Advice on Digital Cameras please

mosaicwendy · 2 January 2005 at 2:36PM

Happy New Year!

I'm hoping someone can advise me on buying a digital camera. I have about £150 - £170 to spend on a camera. I have seen 2 that look OK, a Sony P73 and a Minolta G530.

However, I haven't got a clue on which one is best or if there is anything I should be looking for in a camera - can anyone offer me some advice on which would give me the best photo's and performance.

Many thanks
Wendy

EvilMonkey · 2 January 2005 at 6:31PM

Happy new year to you Wendy,

There's plenty of people out there (myself included) who should be able to help you come to a decision, but 1st off we need to know a little about what you're looing for from a camera. Sub £200 still means a huge ammount of cameras to choose from (as I'm sure you're finding out). So:-

What kind of pics will you be taking? (holiday snaps? nights out? birds in the garden? etc.)

How big do you think you'll want the printed out to? (standard 6x4, the larger 5x7, A4, bigger???)

Do you want a point and shoot or do you want room to experiment?

Which is more important to you, brand, price, quality, features (if it helps, put these in order of importance).

Is there anything specific you want to be able to do with your cam, or a feature you MUST have?

If you can come back with some rough idea's along this line I can start to take a look around.

BigAl94 · 2 January 2005 at 7:09PM

Here's one I would give serious consideratiion to http://www.internetcamerasdirect.co.uk/olympus-mju-400-deals.htm , have had one since last March (paid £270 then!) and now have several friends who bought the same one, brillian camera, great battery life, very easy to use but with a great range of creative options. The low light capability is superb compared to any other camera I have owned.

mosaicwendy · 2 January 2005 at 9:08PM

Hi there
Thank you to both of you for such prompt replies

As for what I am looking for in importance - well here goes

I will be taking photo's of my family, birds in the garden and scenery when we are out and about.

I would like a zoom facility but I'm not sure what they mean in the blurb about optical and digital zoom.

Picture quality is of most importance, either for printing or on the PC

Not to worried about brand as long as the camera is good quality.

I would like to be a bit creative, but know nothing about exposure and stuff like that.

Price, between £150 - £170, can't really afford any more.

I hope that gives you enough information, I really, really appreciate your help with this, I am so worried about spending that much money and not getting the right one - I am so grateful to you both.

Once again, thanks and look forward to hearing from you again

Wendy
xxx

BigAl94 · 2 January 2005 at 10:50PM

Optical zoom is important, never buy a camera with digital zoom only although these are generally confined to cheap cameras. Optical zoom as the name implies uses lenses to magnify the picture so quality is retained. Digital zoom is electronic and the picture quality degrades substantiallyas the pixels are magnified. Unless you plan to do some seriously big enlargements, anything in the 3 to 5 megapixel range will be more thyan adequate. You won't notice much difference on the screen nor on prints up to 10 x 8.

For the sort of use you are talking about, I know you would be delighted with my recommendation.

EvilMonkey · 2 January 2005 at 11:01PM

The first thing that I've GOT to get off my chest about your reply is this:-

Which ever camera you end up buying WILL be wonderful. There is no "right one" just a number of camera's, some of which will suit you more than others. Nowadays so many of the digicams are of such good quality there really is very little to choose between them.

So looking through you're reply I've picked out some things.

3x zoom as a minimum, possibly consider one of the big 7-10x zooms? (very good for widelife shots).

NB the simplest way to avoid confusion over digital / optical zoom is to ignore digital zoom. With almost no exceptions digital zoom can be considered a marketing gimick. Essentially it crops the picture to "zoom" in. The downside is you loose some of your quality. Let me know if you want me to explain this further, it really needs a post of its own...)

Picture quality - A 3 Megapixel camera (3MP) as a minimum with the posibility of more if you can afford it.

Mainly a point and shoot, but maybe with some preset scenes?

All in all I guess we're looking at a good all rounder?

One thing on the price. Most camera's come with a memory card (digital film) and batteries, but they're barely enough to test the camera out. Is there anyone else who can buy a card (or 2) and the batteries and charger? If not you should knock £30 or so off the total to spend in order to get these.

