Digital Camera - No Idea

burbs_2

Hi

We are going to Florida next year and want to take a good digital camera with us. I am in the process of looking for one at the moment but the problem is i do not have a clue what it all means - 4.1mega pixels etc etc.

I want a good one and would like to spend about £100 but can go up to about £150 if its worth it, i again have no idea.

Any help would be great. thansk you

lipidicman

Ignore the 'mega pixel rating' They are all pretty high. What counts in a camera are the quality of the optics and the feature count (ie manual modes, metering, the quality of the flash etc)

A 5Mp camera with a rubbish lens, is a rubbish camera!

Also, ease of use, battery life etc may be important to you, too much to list.....

blindman

Two very good review sites from which you can get info as to what to look for in a camera and what's good etc

Steves digicam

DCResource

Basically I would say that for ordinary sized photos I would go for a 3 Mega Pixel camera with say about 3x OPTICAL zoom (NOT DIGITAL).

A few of the (many!) things that you should look for apart from the actual specification of the camera.

Memory
Size of memory card supplied.
With a 3M pixel camera 32Mb is really the minimum. However prices have come down quite a bit so less of an issue now.
I would suggest that with a 3 Mega Pixel camera the minimum you need is at least 64 Mb with 128Mb prefered.

Type of memory:
Lots of different types, with varying pros and cons. Just factor in the cost of buying the stuff.


Batteries:
Type supplied and what type does it need?
Digital cameras are REALLY heavy on battery use, so RECHARGEABLES are the only ones you should use.
Some cameras come with their own recharger + batteries, but most probably don't so you have to think about the extra cost of buying a charger and batteries.
If you buy a recharger, get one with a CAR ADAPTOR as this is really handy.
Some cameras come with ordinary batteries which are literally useless.

Battery usage:
Cameras use their batteries more than others, so look for one that has a long time before replacing batteries. Doesn't really become an issue if you have a fast recharger and 2 sets of batteries, but that involves more cost.

This website is usually a good cheap source of both memory and batteries:

7 dayshop

Shutter lag:
Digital cameras have a noticeable delay between actually pressing the button to taking the picture, look for the least delay if possible.

Buying new
Buy the camera from the Internet if possible, or get a price from the Internet and then go to Jessops and ask if they'll match the price, they usually will, saves you ££££.

Use a comparison web-site to get the best prices and retailers

Kelkoo

Buy from Ebay

EvilMonkey

Burbs,

Most of the current batch of 3MP camera's will do you a grand job. As you're not off to Florida for a while, I'd keep your eyes peeled for something similar to the Boots sale which just happened. Basically selling off "last years" camera's for ver good prices. (I notice the Argos sale has just started...)

MP or megapixels is the number of pixels the sensor has so 3 megapixels is 3 Million pixels in a grid (1500 tall by 2000 wide) As you can guess, the more pixels you have the finer the detail the camera will record. For standard size prints (or even the slightly larger than standard size some developers do) a 3MP camera is fine. Anything lower than this will give very digital looking prints and is only really fit for showing pics on a computer screen.

Blindmans already covered batteries so I'll skip that

Memory wise I'd look for a camera using either compact flash or secure digital as these 2 are by far the cheapest to get additional memory for (think of it like digital film). As the other chap advised 128MB is a good size as this would fit around 80 photo's on it at the best settings. This size card should cost you around £10 though so probably best avoid places like comet or dixons which charge a fortune for them!

For general usage the Canon AXX series of camera's is considered very good and you can find them within your budget. I'd personally avoid sony camera's as they use proprietry batteries and memory (memory sticks).

Hope this helps..

E.M.

burbs_2

Thank you all, brilliant advice and i can now really start to look. I had my eye on a Canon Powershot A85, someone had mentioned it somewhere so that seemed a good place to start. I can get that for around £160 so i will look into this a bit more.

Thanks again

fatboyonadiet

I got this one a few months back; http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/B0002KQ6H4/026-0607311-6997256?%5Fencoding=UTF8

Easy to use and the pictures come out really well too, got a free case with it too which comes in handy. Got a 512 memory card from them too which was about £24 and holds loads of pics, but think you can get a cheaper one from either ebuyer or mymemory. HTH.

Joannekerry

I had the Minolta Dimage Z10 from boots when it was half price (you can pick a tenner discount code up). I am well impressed with mine, easy to use and very simple to load onto the computer and print your own pictures off. The reasons I went for this one is that firstly I didnt want anything small that I could either lose or break (Im quite heavy handed) but also it has an eight optical zoom which is absolutely fab.

JimArnold

The market moves so quickly - I bought a nikon which was released 18 months ago and was superceded so it was 40% off when I bought it and that model has now been superceded again

Buy it just before you go - about 2 weeks - read the manual on the plane(!) - as it's digital you can see the results straight away and know if you're doing it Ok but it might take some practice to be really good

yes 3 Mp minimum and OPTICAL zoom essential

buy Nikon, Canon, Olympus, Minolta or Pentax ie quality

a large optical zoom eg minolta z5 or olympus c765 really adds to the fun think how many snaps you have taken when you couldn't get near enough £150 will get you one of these in last years model eg z10 or c730

I favour compact flash memory - larger than some but cheap and available in large sizes eg £20 for 512Mb - buy from a memory specialist

Don't forget spare batteries - some take unusual sized rechargeable ones and you always need a spare

EvilMonkey

I agree with Jimarnold, either wait until about a month before you go (2 weeks is a little short, imagine the panic if you ordered it online and it was delayed delivery and arrived broken!) or keep your eye out for an absolute unmissable bargain (a la boots)

One other Camera which I'd keep an eye on is the Ricoh Caplio R1V, everyone talks about zoom, but this normally means extra telephoto shots (IE "zooming" into something far away). But they also neglect the wide side of things (IE craming everything in on a group shot or a nice landscape \ vista) The ricoh maintains both, with a good mix of wide and telephoto focal lengths in its range giving you a lot of flexibility (It also looks V nice IMHO). At the mo, they're just above your price at around £160, but keep an eye on them for the future....

See

here for a review of it

or here for a good price

E.M.

Hintza

Try here:- http://stores.ebay.co.uk/Canon-Outlet

I and all the family have bought from them.

A80 should cost about £100 plus £5.25 P+P. Follow their instructions carefully. I have never had a problem.