ziadel

Ok, so my Samsung bit the dust, literally, and I want a digi cam with some more zoom being all the wway out here in Montana..

The Lumix is out front in my mind right now..


The pics for some reason relaly odnt look much better than my old camera (8mp) but this has better motion picture quality and will continue to record audio while the xoom is being futzed with...


So can anyone recommend something better than this? I'm kinda clueless when it comes to this nonsense so any advice would be appreciated. Anyone have any personal experience with this model?


thanks
adam

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sadistikdreams

Wow, that's not bad.

There's something I always try to explain about megapixels to people.
It breaks down like this: 1 megapixel is 1,000,000 different colors.
So let's say, since the camera you're looking at is 10 mega pixels, it represents 10 million colors.

Now here's the thing: the human eye can only see 7 million different colors (allegedly). So when it comes to cameras, the more megapixels doesn't necessarily mean that a 4 by 5 photo would look better than a picture taken with a camera with less megapixels.

The advantage is for larger, poster sized photos. That's where having more megapixels count.

As for a reccomendation, I always liked my Canon Digital Elph. It's a extremely portable camera, about 7.1mp.

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laudanum

If you don't need the HiDef movie capture ability, you could probably go for its predecessor the TZ-4.

Its 8MP and also has the 10x optical zoom. I got one for a trip this year and found that the outdoor photos were fantastic. The indoor photos were okay. I found the flash a little in need of improving. Its too bad none of the camera makers can make a flash that will automatically adjust to to the zoom level that you're using.

The thing about these cameras is that the 10x zoom makes them a little big to be pocket size. I looked at Olympus's 10x camera which is slightly smaller but the menu structure was absolutely terrible.

hope this helps.

Halx

errmm sadistik, not to threadjack, but a megapixel is a million pixels, not a million colors. It has nothing to do with color depth. The number of megapixels a camera "has" is simply a measurement of how much data the lens can capture when it goes "click." Or the resolution of the video that is being captured. 2 megapixels is a small picture. 10 megapixels is a HUGE picture.

I now return you to your regularly scheduled thread discussion.

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sadistikdreams

Okay, but a pixel, one single pixel, can only be one color, correct?

It's kind of hard to understand, but since photography is very similar to the way our eyes work, it makes sense. If we can only see 7 million colors at any given time, wouldn't ten megapixels, or ten million colors be overkill?

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Zweiblumen

Pixels are a single dot in an image. A known 64 pixel image is the chessboard 8 by 8 "pixels". Each square is one pixel.
So the more pixels you have in an image makes it sharper (potentionally). So the number of pixels in a picture are the colums multiplied by rows. By Kodak 1152 x 864 pixels are close to 1 megapixel.
Each pixel can only be 1 colour but the number of possible colours depends on hardware and software. In the chessboard each "pixel" can only be white or black, that is 1 bit. Most common is 16.7 million colours or 24 bits.

Yours
Zweiblumen

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sadistikdreams

Ohhh. I guess I wasn't understanding it right.

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ziadel

well crap, I just found out this thing only makes videos in quicktime format.


Can anyone suggest any other comperable cameras? I really want HD motion and to be able to zoom with audio.
-----Added 29/10/2008 at 01 : 36 : 31-----
ok, according to an amazon reviewer you cannot convert these quicktime files. I find that hard to believe, but can anyone comment?

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