Advice on a new digital camera, por favor

In My Humble Opinion
1

A few months ago, I bought a brand spankin’ new (and pink!) Casio Exilim EX-Z75 for the nice price of $195 (with tax and two day shipping included). It was just ok. The pictures were all VERY warm and even after adjusting the saturation, things still looked pretty orangey. I read in a few places that this is a common complaint with that camera though, so it’s not like mine was defective.

Anywho, long story short, I may or may not have gotten the camera wet by getting into a pool in at a 50 Cent concert cough and now the video feature works, but the pictures themselves suck. The pictures I take indoors all have weird, horizontal lines across them and the camera simply can’t take pictures outdoors- the whole picture whites out.

Needless to say, I’m in the market for a new camera. Some of the things I’m looking for are:

[ul]
[li]At or under $200.[/li][li]Has a battery in it that I can take out and recharge. IE: No AAs or anything.[/li][li]SD memory is preferable, since that’s what I have (though it wont break my heart or anything if I need to shell out for a different kind of memory).[/li][li]Thin size- I like to stick my camera in my pocket or my purse.[/li][li]Big screen on the back or maybe even gasp a view finder, too.[/li][li]A decent video feature is a must for me.[/li][li]Good zoom, the stronger the better (obviously limited since I want a thinner camera).[/li][li]Mostly though, I want a camera that can handle pictures in various lighting situations. Pictures at night? A must. Pictures of moving things? Awesome. Etc and so forth.[/li][/ul]

MP don’t really matter all that much, since I’m a casual photographer. My old, old camera was a 4 MP Kodak which took ok pictures and the Casio was 7 MP. Frankly, I don’t need to take huge, massive prints or anything, so 5 MP would be fine, I think.

So, wise Dopers, any suggestions for me? I’m asking because when I picked out the Casio before, it seemed perfect and sort of let me down. I’d like to know what you all like!

2

Here’s a good resource for reviews:

Personally, I like the Canon line. Nikons are good too, but not sure you’d find anything in your price range.

3

Tiny and big zoom don’t go together. There are some compact ultrazooms but they’re still bigger then what you want.

Take a look at the Canon SD1000 - SD cards, Li-Ion rechargeable, nice LCD, optical viewfinder, excellent movie mode, very good picture quality, 3x zoom, about $200. You can also look at the Panasonic FX-30

While most small cameras don’t take AAs, many people find them to be a better choice in a camera. You buy a set of NiMH rechargeable batteries and a charger for $30 and they will work great in cameras and other gadgets. Plus, you can buy a set of 4 batteries for $12 and never run out of charge. But if you’re looking for an ultracompact none of them use AAs.

Unless you go for the Fuji F-40 or F50 (more on that later) none of these cameras will be great in low light situations without flash. If you keep the ISO low there won’t be enough light so the camera will keep the shutter open too long and the pictures will be blurry. If you push the ISO high (the best way to take pictures in low light) the pictures will be noisy. Only the Fuji cameras that have their Super CCD really work well in low light without a flash. If you are willing to use a flash, most cameras will take acceptable shots. But without a flash in low light, forget it.

4

[QUOTE=DiosaBellissima]

[li]Has a battery in it that I can take out and recharge. IE: No AAs or anything.[/li][/quote]

Get rechargeable AA’s. It really is a better solution because if you are out on vacation and your battery goes dead ast an inconvenient time you can always slip in some cheap alkaline batteries. MHO, anyway.

I agree with romanperson on Canons. For P & S cameras they consistently garner good reviews for their dependable picture quality.

If you can live with AA’s and perhaps a slightly thicker camera, relatively speaking, you might want to try the A570 IS - I think the little grip on the side makes it much easier to hold the camera steady and IS is always useful: http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/484783-REG/Canon_1773B001_PowerShot_A570_IS_Digital.html

But for thinner, under $200 with a lithium-ion battery, there is the SD1000 Elph: http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/484782-REG/Canon_1862B001_PowerShot_SD1000_Digital_Elph.html

5

My only suggestion is the actually hold the camera in your hands and work the controlls. Sometimes all the features are not that easy to use and the buttons are built for Polly Pocket’s little sister.

