Recommend an inexpensive(ish) compact camera

In My Humble Opinion
1

Hi folks,

(ETA: I dithered as to whether to put this in Cafe Society, because it’s about photography, but settled for IMHO because I’m asking for opinions.)

Mrs Snowman has asked for a new compact camera for Christmas. I use an older Nikon DSLR, and I’m not really up to speed with the point-and-shoot market.

Ease of use is probably the number one feature - she’s not really into manual exposure or lots of creative settings; she just wants to be able to point the camera, click the button and get a decent photo. Smaller is generally better (it’s going to live in a handbag), and a viewfinder isn’t a necessity. Is the ability to upload photos via WiFi a thing now? Not having to swap memory cards from camera to laptop would be a plus, and syncing to OneDrive or similar would be awesome. She’s not the sort of photographer who will scour the pics for noise or chromatic aberration, so image quality isn’t likely to be a deciding factor unless some models are exceptionally good or bad.

Budget is somewhere in the region of £150 GBP ($226 USD) - there are tons on Amazon in that price range, so I’d welcome any feedback or opinions from Dopers who know more about this market than I do.

Cheers,

Rich

PS: As I was writing this, it occurred to me that what I’ve described, budget aside, sounds awfully like a smartphone, and that’s probably what I’d recommend if I were reading the requirements for the first time. But’s she’s already got a smartphone, and wants a standalone camera as well. She’s old-school like that. :slight_smile:

2

I’m a big fan of my Canon S95 (now superseded by several generational models). I see that on Amazon you can still buy a new S110, which is cheaper than the newest S120. The camera has a lot of features beyond just point and shoot, but can just be set to ‘auto’ for most things.

3

My wife swears by her Canon PowerShot D30. It’s tiny–2 smartphones thick, the same width, but shorter by 3/4 inch +/-. Takes great underwater pix/video. I’m a camera näif, so I can’t help you with price or greater details.

4

I have the D20 and have been very happy with it as well.

5

Thanks all - food for thought :slight_smile:

6

Another vote for something in the Canon PowerShot line. Several of them are very small and surprisingly powerful. I have the ELPH 135.

7

The ELPH 160 or 170 is the current model. I’d select these over the shockproof and waterproof D30 which is quite a bit more expensive.

8

This is a good site for camera comparisons.
http://www.dpreview.com/

9

What a great link…a (nother) place to piss away many happy hours… :slight_smile:

10

A used Canon G10, 11, or 12 would be ideal. I love my g10 and use it over the d300 that so many times more.

11

The G-series is noticeably bigger than the ELPH series.

12

Look at the smaller cameras in the Nikon Coolpix series. There’s a range of prices and they’re all quite good.

13

Camera nerd here. I’m not a fan of DPReview, because I’ve found that some of their camera reviews are biased in some really weird ways. I think Imaging Resource has much better reviews. Here’s the link the the price category you’re interested in.

14

Thanks - the S7000 looks quite good and is bang in the price range.

15

Thanks - that’s the useful sort of summary-by-price that Is struggled to find on other sites :slight_smile: