Digital camera

Gem

Gem

Member
Fellow Frogger
Joined
Apr 6, 2003
Messages
109
Location
Brisbane
Hello!
Again I am in possession of about $1000 worth of myer vouchers. No, I am not in the habit of stealing books of vouchers, I had previously owned a Ricoh digi camera, and it shat itself twice so we demanded a replacement camera and got vouchers instead :D .
I am looking at the Canon PowerShot A70, Canon PowerShot S30 and the Sony DSCP8R.
Anyone had any interaction with one of these cameras?
Or anyone had another that they would recommend??
I am after a basic camera, greater than 3 mega pixels. Easy to use, and takes good pictures in low light!
Any comments would be appreciated!

ps, I still have that $80 autobarn voucher!
 
It's been 12 months since I spent much time investigating cameras Gem, but after trying out everything in my price range at Ted's Cameras here in Sydney my best advice is, buy a camera from a camera company not an electronics company like Sony.

I found the Nikons to be amazing (which is why I bought one) but I was equally impressed by image quality of Olympus and Minolta. I was not happy at all with Sony images, and one of my mates has a Sony 3megapixel unit and it's not a *patch* on my 2mp Nikon in terms of clarity of image.

The most important thing in a camera afterall is its lens :) After all that, I guess what I'm saying is go the Canon. My cousin has the S30 and she is very happy with it. Lots of snaps of her new baby :)

Happy snapping with whatever you decide on!

Derek.
p.s. My sister was looking at cameras recently and apparently the new Olympus Mju Digitals are even better than last year's models...
 
I thhink Cannon makes great digital cameras with loads of professional options like shutter speed, fstop, timers, etc...
I have an A20, it's great!

My mate has the A30 and it's awsome, he takes photos every weekend for fishing magazines and it's a good little camera, good enough in hi res mode for glossy magazines :)

I say go the Cannon
 
I'd recommend the Panasonic F1 3.2megapixel or LC5. Both runs a Leica Elmarit lens, very nice piece of glass. I'd disagree with Derek that an electronics company, like Panasonic, can not make a good camera, as the F1 is the same as Leica's digital, just with some different colour settings. Panasonic also won some best digital camera of the year awards last year.

However, I do agree with the Sony bagging and the lens being more important than the megapixel level. Sonys tend to be too slow, that's my main critcism of them.

I'm a film purist at heart though, all of my shots at my website are shot on film and film scanned. There are some pics there from the DSCP9 (5 megapixel), and you can see how ordinary they are. <a href="http://www.mymane.net" target="_blank">http://www.mymane.net</a> is my site
 
Gem, i recommend you spend a little extra ontop and get a Nikon Coolpix 5000, its a very good camera slr style with lots of features and easy to use too. Lots of support from Nikon too.
cheers Xq

ps, with 5megapixels and all the usual Nikon features, like Deka said Nikon are hard to past in the consumer range of digicams. Or find out about the Canon Pro-shot range, starting at about $10G's..lol
 
I used to like the Nikon's until I saw the results... a little too red. Unfortunately, most manufacturers use generic/common CCD's in the camera's.

A good example is the Panasonic which use Leica lenses. Leica make awesome lenses, and Panasonic make decent point and shoots (the leica C series). However the Panasonic digital cameras have been very ordinary with the quality of the pictures it gives.

As much as it pains me to recommend Canon, I have to. They really have their act together with Digi Cams. Canon have their own proprietry image handling that they built from the ground up. The A70 is a very good choice.

Ultimately it's a camera and should give you a good picture at the end. All the hype has confused people with talk of megapixels and other bells and whistles.

cheerio
 
Gem,

It all depends what you need a camera for. SLR's for scenery shots. And a small digital camera for thos every day shots when with friends and just-in-case situations.

Assuming the former.
Up until the begining of this year I would swear by the Nikkon (Im using 950 model). But I have been converted. I have had a chance to use and experiment with a Canon IXUS400. Its small ! Very compact without too many protruding parts that almost guarantees that you will take it with you. Its smaller than a packet of cigarettes.
here is the brochure <a href="http://www.canon.com.au/products/cameras/digital_compact_cameras/powershotdigitalixus400.html" target="_blank">http://www.canon.com.au/products/cameras/digital_compact_cameras/powershotdigitalixus400.html</a>
It probably isnt the camera that will take the best shots but it is the camera you WILL take with you everywhere because its portable.
And its in your price range of about $1000.

hope it helps.

ps. The menu and "usability" is pretty straight forward as well.
 