6

Oh yeah, A570 IS’s slightly bigger brother the A720 IS has 6x zoom. But again bulkier than you might want and AA’s ( again, a plus in my book :slight_smile: ) : http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/518217-REG/Canon_2092B001_Powershot_A720_IS_Digital.html

edited to add: Oh and what Telemark said about low light situations. NO ultracompact will do all that well under those situations. Sadly the ultimate camera does not yet exist.

7

The battery problem is pretty much that I lose them. It’s not that I’m opposed to rechargeable AAs I can buy or anything, it’s just that I go through tons of them because I’m a complete spaz.

My Kodak used AAs, which I got rechargeables for. It’s ok, of course, but I notice that a: the rechargeables die faster than the other kind (Li-Ion?) b: again, the Diosabellissima Spaz-Factor. :smiley:

The lighting thing comes into play because my roommate and I went to Disneyland on Saturday where I was forced (forced, I say! :stuck_out_tongue: ) to use my old Kodak. While I’ll be the first to admit that my roommate is far from the world’s best photographer, most of the pictures from at night turned out like this: lameness.

I thought maybe it was just impossible to take a good picture considering the conditions, but then a Japanese tourist (she said in broken English that she was from Japan, so I’m not being a horrible racist or anything) asked if I could take her picture. It was the exact same shot as the one of me above, but of her (obviously). Good god, her camera took the most PERFECT picture. The flash was super bright so everything was nicely lit up, everything was sharp (not blurry), and she looked great without the background being too dark or light. Of course, she grabbed her camera back before I could see what kind it was :(. It was thin, silver (looked sort of like the 1000 you guys are talking about) and had a massive screen on the back. That’s all I know though. It was probably some super cool Japanese Camera or something. Lame.

8

As a former electronics salesman for the GoodGuys some years back, including some camera sales, I fell in love with Panasonic products for reliability, ease of use and bang for the buck.

When it came time to buy a pocket camera, I chose the Panasonic DMC-FX3 and I l-o-v-e this thing!

Small, feature packed, more settings than anyone can want and a Leica lens. I paid $190 online. (Including and extra $10 for a cool black body.)

All the details here: http://panasonic.co.jp/pavc/global/lumix/fx3/mainparts.html

A few highlights given your needs:

The Panasonic Lumix DMC-FX30 is a 7.2-megapixel point-and-shoot digital camera features 3.6x optical zoom (35mm equivalent: 28-100mm) with Image Stabilizer (MEGA O.I.S.), ISO settings ranging from 80 to 3200, and a 2.5″ Polycrystalline TFT. The camera measures 94.9 x 51.9 x 22.0 mm (3.74 x 2.04 x 0.87 in), weighs 132 g (0.29lb) and runs on Li-ion battery pack.

I bought an extra rechargeable battery (~$35) and 1GB memory card (~$65?) which holds something like 1000 photos or as much video. If you have a pocket full of memory cards, you can shoot an entire concert. (Void where prohibited.) It charges in an hour and lasts a good long time. The charger is small and easy to pack.

It has settings for low light, “birthday cake,” starry night and fireworks. It also has a setting for shooting food, and two settings for shooting babies–among all the more normal settings like portrait and sports shots (stop action). Since I don’t always wear my glasses, I can count on the multiple spot focus features, and image stabilization to catch what I’m shooting. The view finder is plenty big, and visible in bright sun.

Here are a few shots of Sassy’s sister’s wedding in Chicago, if you are interested. (I used some Photoshop tricks on a few shots including color balance and lens flare.)

It will take some practice to learn the menus but you should do yourself a favor and check out this little wonder!

9

Did you Disneyland photo use a flash? Typically, when using the flash the camera will set the shutter speed to 1/60 which would have eliminated the blur. In this case, the shutter was open at least 1/15th of a second, maybe longer. You cannot hold a camera steady for that long by hand. There just wasn’t enough light, the camera didn’t have much choice.

