Recommendations for a digital camera & printer please.

Posted by: DavidY80 on 07 July 2004

We've just had a fundraising drive for the school that two of my boys attend and raised £1500.
The head would like us to buy the school a new digital camera and dedicated printer.

Can anyone recommend suitable items? Ideally the camera would be simple to use and tough as it may well get some rough handling.
The printer would ideally print up to A3 size paper and require little maintenance.

Although we have £1500 to spend, I'd like to save some for a different school project, so something in the region of £500 to £750 would be best.

Thanks guys.
Posted on: 07 July 2004 by Dobbin
If you are looking for something to learn the fundamentals of photography I'd spend the money and go for a Nikon D70 and Epson Photo 2100. The Nikon offers great quality, can me operated in program (automatic) mode and can be used with more photographer control.

The printer offers high quality imaging and prints up to A3.

Quality doesn't come cheap!
Posted on: 09 July 2004 by DavidY80
Thanks for the advice so far chaps.

Someone else has recommended the Canon G5 as a likely contender. Has anyone any experience of this camera?
Posted on: 09 July 2004 by Mike Hanson
quote:
Originally posted by DavidY80:
Someone else has recommended the Canon G5 as a likely contender. Has anyone any experience of this camera?

I've got the G3, which is virtually the same, except for being 4MP rather than 5, and silver rather than black.

It's a great little camera, easy to use in automatic mode, yet lending itself to more complex tasks with its various adjustments. There are many single purpose buttons, so you don't have to go hunting through sub menus for many common tweaks.

The flash does a good job, and red-eye isn't as bad as many cameras. You can also add a separate flash, if that suits your fancy.

The auto white-balance is respectable, and it has manual modes for those "special" situations.

The "SuperFine" JPGs are nicely compressed, but offer similar quality to the RAW mode.

The battery is a rechargeable lithium-ion, and lasts "forever" on a charge.

The icing on the cake is that the resulting snapshots are admirably good. Either the G3 or G5 would be a good choice.

-=> Mike Hanson <=-