(This is a general question that will have factual answers, so I feel this is the correct posting place…)
I am shopping around for a good digital camera. I want it to be 3.2 or 4 megapixels, depending on the price. Can anyone recommend a good one for digital artists?
I came across this one for approx. $375.00. I’ve used Minoltas before and they seem to be pretty decent cameras.
Any advice/feedback would be appreciated. Thank you!
You can read a review of this camera here;: http://www.dcresource.com/reviews/minolta/dimage_s414-review/
The DC Resource website is reliable.
Here’s an excerpt:
I’d suggest reading the whole review.
Hm. Never heard of DC Resource, but I’ll give it a shot. Many thanks!
Try B&H Photo They list it at 399.00, but will email you a better price. And no sales tax (I think).
I would never buy a camera at Wal*Mart.
The Minolta F100 is a much better camera. It goes for under $400, has 4 megapixels and takes great pictures.
Is there a reason you need the high resolution? If you are not going to be enlarging past 8x10, you may be better off with something like the Olympus Camedia 700, which is 2.11 MP. I do 8x10s all the time with this camera with excellent results. It has a 10x optical zoom, macro capability, etc. Just a thought…
If you’re going to crop the images after shooting, to get the framing/composition just right, then you may need a little spare resolution, also, some effect filters work better (i.e. produce a smoother and more realistic effect) on higher resolution files.
I purchased an Argus DC3810 5.0 mega pixel with 3x optical and 2x digital zoom from Fry’s Electronics for $329 and it seems to work great. It does go through batteries pretty quick though. Has anyone else seen or used this camera? How does it rate with the better known brands?
You can buy the same camera online for much less:
http://megapixel.bizrate.com/marketplace/search/search.xpml?rf=pix&prod_id=7385481&sort=6
I just bought a Canon, and suggest if you can to get rechargable batteries as well. I bought Canon because all the people I talked to said it was a good camera, with lots of options.
Be careful with the mem card readers if you get one though, the first one I put the card in wrong, screwed it up, then screwed up two cameras by moving them back…good thing the first camera was only two days old, and the second was in the store.
As for batteries, NiMh are best suited for digital cams, and the best way to keep from draining them is to remember a simple rule: The monitor is not a viewfinder.
The biggest drain on digicam baterries is the monitor. Use it to review what you have shot, not what you’re shooting.
I respectfuly disagree. I shoot most of my photos using the LCD as the viewfinder. I shoot quite a bit with a wide angle adaptor in place. The optical viewfinder doesn’t show the field of view, additionally, the adaptor blocks most of the view from the optical finder. Both my digicams are Nikon Coolpix with the twisting bodys. To take advantage of the capabilities, the LCD must be used as the viewfinder.
Most LCDs are difficult to use in bright sunlight, so they don’t work too well in those situations.
Just be aware that battery life is significantly reduced when the LCD is in use.
I know where you’re coming from, GaryM, I use the 990 with the wide angle adaptor for one of my regular freelance jobs. Since I’m shooting real estate, it’s always outdoors, so there’s no avoiding it.
But a lot of people become enamored of using the monitor as their viewfinder (it looks like they’re trying to drive their camera somewhere, doesn’t it?), one person I mentioned it to actually didn’t realize there was an optical viewfinder.
Another thing to realize is that holding the camera up to your face will help to brace the camera, leading to sharper pictures.
[sub]click on the symbols below if you’d like to see some of my work.[/sub]
I disagree. I own a Canon G2, and use the monitor to frame my shots. Using the monitor to shoot gives many of the same advantages of an SLR - you see the shot as the camera “sees” it. This is an immense help when composing the shot, especially under difficult conditions (like close-ups, where the parallax error of a viewfinder can be a problem).
I can shoot all day using the monitor without fully draining the battery. It helps that I turn the camera off when I know I won’t be shooting for the next several minutes. I use the auto-power-off feature, so the camera turns itself off if I forget. Also, I keep a lens cap on whenever I’m not shooting, which prevents the auto-focus from using power.
The best web site I’ve found for comparing digital cameras is http://dpreview.com/
On many cameras you can also switch the autofocus mode from “continuous” to “one-shot” mode. In the one-shot mode, the autofocus will not work until you press the shutter halfway.
The reviews on Imaging Resource has power consumption figures with the LCD viewfinder ON vs. OFF. There is a huge variation; the Nikon 5400 uses 23% less power with the LCD off, while the Canon G4 uses 75% less.
Before you decide what the right camera is for you, you have to decide what you are going to use it for.
I have an Olympus C4040. Bought it refurb a couple of months ago. It’s a similar class of camera to a Canon G2. 4 Megapixls, all the manual controls you could want.