Most cameras have a variety of settings and scene modes that will help in low light situations. Most (like the Canon I mentioned above) have a night snapshot mode which will combine flash, shutter speed, and ISO settings to deliver a pretty good image.

Some cameras (like the Fuji F-50 or a dSLR) can take that picture by setting the ISO to 1600 and not even using the flash, most others will require some adjustments. A good strong flash isn’t going be found on a small camera, mainly due to the fact that you need a lot of battery power for a strong flash. Learn the scene modes, learn how to use ISO settings, and you’ll see the results right away. I can’t say that you will take perfect shots all the time, but you can certainly get more out of your current camera if you choose to keep it. Having said that, I’d still upgrade - I like buying cameras. :slight_smile:

The Panasonic FX-series is also good, as I mentioned above. They don’t have optical viewfinders which rule them out for me, but others may not care. Nearly all cameras today come with a plethora of scene modes so that’s not a big advantage. IMO, the biggest selling point of that camera and its current version is the 28mm wide angle lens. That’s hard to find on a small camera. Unfortunately, the current versions of that line (FX-33 and FX-50) are both considerably more then $200.

10

Myself- thank you for the in-depth review! Your pictures look great and really, what more could you want from a camera? I totally love cameras that have all of the different and exciting settings, so that’s a huge plus for me. I’ll look into that camera when I get home from work!

Telemark- the linked to Disneyland picture? That was taken with the Kodak “Night Picture” setting. With the night-setting on, pictures definitely came out better than without, but they certainly didn’t look as good as the picture I took for that one lady.

Ok, so here’s is where I’m going to ask a really stupid question: ISO settings- what is that? I mean, I know WHAT it is on my camera, I’ve played around a teeny bit with it, etc. but I have no idea. . . well, what it is. That makes total sense, I’m sure :D.

As far as the various settings, I’m a big fan of action settings on cameras, since I go to many concerts and love taking pictures during them.

11

He/she obviously did, because the people in the foreground (within the range of the flash) are not blurred.

This is a situation where optical image stabilization really helps, but I don’t think you’ll find a $200 camera with that feature. And even with image stabilization, if you don’t hold your camera steady, you’ll get a blurry picture. As already pointed out, using a higher ISO setting should help. Also, since it’s a mostly dark scene, it helps to use exposure compensation, towards the negative (underexposed) side. In this case “underexposed” means most of the picture is dark, which is in fact correct exposure. But really, the most important thing is to learn to hold the camera steady. Press your elbows against your torso. Hold the camera firmly with both hands, but make sure your index finger can move freely - when it pushes the shutter, it shouldn’t move the whole camera.

Anyway I’ve had very good experience with Canon compact cameras. The SD1000 should fit your requirements.

12

ISO is a rating of the camera’s sensitivity to light. The higher the number the less light the camera needs to take the shot. This is a good thing, allowing you to take pictures in low light and/or without flash.

So, why don’t we push the ISO to the highest setting all the time? Because for the most part high ISO = noisy pictures. They will have grain, and speckles, and JPG artifacts as the camera tries to remove as much of the noise as it can and still leave the image in a recognizable form.

For most Point and Shoot cameras you can still get very good images at ISO values up to 200. Beyond that it can be hit or miss. Some cameras are useless at ISO 400 or beyond. Even though the camera has settings of ISO 1600 you’d never want to use that.

Some (but not all) Fuji cameras use a slightly different technology they call their SuperCCD which can take photos up to ISO 800 and even 1600 with little noticeable noise. This is head and shoulders above all other P&S cameras. dSLRs (the ones with interchangeable lenses) also can shoot very clean at high ISO but they are out of range for this discussion.

For my SD800 I’ve played with ISO up to 400 for some long exposure, low light shots and have gotten good results. In bright light it is very good, as all my Canons have been.

So, learning how ISO works and setting it for the right occasion can do wonders.

