon S5 IS would be your best bet, at 12x optical zoom and a build in image stabilizer you cant get anything better in the point and shoot category.

If you are willing to spend 500-600 bucks you can find the occational store still selling the Canon Digital Rebel XT (slr). But this is a much more complicated camera, but will also take much better pictures.

But for your needs the S5 IS is amazing, my aunt has one and it take beautiful pictures and it is pretty fast.

allaboutmusic

I might have to look into that one as a second camera.

Or you could buy the slightly older Digital Rebel secondhand. I have this camera and it is far better than any point and shoot on the market... admittedly bulkier, and you will end up buying lenses, but it's markedly superior in picture quality and control.

bitrunner

I've run though a bunch of digital cameras, and all had flaws of some kind. I just didn't want to spend the money on a DSLR. Well I just bought a Canon Rebel XT and love it! It was around 600 bucks, which for as much camera as you get is a great price.

It does take CF, but the price of a 2 gig card is like 20 bucks. I just took it to FL and it did great, took like 300 pics and never had to charge it. I just wish I would have bought it about 2 cameras ago!

robot_parade

We just got one of the entry-level DSLR's (Nikon d40), and it is freaking ~amazing~ - I'm very happy with the pictures I'm taking with it. I was never happy with the pics I got from the point-and-shoots. Advantages that I've seen from it:

o I can actually take pictures of the kids when they aren't holding *perfectly* still, and have them come out not-blurry. I took some pictures of my daughter on a swing, swinging, and they turned out awesome.
o I can take lots of pictures - 2.5/sec according to the specs (without flash). With flash, it's about a second or two between shots. Either way, much, much faster than all the point and shoots I've had.
o Much more flexibility with the settings. Feels like I could actually learn to be a photographer with this thing, though the 'automatic' mode is mostly good enough.
o No red eye. The built-in flash is far enough away from the lens so that I've never had red-eye.
o 'Expandable' with fancy lenses and flashes.

Downsides:
o Expensive - about $500.
o The lens it ships with is only 3x, IIRC. And 'nice' lenses are insanely expensive. I may look at ebay, though, when I want a telephoto lens.
- That said, with the sharpness and clarity I get, I don't really miss more of a zoom.
o It is a bit heavier and bulkier than the point and shoots, and you can't just glance at the screen and snap away, you have to actually look through the eyepiece. Fine with me.

Anyway, on the whole, I'm very happy with it, and glad I spent the extra $$ over yet another point-and-shoot.

xepherys

MoaB,

I hope you enjoy my two cents.

First, are you already invested in SD cards? If not, don't fear CF either. It's the de facto standard for pro photography for a reason (and no more expensive).

Second, AA batteries. The upside? You can get batteries anywhere. The downside(s)? If you get rechargeable AA (even Eneloop, the best out there) they will not last NEARLY as long. If you get the "digital device" batteries, they will last a bit longer, but be more pricey and you still have to replace them a lot. In the end, the convenience of AA batts is rather costly.

Well, if you don't want to pay for SLR, but you want good shots in almost all situations, you're going to need a P&S with excellent manual controls and you'll need to learn to use them. The auto and scene modes NEVER net the best results on a P&S camera. I used to fire a Kodak DX10, never left "M". Now that I'm a pro-Canon guy, I can honestly say that Canon has great manual settings on all it's psuedo-SLR cams (like the PowerShot S5 IS listed above). On the true P&S cams, it's generally decent. I'd still go with Canon anyhow because of the sensor quality.

Zoom... be wary of digital zoom. It sucks across the board, without fail. This is the ultimate downside to non-SLR (fixed lens) cameras. a 10x zoom on one kodak is not the same as a 10x zoom on another kodak, let alone a canon or epson or pentax or < insert manufacturer here >. with an "x" zoom rating, it's so many times longer than the widest angle the lens can capture. It's very misleading. If the lens is wide (say 24mm) and it has 5x optical zoom, you can zoom to 120mm equivalent. Now look at the data there. 24mm is fairly wide, but because the lens and sensor are so small, there will be a lot of distortion on the edges, or the manufacturer will compensate for that by setting up the camera with a cropped sensor type of feel (where the 24mm actually seems longer than 24). Also, 120mm isn't very long. A lot of pro studio photographers do portraits with 135mm lenses. They still manage to do this in a largish studio. It isn't exactly telephoto and also lends itself to the problems mentioned above. The moral of all of this is, really look into zoom options on any camera you buy.