I can highly recommend the S30 with one caveat: the menus and controls are not intuitive (so don't lose the handbook).

The constructive of the S30 is extremely robust (it's like comparing a 505 to a Hyundai).

The lens is as good (if not better) than my friend's Coolpix 4500 (this is a very subjective comment).
In the "auto" mode the S30 produces very high quality photos. For example, the photos I took on Sunday, at the Redex start were all taken using "low compression" setting and each photo was about 2Mbit. in size. I have also used the "raw" mode and the resulting photo sizes are 9Mbit. in size.
In the past, I have used Sony digital cameras and I would not own any of them. Also, a friend who is a professional photographer curses the day he bought a professional Sony (5Mega pixel) camera: He claims it's the most expensive piece of junk he has ever bought.

I can send you some Redex photos if you wish, but be aware of the sizes involved.


con......

PS. Canon cameras can be bought with huge discounts from PC suppliers (but not Nikons).
 
I second tekkie suggestion for the Canon IXUS. My sister got one and it rocked.
 
Gem,

The July issue of PC Authority had a fairly comprehensive Buyer's Guide of about 20 digital cameras. I have a spare copy due to my wife buying last month's copy again for me. If you can't get a copy send me an email and I'll mail it off to you. It's no good to me!

Cheers,

Ralph.
 
I've got an Olympus mju 300, Gem. Absolutely love it. Very compact, stunning picture quality for a 3.2mpixel camera, completely weather proof, metal body, good size screen, 3x optical zoom, etc etc.

You'll find a review of it at <a href="http://www.ephotozine.com/equipment/tests/testdetail.cfm/test_ID/179" target="_blank">http://www.ephotozine.com/equipment/tests/testdetail.cfm/test_ID/179</a> and one local dealer at <a href="http://www.digitalcamerawarehouse.com.au/prod246.htm" target="_blank">http://www.digitalcamerawarehouse.com.au/prod246.htm</a>

Cheers

Rod
 
Yup, I've heard good things about the Olympus, as well as some good results from the Fuji 3.2 as well. I went with the Panasonic because of the lens and the 50 and 100 ASA settings, which the Fuji didn't have. I bought the Panasonic for a friend who is in Europe at the moment. I'm yet to see the results to confirm how good it is.
 
You'll find a few examples of Olympus mju 300 shots (some in lowish light - but it actually also has a "night shot" capabaility that I have tried yet) at <a href="http://www.netspace.net.au/~rodhagen/Olympus%20export3/index.htm" target="_blank">http://www.netspace.net.au/~rodhagen/Olympus%20export3/index.htm</a>

I've kept the resolution down for the sake of bandwidth. At full resolution 8x 10" prionts look very , very sharp.

Cheers

Rod
 
I just bought an Olympus C740. I wanted a dcent zoom and with its 10x optical zoom and 3.2 megapixel qualities I was hard pressed to find anything that compared for the $900 it cost me.

The only problem I have heard of is that low light shots aren't the best but I haven't seen any problems. I have also read that using it in manual mode allows you to get around this problem.

Its easy to use and suits my purpose being my first ever camera, digital or otherwise.

Yes I'm a very sad individual....... :p

Darren
 
Yes Darren, :p

Does that mean we can expect some pics of the 205 in INCREDIBLE DETAIL !
 
a 10x optical zoom would tend to have a low apeture level and hence have trouble under low light...but I'm talking in film terms...not sure about digital CCDs.
 
tekkie:
I have had a chance to use and experiment with a Canon IXUS400. Its small ! Very compact without too many protruding parts that almost guarantees that you will take it with you. Its smaller than a packet of cigarettes.
Click to expand...
I have to second that ... I've used an IXUS V3 for about 6 months now ... my photo count is over 4500.

The IXUS 400 is an improvement in resolution and zoom, the only feature missing is a 640x480 movie mode (was present in the IXUS V3).

The point about size is true .. this camera goes with me everywhere, to work each day and to any social outing .. it's diminitive size will make you want to take it everywhere. I'm running with a 512Mb card, you should look at a 256 minimum and a spare battery (one battery will give you about 100 shots - nothing worse then running out of power).

Cheers XTC206
 
I ended up getting the Canon S45. Spent all the vouchers but I am happy with the camera! :)
Thanks for all the replies!
 
I have just bought a
Samsung Digimax V4 digital camera
4 megapixel, MPEG woth sound, works well.
I have owned some pretty good cameras, but this has to be the best.
Not too big, easy to use...
Regards
Adrian Colman
 
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