Digital Camera- What's the best, smallest digicam?
 

So my Canon S40 broke about a half year ago. Sence before this accident though, I've been looking for something smaller. I frequent DPReview.com and am yet to find a really small camera that can take 'acceptable' pictures. I figured it might be impossible to go so small and still retain quality, however a guy at Circuit City said that new technology is coming out that involves "vertical lenses" that are helping the super-slim cameras take good pictures.

So do I need to wait longer for a camera to come out or is there a decent camera out there that I'm missing? I really like the size of the Sony T-something, the really thin one, but I've heard bad things with it's flash and overall image quality. I like the quality of the Canon S400 and S500 but it's a little too big for what I want.

I'm getting antsy here but don't want to wind up with a slim POS if possible. I'm basically looking for a camera that can take decent scenery pictures, as well as good people-pictures. Nothing professional, but I'm coming from an S40 that I liked so I'm worried that I'll be unhappy with the picture quality

Edit: I'm not trying to find the smallest camera for the cheapest price. If anything I plan to spend a lot. I'm trying to find out if there's a very small camera (Smaller than the Canon S500's) that can put up any kind of competition.

Thanks for any info guys.
-T

about 2 months ago Qualcomm releases specs on a 6mp chipset that will be used for cellphones....

use that information to extrapolate that the camera market will need to do something competitive in the next 6 months to 1 year.

6mp cellphones huh? Pretty interesting to hear. Surprised I haven't heard anything yet about the tech being used in small Sonys and Canons.

Bump for any other comments.
-T

I had a Casio Exilim M2 and loved it for its small size... I had a case that you could flip up the flap and take pictures from in the case almost instantly. It was a 2MP, nothing stellar, but perfectly acceptable. I've heard good things about some of the more recent Exilims though... Z3 is it?

I was looking for the same thing. The smallest inexpensive camera of quality I found was the Sony U series. Only 2 meg. But fairly inexpensive. Around 200.00.


Link


http://www.dpreview.com/news/0305/so...-angle-001.jpg

Thanks for the info guys. I'm going to edit my original post though, I think some were confused.

id just upgrade to a Canon s60... that line of the S series offers full manual controls. i have a s400 (and a larger dslr) i am sorry i didnt get a small cam that could handle manually.

Realtively cheap, slimmer than the S500 series, and a great camera is the Canon SD110. I have one and love it. Easy to use.

i agree w/ darkeness. especially if you're already familiar w/ the canon os & image quality. plus w/ the sd110 you get some zoom (2x). not bad for such a little point/shoot w/ 3.2Mpix

Have you guys seen the SD20 yet? It's a updated version of the SD10 that people didn't like too much (sd20 was released just a month ago.)

5 megapix and it's only .7 thick! No viewfinder but I think I can get along with that as long as battery power doesn't die *too* quickly, and I don't think I ever used the viewfinder on my other digicam anyways.

http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/spec...canon_sd20.asp
Just waiting to read a few more reviews.

-T

heres some more revies of it for you

http://www.steves-digicams.com/2004_reviews/sd20.html
http://www.dcresource.com/reviews/ca...ew/index.shtml

I'd also look into the sony DSC-P150 which is slightly larger but is 7 megapixels and has nice image quality.

I'm not much of a photographer, but I've always been happy borrowing my buddies diamage x. There is a somewhat extensive Dimage X series, all of them are quite slim.
I'd take a look if I was in the market for a new small digital.

http://konicaminolta.com/products/co...camera/dimage/
in general

http://konicaminolta.com/products/co...x50/index.html
in particular

I've had a Casio Exilim for about 2 years but it just crapped out and Casio wanted $150 to repair it which is too much ...I ended up getting another on e-bay for half that. Its the smallest digicam that I've seen which is great but I'm not happy about the cost of it failing like that.

definitely the casio exilim, chic and the size of a credit card. my parents have one and they love it. fits right in your pocket. have seen negative online reviews about the quality of the pictures though.

Im in the market also, a few of the ones Ive been looking at are the Casio Exilim Ex-Z50, Canon S500 and the Sony W1... might be worth your while to do a little reading on them though - Ive heard the least complaints about the sony but Im still not quite sold.

Can't really talk now, but I did tons of research and wound up getting the Canon SD300. Thanks for all the info guys.

T

Make sure you post some pics so we can see how the quality is overall.