What Digital camera to buy?

May

Does anyone have any tips for buying a digital camera?
I know the more pixels you have the better the quality of picture but the memory also counts aswell and that's not what i'm sure of.
I'm looking to spend a maximum of £150. ANy ideas to the best deals out there?

brummybloke

the best way of doing it is buying a digital camera magazine and having a good old read. also try a coupl websites who review digital cameras.

the amount of pixels is an important factor but so is the optical zoom. there is little point having a 5 mega pixel camera with only a x 2 zoom ( optical)

forget digital zoom, this does nothing other than distort you picture, the quality becomes less the more you zoom where as optical , you keep the true image.

nowdays 4 or 5 mega pixels should be the minumum, x 3 optical should be the minimum you go for.

memory will normally be in sd/mmc/xd or sony sticks, they can be found in many ifferent sizes and speeds but normally best to choose something around 256 meg or higher for each card as the higher quality pictures you take, the more memory it takes.

so if you went for a 10 mega pixel camera you may only be able to take 20 pictures on a 256 meg card compaired to 40 pictures on a 5 meg. there is a chart somewhere which tells you how many photos to expect on what megapixel camera.

im looking after my sonat the mo but i will try and foind you some useful sites when i put him for afternoon nap.

jjames_3

You're after something with the best lens you can get, the megapixel count is less important.

Having said that, at £150 there aren't really any bad cameras about.

I would personally recommend the Canon IXUS 500, this is a 5mp camera which takes fantastic quality images.

Having said that there are some great deals in the sales. You won't go far wrong with any top-brand Japanese camera with an OPTICAL (NOT DIGITAL ONLY) zoom lens and 4mp or above. These can now be picked up for well under £100. I have a hard time recommending spending significantly more because of the diminishing returns thing -- a Jap 4mp 3x-optical camera will deliver results 90% as good as a £200 camera, and most people won't need the extra 10%.

ManAtHome

The pixels thing is true up to a point, but anything over 3 million will give decent A4 size prints. Much more important is the lens which is why a 3mpix Canon, Fuji, Olympus will be much better than a 6mpix Thingywhatsit... Most cameras have some form of internal memory (often just for buffering the data), but nearly all will take some form of memory card.

There are plenty of deals out there at the moment - a couple of different ones which caught my eye at Dixons were the Pentax Optio 60 (£130) and Kodak Z740 (£150 - would stretch the budget) - haven't used either, but I'm pretty sure both were recommended on another thread. The first one is compact enough to carry around with you, the second is bulkier but has a longer lens range. I have both types (although not these models) and the compact one gets the most use - I only take the bigger one with me on 'picture safari'.

Reluctant_spender

All the advice is very good - may I recommend a website. They are very good with good prices. I have just bought a camera for my wife. Ordered it on the 23/12/05 and recieved it today. Good service.

The website is Pixmania.

pchelpman

Useful free advice on all aspects of digital cameras...

http://www.shortcourses.com/

I, too, have used Pixmania. Always found them efficient. Also Ebuyer here....

http://www.ebuyer.com/customer/home/