Digital cameras - Help!!!

Ellie2758

I need to get a cheap, easy-to-use digital camera for my daughter to use at college in her Art course. I have in front of me a Jessops catalogue which has many different brands of camera around the £60 - £80 mark. TOO MUCH CHOICE! I know I should be looking at number of pixels and size of screen but what else? Help!

Ellie

mummysaver

Hi, no help to offer, but perhaps the college might provide some guidance?

Anyway, will be interested to see the replies, as I keep looking at the cameras in Boots and Tesco priced around £80.00, what are you meant to look for, which is good make of digital camera, etc?

myrnahaz

I only know the bare basics, but I know that optical zoom is better than digital zoom (the photo quality doesn't diminish as the picture zooms in with optical zoom), and a 5mp camera is better than a 4mp etc (sharper picture).

I had that information from this site - I'm pretty sure it was on the £40 Tesco camera thread that was on around December time. The replies ranged from simple stuff like this to really impressive technical information. I'm sure someone will be able to provide a link.

(Incidentally, the £40 camera in Tesco is now reduced to around £30)

Ellie2758

myrnahaz wrote:

I only know the bare basics, but I know that optical zoom is better than digital zoom (the photo quality doesn't diminish as the picture zooms in with optical zoom), and a 5mp camera is better than a 4mp etc (sharper picture).

I had that information from this site - I'm pretty sure it was on the £40 Tesco camera thread that was on around December time. The replies ranged from simple stuff like this to really impressive technical information. I'm sure someone will be able to provide a link.

(Incidentally, the £40 camera in Tesco is now reduced to around £30)

Dont suppose you mean this one:

5MP camera for £49.99
In Tesco they have Premier DS-5080 5 Mega Pixel PictBridge Enabled Digital Camera for £49.99.

Ellie

coolagarry

Ellie there are lots of good cameras out there... some pointers

Optical zoom is all that matters- digital zoom is irrelevant (You can crop it to the same quality on your pc).

3mp is perfectly good for normal use (6x4 or 7x5) . You only need the extra pixels if you are printing very large copies of the picture. the disadvantage of 5mp etc is that you have to buy a far larger memory card to store the same number of pictures... they take up more space if stored on your PC etc and are a pig to email because of the size of the file. I had a 1.3mp camera and the pics were fine. To put it into perspective a professional photographer friend had a 5mp camera and said he could easily enlarge pictures of people to life size.

Go for a well known maker of cameras - they know about quality lenses.

Ellie2758

coolagarry wrote:

Ellie there are lots of good cameras out there... some pointers

Optical zoom is all that matters- digital zoom is irrelevant (You can crop it to the same quality on your pc).

3mp is perfectly good for normal use (6x4 or 7x5) . You only need the extra pixels if you are printing very large copies of the picture. the disadvantage of 5mp etc is that you have to buy a far larger memory card to store the same number of pictures... they take up more space if stored on your PC etc and are a pig to email because of the size of the file. I had a 1.3mp camera and the pics were fine. To put it into perspective a professional photographer friend had a 5mp camera and said he could easily enlarge pictures of people to life size.

Go for a well known maker of cameras - they know about quality lenses.

Thanks, can you explain about the "normal size" battery issue?

What would be a "good" amount of optical zoom?

Ellie

Ellie2758

Bump! I need help people!

Ellie

Cryogenic

Ellie,

The explanation of the "normal Sized" batteries is that some cameras can take "normal" AA batteries so you can cheaply buy good quality NiMh rechargeable batteries and have spares. Some of the smaller cameras have their own brand non AA rechargeable batteries which are usually £20-£30 a go, which if you want a spare will push up your camera budget.
When looking for a digital camera I found this website http://www.steves-digicams.com/ very informative. Other points are in your price range you will prob. not get more than 3X optical zoom and finally if you want to buy your camera from a highstreet store at internet prices Jessops will usually price match UK based internet companies (this does not include pixmania, how are french) I got £140 off the price of my camera this way.

Digital camera memory can be found cheaply at lots of websites listed elsewhere in this forum so I would not buy a 3MP rather than 5MP just because it uses less memory (you can always save the images as 3MP on the 5MP camera and use 5MP for when you want to enlarge or crop an image) but it is not the case that the higher the MP the better the camera. The "proper" camera companies are more likely to have a better quality lens. Also some if the cheaper cameras give high mega pixel specs but with the word interpolated hidden somewhere, which is "cheating" in my opinon.

Hitme

If you have a somerfield near you they have been doing the Fuji F440 for £79.99 which is an incredible bargain if you want a really small 4 MP metal bodied camera with an optical zoom. Got one for each of my childrens birthday later in the year and I'm really impressed.

Ellie2758

Thanks you two, I feel reasonably informed now

Ellie

dk143

Go to https://www.cameras.co.uk. This website is very very useful, in firstly helping you to decide what camera to go for, and then to find where to get it cheapest!

I used it a lot when I was getting my digital camera.