There were two reasons I bought this camera instead of a smaller camera like a Canon S400 - it has a bright lens, and supports an external flash. Most of my photography is indoors - family photos, mostly. I wanted a bright lens, because it gives me more indoor options, allows me to take some indoor pictures without a flash (eliminating red eye entirely, and changing the look of the photo), and I think it allows for better portrait photos.
Smaller cameras with optical zooms may be reasonably bright at minimum focal length, but they get dim when you zoom them. That means you need more flash. It also means the flash range is much shorter. This is made worse by the small flashes in the tiny cameras, which are also too close to the lens, causing more red-eye.
The tradeoff is that my C4040 is much larger than an equivalent compact camera, and my wife hates that. So she’s taking far fewer pictures with it.
If I were taking mostly outdoor photos, or if my main need was for a ‘holiday’ camera, I would have purchased a Canon S400. That’s a great camera, and it’s really tiny. You should check it out.
Good point that defining your requirements in some detail makes it easier to choose a camera. My Coolpix cameras don’t have a particularly fast lens, but they excel at macro work. The macro capability was more important to me. Of course once you have wide angle and telephoto adaptors that only fit Nikons it’s somewhat difficult to change to another brand.
At work I have a Canon G3 to use and it has some nice features. If I were starting over I’d certainly consider the G3 or G5. But they don’t do macro as well as the Nikons.
just bought a canon A70 for my wife. She is very impressed. A great site is: Steve’s Digicams (http://www.steves-digicams.com/)
Amen.
B&H is, without doubt, about the best place to buy camera equipment on the web. It’s not always the very cheapest place, but the prices are still good, and the quality of service is a step above most other internet retailers. B&H has a huge store in Manhattan, not just a walk-up office in Brooklyn like many internet electronics retailers, and it is a fully-fledged professional camera store.
I bought my Minolta (a Dimage 7Hi) from them about six months ago, and have bought accessories from them since, and have never had even the tiniest problem. The goods arrive promptly, and are well-packaged. B&H also does not try to palm off cheaper “grey market” goods as if they were the real US models, and nor do they try to prssure-sell you extras that you don’t want. They do stock some grey market stuff, but it is clearly marked as such.
As postcards says, their current price on the S414 is $399, but i put in my email address and got an offer of $329. I know that some of the other links provided have shown this camera at less than $300, but i’d sacrifice 30 bucks or so to go with a reputable retailer like B&H.
Whoever you buy from, check their customer ratings on a website like Reseller Ratings. You can get an idea of whether or not they are scam artists.
To those arguing that the LCD screen should not be used as a viewfinder: this might be true with high-end digital cameras that have electronic viewfinders that show the actual image seen by the lens (although i still sometimes use the LCD on my 7Hi). But for rangefinder-style cameras like the S414, using the LCD as a viewfinder has the advantage outlined by Jeff Lichtman–it allows you to see the picture as the camera sees it, eliminating parallax error.
I would add one more piece of general advice when buying a digital camera. When weighing up features, ignore the digital zoom. Anything that can be done with a digital zoom can just as easily be done later on your computer. Digital zooms work by simply using less of the sensor area, resulting in fewer pixels for the shot. This can be done just as readily, and with greater room for error, in Photoshop or some other image software. I’ve never even turned on the digital zoom on my camera.
I have a Nikon Coolpix 995, and absolutely love it. It’s about 3.3 MP and I paid a little under $400 for it last year. I think you can get the Coolpix 4500 (4 MP) for about that price now.
Like others have said, dcresource.com is great for reviews.
When shopping around for digital cameras, there are MANY scams out there. Make sure to buy from a reputable retailer. resellerratings.com is great for checking that.
A few other digital camera related tips:
Get a decent sized card and ALWAYS shoot pictures at the highest resolution, because you never know which shot will be the best. You can always reduce the pictures later. The 8, 16, and 32MB cards that come with most cameras are inadequate. You can fit 100-300+ pictures on a 128 or 256 MB card for a very reasonable price. 512 MB or 1 GB is probably overkill.
Buy extra batteries. Ebay is great for those. From my experience, the LCD and flash both wear the batteries down quickly. If you have at least two, you can always have one in the charger.
Realize that you’ll be taking pictures differently. With film, you take 24 or 36 pictures, have them all developed, and getting a few really good ones out of that. With a digital camera, you can easily take 100 pictures, look through them on your computer, and pick out a dozen good ones to have printed. Snap away–it doesn’t cost you anything.
Personal photo printers are expensive, with operating costs of $0.50 or more per print. Walmart is $0.29. Fotki.com is $0.19.
If you take a lot of pictures and/or have family and friends around the country or world, use an online service to share photos. I use Fotki.com, and am really impressed. Unlimited storage for something like $30 per year. $0.19 4x6 prints. $1.99 8x10 prints.
Michael