Compact cameras will not generally take as good of pictures as less compact cameras. Making the sensor smaller makes the picture quality lower (espcially at higher ISO settings, shots in darker situations). REALLY slim cameras take REALLY bad pictures.

As mentioned above, the megapixel rating is not the end-all thing to look at. There are 12MP cameras that take crappy pictures and 4, 6 and 8MP cameras that are years old that take amazing pictures. Again, a lot of this is based on the sensor size.

Anoter point for taking good pictures in almost all situations. Check that you can manually control the aperature size (or f-stop value). Also, make sure the maximum aperature (smallest number) is something amazingly low. 2.8 is good. Lower is great! Higher will make low-light photos not as good and prevent you from doing shots with much depth of field.

Lastly, robot_parade, did you actually just call a kit lens on a dSLR a "3x" lens? Grrr! Bad Robot! Bad! :-p I assume it's something like an 18-55mm. You can't really say 3x, though, as a 100-300mm lens is still a "3x" zoom lens, but is so vastly different that comaprison isn't reasonable. Stop thinking point and shoot, start thinking SLR

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robot_parade

Sorry, dude, I'm not a photography guy, so what do I know? ;-)

The lens is indeed the 18-55mm that ships with the d40 - it's described in various places as '3x', which seems to match up about right with what I expect - it zooms a bit, but is clearly not what I think of as a "telephoto" lens. Still, whatever it is, it's much, much better quality than my last camera (A fuji P&S) that was "10x". I could easily zoom to 3x, crop the picture, and get a better shot that looks closer up and better quality than the old one. If I want a telephoto lens, it looks like I'll have to pay out the nose, so...

Fwiw, when I asked some friends about recommended cameras, this page was recommended to me: http://www.kenrockwell.com/tech/recommended-cameras.htm - the guy is in love with the d40, and recommends a cannon if you want a P&S. I'm pretty damn happy with the d40, so maybe his recommendation for P&S is good, too.

MexicanOnABike

Absolutely! great post! this is exactly what I expected.

It's not something that I need but with the cost of the other types like sony memory or XD, SD or SDHC seems like the best option for now. Even CF is not that expensive... I just don't have much knowledge on CF or cameras that use them.

I know, I just don't want to have to purchase a 2nd battery when i already have so many AA and 2 chargers. I would rather get something that can save me $ on the long run.

And that's why I asked for opinions... I know that not all cameras can shoot in every settings at 100%. but a P&S camera that can take good shots mostly outside is really what I want. I plan on going on vacation so good shots with good zoom is what I need. doing in the dark action shots is not really what I want.

Absolutely. Digital zoom is the worst thing ever! I have photoshop for that!

good to know. I didn't really plan on getting a super slim compact camera anyways.

true.

This is good to know. This was one thing I didn't know.

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xepherys

The d40 is great, no doubt. As for bodies, at the sub-$2000 level, I give Nikon and Canon equal credit. Easily. I just love Canon lenses. *swoon* At the pro level >$2000 I'd stick with a Canon body anyway. One suggestion is to find the Nikon equivalent of the Canon EF 85/1.8. This lens may as well be glued to my camera body I use it so often.

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allaboutmusic

I preferred the smooth image quality of Canon sensors when I bought my DSLR. I would certainly not be unhappy with a Nikon DSLR though.

MexicanOnABike

what is everyone's thought on this camera from looking at the specs? good enough? crappy?

http://www.fujifilm.com/products/dig...ons/index.html

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xepherys

Looks decent enough MoaB

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allaboutmusic

THat looks pretty nice to me.