Let me know what you think so far? Also what you think about the superzooms (7x or more)? It'll take a while to pull together a good post with some camera idea's / sites with reviews / sites with good prices. If someone else hasn't pipped me to the post, I'll do that tomorrow.

Oh one last thing, does the recipient know its coming???

Luke

Hintza · 2 January 2005 at 11:30PM

Here you go.

I make a spead sheet of the cameras that are of interest I will then read the reviews and rank them, giving a heavier weighting to the specifications that are important to me.

Here are some review sites:-

http://www.steves-digicams.com/ (very good site)

http://www.dpreview.com/ (also excellent)

http://www.digitalcamera-hq.com/

http://www.imaging-resource.com/

http://www.megapixel.net/

http://www.dcresource.com/

If you are looking for real value for money try:-

http://www.fujifilm.co.uk/technical/refurb/shop.php

http://stores.ebay.co.uk/Canon-Outlet_W0QQsspagenameZl2QQtZkm

Pixmania is good place to check out too.

Hope this helps

Hintza · 2 January 2005 at 11:52PM

If you fancy an SLR type camera the Fuji Finepix S602Z at £184 is excellent value (better than the S5000). Migh get it cheaper now. Bought one last year (2004) excellent value even though it is not the newest model.

The Canon A70 - A85 etc get rave reviews.

Personally if you want to photograph birds you might want more optical zoom than 3x. Ignore digital zoom can be done on PC as stated elsewhere.

One thing you really want to think about is how important is size of the camera. The S602 for example is pretty chunky.

mosaicwendy · 3 January 2005 at 2:00AM

Hi Guys

You are all real stars - thank you all of you, I know more now than I did before (about zooms anyway lol).

By the way the camera is for me - a post christmas treat, spending my Christmas bonus! And because its taken me all year to earn it I just want to make sure I get the 'right' camera for me, I feel anxious about it because there is just so much to choose from and to be honest I never usually spend that much money on anything!

With your help I'm sure I'll get there and I know I've said it before but thank you for spending time on this. I'll review some of the sites mentioned but will gladly wait for your further advice.

Many thanks
Wendy
xxx

mosaicwendy · 3 January 2005 at 12:30PM

Hi again

Just been researching some of the sites/cameras reccomended.

Now I understand a bit more about zoom lens, and ignoring the digital bit - do you think I would need more than 3x optical? It seems to push the price up considerably the higher the zoom - am I going along the right lines do you think?

Also, as for a memory card, I could squeeze another £30 if necessary, but that would be my very limit.

Thank you
Wendy

EvilMonkey · 4 January 2005 at 1:01PM

It's for you? Even better.

My big bit of advice for you now is to get yourself down a camera shop. If there's one close then you can go twice, if not then just the once. I think the t'internet and all the sites Hintza mentioned are great, they give a lot of info, good prices etc. etc. but I think you need 2 things they can't give you.

- A basic understanding of some of the funtionality - is 3x zoom enough? Well for me it is, but for my mum (when I helped her through this process) it wasn't. They only way to tell, is to pick up a cam and use it, zoom in and out!

- That mystical "attraction". Almost everyone I've advised on which digicam to buy who has popped down to look at camera's has had a strong feeling about a cam. The way it feels in the hand, the layout of controls, that tiny little function that no other cams have but just suits you to a T.

So if it was me I'd pop down to a shop to explore the basics, look at some of the shapes, look at the different zooms. Return to home with some basic idea's of what you need under your belt to whittle down a list to 3-5 cams.

Head back to the shop (or a different one) making sure they've got the cams on your list in stock (take along your best online price, to see if they match it). Take a good look through your short list cams to see which "feels" the best.

Jessops (for instance) do price match, so you may be able to score a bargain there and then!

Luke

NB for my money I'd stick to the 3x zoom as 7 - 10x really needs a tripod to avoid camera shake and is for either sports or wildlife photography in the most part. My ma on the other hand likes to take pics of birds in her garden....

Advice on Digital Cameras please

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