-dave-

13

Someday (when I’m not a poor college student) I’m definitely going to have two cameras: a real one (big and fancy with great zooms and such) and a smaller one for taking around. That said, being a poor college student, it’s practical I go. I love taking pictures, so taking my camera to theme parks, concerts, and on traveling is a must for me. Hence the compact size.

Thank you for explaining the ISO thing, as I had no real idea. Your pictures are phenomenal and I had no idea that was the setting I needed to tweak for that kind of lighting! I learn something new every day! What else should I know? I’m sure I’m missing other key things.

I’m definitely a better “photographer” (quotes because, well, I’m hardly qualified) than my roommate, who took the picture of me in front of the castle. This is a similar picture I took of her, but as you can see my hand is a lil’ more stable than hers when it comes to these things.

It definitely sounds like the 1000 is the way to go, as I’ve also heard good things about it in the past. Does anyone have any recommendations for buying sites online? Just your favorite stores that offer good service and nice prices.

Also, like I said, any general photography tips for my uninformed self (ISO, who knew!?) would be great as well!

14

I usually go with B&H which I linked to above. Their prices will be very reasonable, NOT rock-bottom, but good. However the rockbottom-price places can get a little hinky, whereas B&H is always reliable. Here’s a thread ( from a digital camera forum ) that goes over this and mentions some places you shouldn’t buy from:

http://www.dcresource.com/forums/showthread.php?t=14677

edited to add: But just so you know, the owners are observant Jews and won’t take orders on the Sabbath or during high holidays :).

15

Thanks for the link!

I bought my Casio from Beach Camera because they had the lowest price and shipping, so it’s good to know they, too, are a good company!

16

You will not go wrong with B&H, that’s where I’ve bought my last two cameras. For accessories (memory cards, extra batteries) I often use NewEgg.com if I didn’t just piggyback those items with the camera. Neither have the absolute best price on line, but they are competitive, reputable and stand behind what they sell.

17

Or you can get a camera with optical image stabilization, which lets you use lower ISO and longer exposure without blurring. I’ve compared a Fuji F20 (with a SuperCCD) and a Canon SD800 (regular CCD, with optical stabilization); in my subjective opinion, the Canon produces better pictures under all lighting conditions. (Though admittedly it’s an unfair test, since the SD800 is a more expensive camera.)

As for where to get it - I bought mine from Amazon, they often have the best price (or close to it).

18

OIS and High ISO performance are two different things and don’t perform the same. OIS allows you to keep the shutter open longer without having shake from holding the camera. While this is great for subjects that are still, if your subject is moving you get lots of blur because the shutter is open for a long time.

High ISO allows you to keep your fast shutter speed in low light. This is important for moving subjects as a fast shutter speed is essential for freezing a moving object.

In low light, there is no comparison between the Canons and the Fujis. The Fujis allow you to take low light no flash pictures that you simply can’t get with the Canons. I have the SD800 and a Canon S3, and I love them both, but they are not good low light cameras compared to the SuperCCD line of Fujis. Personally, that’s not as important to me as other camera features so I’m happy with my cameras, but it certainly is a differentiator.

Here’s a nice review of the F30 that demonstrates the fantastic high ISO performance.

19

I’m not sure I made myself clear. In low lighting conditions, blur due to camera shake is the primary problem. There are two camera features that can help in that situation: (1) high ISO setting, which allows you to use a shorter exposure, thus reducing blur, and (2) optical image stabilization, which reduces blur without having to use a shorter exposure. In real life, being forced to choose between those two, I preferred having image stabilization. The only time it’s better to have higher ISO is when you have a moving subject in poor light that’s too far to be illuminated with a flash. (More typically, you have a moving subject in the foreground, which can be frozen by the flash, and a static background which can be frozen by image stabilization.)

20

I bought my last Canon SD off newegg.com. I’ve bought several items from that site with no problems. Shipping is quick, prices are reasonable. The site also has lots of user reviews that I like to check out.