Digital Camera advice

With the holidays coming, I’m thinking about getting a digital camera. I’ve never had one, so any advice would be helpful.

Some basic info:

I am an solid amatuer when it comes to photography, so high end features would be wasted on me. I have a Nikon N50 35mm, so I’m above point-and-shoot, but not by much.

I am interested in high quality images, that is important.
I’d like to be able to download the pictures fairly quickly.
Editing features would be nice.
My price range is around $300-$500, + add-ons.

What add-ons do you consider essential? (Memory, etc.)
Which are a waste of money?
How soon am I going to want to upgrade if I start cheap?
Any good places to look on-line? (I’ve been researching on cnet and zdnet.)

Thanks in advance,
LM

Hi LM,

You might want to check out http://www.epinions.com or the user reviews on http://www.amazon.com to get focused feedback from users of the products. While the reviews on the trade websites can be helpful, they may overlook some real world scenarios or be influenced to an extent by advertising dollars.

When I was looking at digital cameras, a few things stood out as important considerations:

[li]Sufficient memory to store pictures on the camera prior to moving them to your computer.[/li]
[li]Practical method of moving the pictures to the computer. A serial connection may work ok, but if you are moving a lot of photos or large photos to the computer, USB or Firewire will be much quicker.[/li]
[li]Battery life. Digital cameras tend to really eat up the batteries. And this last point leads to accessories…[/li]
I would recommend a battery charger along with a couple of sets of rechargeable batteries.

I would also recommend adding memory if the camera you buy has only 8 to 32mbs of RAM. 2 megapixel and above cameras fill up memory fast at the higher quality settings.

As far as whether you get a 2 or 3 megapixel camera, that will depend on what you want it for. If you’re looking to just post pictures to the web or print out 4x6’s or 5x7’s, a 2 megapixel camera should work fine. If you’re going to regularly make 8x10 or larger prints, you should look into 3 megapixel camera’s for the enhanced quality offered by the increase in information stored in an image.

Hope this helps.

Hie thee to http://www.dcresource.com and check out the reviews, image galleries, and message boards. Lots of good stuff.

With the price range you mentioned, look at the Olympus D-360, D-460, and D-490. I’m kinda partial to Olympi.

As Purd Werfect said, you’ll need rechargables and a recharger. Regular alkalides and lithiums are useless in a digital camera, only rechargables are worth your time. You want NiMH ones, not NiCD.

Most cameras in your price range come with an 8 meg card. You’ll probably want at least 32 to be able to take a reasonable number of pictures. Memory isn’t cheap, but you’ll need it.

You probably also want a Card Reader. It’ll plug into the USB port of your computer, you take the card out of the camera and plop it in the reader. Voila, you have all your pictures on your PC. They cost $30-50 and work on SmartMedia and Compact Flash, the two most common memory types. It’s much easier and faster than dealing with the transfer mechanisms in the camera.

That’s about it.

At buydig.com you can save so much money you won’t believe it.

Ignore claims of “digital zoom,” it just makes fatter pixels. Optical zoom is better.

I’ve got an Olympus D450Z and it’s great!

New issue of PC World came out with a pretty long review of about 15 cameras. They recommended the Epson PhotoPC 3000Z ($900) for pretty high-end and the Olympus D-360L ($300) for the low end.

I figure for the average photographer, you wouldn’t want to dish out nearly a grand for a digital camera. Prolly just best to test em out before you buy em so you don’t get something you didn’t expect.

I have the Olympus D-460 Zoom. I have been able to take some awesome pictures however in low light it can turn out a little grainy.

Here’s are samples of the pics I took (all but two) were taken with my Olympus:

http://www.cwcm.net/vegas
http://www.cwcm.net/liz
http://www.cwcm.net/sam

If you purchase one definately get a larger media card and look for a rechargable battery pack with the charger, it eats through AA batteries like you wouldn’t believe.

Kodak cameras are great. The images often are ranked the best and you can get other lenses just like a film camera

This is a great site to help you decide what to buy. Here’s a link for the digital cameras.
http://www.deja.com/products/list/top25.xp?CPIDS=&PCID=11773&allow_bg=1
Use “Product Wizard”. It will ask you questions, and give you a list of the cameras starting at the best match and going down to the worst match.

The optical zoom is what counts, you can do the digital zoom with your graphics software at home. You’ll need a camera with at least a gigapixel shot, for picture quality prints on your printer in the 8"x10" size. About the only upgrade for a digital camera is more memory cards or a lens, if the camera can handle add on lenses.

Either my understanding of Chemistry is not as good as I thought it was or my periodic table is a little bit rusty but, NiMH? I have absolutely no idea what the MH stands for?

Yoda or Yogurt? A dilemma for the ages.

NiMH = Nickel Metal Hydride. Dunno the chemistry behind it, but them’s good stuff. :slight_smile:

Thanks for all your help and advice. This is exactly the kind of info I was looking for. You guys are great.

Time to go shopping!

P.S.

