I’m in the market for a digital camera, and I’m looking for some recommendations. I don’t really have a fixed budget, but I don’t want to spend more than a few hundred dollars if I can help it.
My main priority is good-quality images. In other words, I’d be willing to sacrifice other bells and whistles for picture quality. What sort of pixel resolution would I need in a camera to get pictures that look like real photos? I’ve seen the output from some cameras that were blocky and pixelated, I don’t want that.
If you want a camera for web use that you can transfer pictures to any computer quickly I’d recommend the Sony FD-100 (I own this one).
It isn’t something which is really easy to cary around due to it’s medium size, but it is VERY universal (both pc and mac), no cables are needed and you can take pictures on a disk (they’re very cheap) and just give them to people (also copy one disk to another using the unit). And it also has the option of memory stick.
The downside is the pixels arn’t that high, only 1.3 (works fine for web use but pictures might be slightly blocky if looked at from 3 or 4 inches away, not quite photo quality), but the quality of the pictures can be raised considering if you use photo paper (HUGE difference) and also on the quality of your printer.
If you’re going for something highly portable I’d go for the Digital Elph. It is small (about the size of a cigarette pack) and easy to use. It has a greater number of pixels (2.0), so it’s better (still not perfect, though) for photo printing than the mavica. The downside is you need a cable to hook it up (not very universal) because it has a flash memory card.
Both can do video and assorted special effects.
Hope that helps.
See my post in this thread for some info on the Sony Cybershot DSC-P31. It looks like a great 2mpixel cam for under $220, fully loaded. You can, however, get better cams if you’re willing to spend the money, as in all things. I second squeegee’s suggestion of dpreview.com as an excellent place to learn about cams. Use their comparison feature to find cams that fit your requirements.