I’m in the market for a digital camera. I want something good, but I don’t have a ton of money to spend. Basically, I’d like to keep it under $250. I’m looking for a good point-and-shoot camera that could conceivably replace my film camera, or at least be interchangeable. I’m not a professional photographer and don’t need anything too high-end.
Most importantly, I need it to take very detailed close-ups, so a good zoom is a must. I sell a lot of items on eBay (mainly comic books and action figures), so I need the camera to take pictures of these items to list with my auctions. I used to lay my items flat on a flatbed scanner, and the resulting images were of surprisingly great quality. My scanner recently died, and rather than replace it, I think I’d rather just bite the bullet and get a digital camera that can take equally good close-up pictures of my collectibles and collections.
Any advice is appreciated! Megapixels, brands, technical specs, anything I should AVOID… let me know! And thanks in advance.
Digital Photography Review has a lot of exhaustive reviews, although they tend to go for the more higher-end stuff.
Personally, I’ve been using a Sony Cybershot DP-71 and it’s great, wouldn’t hesitate to recommend it to anyone. The only thing I can possibly complain about with it is that it’s a little big, but they’ve already come out with a smaller version.
I have a Sony Cybershot U30, with which I am thorougly impressed.
it is only 2 MP, but I have blown up some shots to near-A4 size with no noticeable degradation in quality - ordinarily I wouldn’t enlarge them this far though - it is a more than adequate replacement for a 35mm pocket camera.
My advice (and this is personal opnion, of course) is to go for the smallest camera you can; you’re much more likely to take it places with you if you can just slip it in a pocket and once you are divorced from the expense of printing every frame you shoot, you can and will take a lot more photos.