Unsolicited stock tip - Take it for what it’s worth, but it’s done me good - NASDAQ ENER

http://biz.yahoo.com/p/e/ener.html

I have a Sony Mavica. It takes 1024x768 images, stores them on a floppy drive. The new ones use Memorystick technology. I have take two thousand pictures in the last two years. Yes, I would like larger images, but I really can live with the standard screen size. Yes, it would be neat to be able to download faster, but it really isn’t that hard.

But one thing I have done a dozen times or more, which no one else is able to do. I go out and take pictures of some fun event, with people I might not see again, or might not even know all that well. They speak wistfully of getting a copy of some of those pictures. I whip a 19-cent floppy into my camera, click click, and hand them a copy of the pictures. “Here you go.”

The prices are competitive, and coming down.

Tris

I just went through the hell that is trying to determine the ‘best’ camera I could afford. A friend has a Nikon CoolPix 900 and is a research hound so I was biased towards the Nikon. I got the CoolPix 800 for about $350 after rebate. I then got the Maha rechargeable battery pack and a spare set of batteries as well as a larger memory card. Lexar is purported to have a faster transfer rate than Sandisk. The only downside is no USB transfer, but my home machine doesn’t have a USB port so no big deal for me.

The Lexar faster transfer rates pretty much have no impact on their use in digital cameras. You’ll never notice a difference.

The Maha recharger is rated as the best by all of the reviews I’ve read.

I’ve read that the Sony Mavica uses a overly enthusiastic compression algorithm to fit images on a floppy. As a result, their image quality is usually rated much lower than what is available from Olympus, Nikon, and the other top end makers. I’ve never used the cameras myself, but I have looked at the images online and could tell the difference. Also, the Sony MemoryStick isn’t as widely used as the SmartCard or CompactFlash memories.

The best storage option out there right now is the CompactFlash II 340 meg IBM microdrive. It costs $250 or so, and doesn’t work with all cameras, even those with CF II ports, so it’s not a perfect solution.

I’m probably going with an Olympus C-2100, a 2 megapixel camera with a 10x optical zoom and image stabilization, plus movie mode with sound. The movies are only good for the web, they are no way comparable with even a low end video camera, but that’s all I need. The 10x zoom lens (equiv to a 38mm to 380mm zoom) is the selling point for me. It’ll run about $1000.

I know it’s a bit out of your range, but please seriously consider stepping up to the Sony Mavica. There are a number of reasons:[list=1]

[li]The media (floppy disc) is incredibly cheap.[/li]
[li]No interface cabling needed, merely insert disc into PC.[/li]
[li]The ability to copy and distribute snaps on the spot.[/li]
[li]It is a very feature rich tool.[/li]
[li]You can take 1 minute full motion and sound video.[/li]
[li]A 5 second audio description tag for each snap.[/li]
[li]Large LCD screen for previewing shots.[/li]
[li]Fairly simple control/feature menu system.[/li]I could go on even longer. I have used these cameras on more than one ocassion and they are very versatile. This is coming from a collector of old Nikons. The only digital camera I would think of buying is the Mavica.

You want the model with 8X optical and 16X digital zoom. Always shoot at highest resolution (6 images per disc) and keep all images until you can review them at home on a big monitor. Discs are so cheap that it whales the snot out of memory stick media. Plus, if you sit down on a disc you lose less than a buck. Snap a memory stick or storage card and prepare to weep.

Spend the money and have no regrets. You’ll see. You owe it to yourself to test drive one of these at a good camera shop that provides expert help. Then buy it someplace cheaper. To me, all others are a waste of time.

If you do decide to get the Mavica, lemme know if you’d be interested in a used one. I have what was the top of the line Mavica of about a year and a half ago. I think it was the FD 90 or some such number, but I’ll have to check. It has a big ol’ zoom lens and takes (I think) 1024x768. I have the original box and all that.

I’m planning on putting it on eBay in the next few weeks, after I get back from vacation, but I’d hold off if a fellow SDMB buddy decided he/she wanted it.

The only reason I’m selling it is that I found that I have much less of a need for a digital camera than I thought. I’ve taken maybe 300 pics with it since I got it, and most of those within the first month I had it.

While there are benefits to the floppy functionality of the Sony Mavica, I think the one disadvantage outweighs them. The compression algorithm needed to put images on a floppy produces inferior images. It’s very apparent if you view the same pictures taken side by side.

Except for the ability to hand out copies of images immediately (granted, a nice benefit) all the other ones (lack of cables, LCD, movie mode, sound) are matched and exceeded by other cameras at a lower cost. No one else makes floppy drive cameras, and Sony is getting out of the business too. It’s a dead end technology as image sizes grow.

The most comprehensive database of digital camera product reviews I have found is at Megapixel.net (select “Reviews” on the left side). The have reviews of just about every camera ever made, easily referenced by manufacturer.

I have a 1.3 megapixel Kodak DC265, and I love it. It has since been replaced by the 2.3 megapixel DC290, but other than higher resolution, it’s pretty much the same camera. It’s very easy to use, with an intuitive menu system on the LCD viewer. It uses Compact Flash memory, and the only drawback I have found is a somewhat slow processing time between shots. The picture quality is excellent, and you can download lots of Digita scripts into the camera to add functionality.