Digital Camera-yet again!!

Synchronicity or what.

I was just going to ask for advice on a digital camera myself.

Spoooooky.

Regards

Mike

On the Yellow Brick Road and Happy

If I buy a digital camera, am I likely to run into trouble when on holiday with regard to number of pictures it can store? What should I look for in a £350 ish camera to provide the equivalent of four rolls of 36 exp film?

Why not the current digital Ixus - not sure of the model, but it's gotta be a contender that at least your wife would be familiar with...

John

TC '..'
"Sun went down in honey. Moon came up in wine. Stars were spinnin' dizzy, Lord, the band kept us so busy we forgot about the time."

Chris M

It depends on the storage medium the camera will use but suppose it uses a Compact Flash card and takes 5mgp images then at 1/8th Jpeg compression you would get about 180 odd images on a 256mgb compact flash card. You can take as many compact flash cards with you as you want to - the price of the cards are quite reasonable - check at Jessops or for a good price at www.7dayshop.com

or you can take a laptop computer or an image storage device of which there are several available to offload the images to.

Derek

<< >>

Need to look carefully at the spec for each camera, the size of the data disk supplied (and the cost of larger ones). It is impossible to generalise, most cameras have a wide range of recording options from low to high res so most will record many pictures at lower quality if you want volume. More pics/higher details means more money on storage, cheaper cameras usually bundled with a very small disk.

A more camera specif detail is batteries. if you intend travelling with a camera abroad then rechargeable-only is an important drawback as you'll need a charger with you (and not be halfway up a mountain). I'm currently looking through specs around £400-500 for a digital cam and the battery life is very variable. Some have disposable batteries so you can carry a spare, a few will even run on cheap 'n' easy AA's.

This is my first real foray into a decent digital camera and I'm finding a few drawbacks with my entire shortlist. One striking thing is that I can only find one decent compact digital camera with a 28mm equivalent at the wide end of the zoom range. I'm trying to avoid the SLR and lots of lenses route.

Bruce

as i started the previous digital camera thread i still believe the new Nikon 3700 is far better than the 4300. albiet less pixels but 3.14 will be far adequate for your needs. also it has audio facility and is a far nicer,more compact shape. it is also metal bodied for longevity.only available in dixons/currys though.

what were barn owls called before barns were invented?

Digital happy-snapers are rubbish on holiday because;
The batteries go flat, spares are heavy and expensive.
The shutter delay kills all opportunistic snaps.
The view-finders are often useless and you can't see the screen in bright sunlight

quote:

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Digital happy-snapers are rubbish on holiday because;
The batteries go flat, spares are heavy and expensive.
The shutter delay kills all opportunistic snaps.
The view-finders are often useless and you can't see the screen in bright sunlight

---

Clearly a well balanced and considered POV Frankly the only negative comment here which has any real validity is the shutter delays which can cause problems, but vary considerably from camera to camera, more recent examples being far better in this respect.

David

"Try not to get overly attached to a hypothesis just because it's yours." :Carl Sagan

Rockingdoc

RE batteries
It is a matter of discipline - I take two sets of batteries with me on trips and rotate and recharge them each night. During less active picture taking times I recharge the batteries every two weeks or so as NiMH batteries tend to lose 1% of their charge each day.

Derek

<< >>

Just telling like I found it. I've taken cameras on holiday for 40 years, ranging from box Brownies to £5k systems, and the only real pain was the one holiday with the digital.

i tested a CENTON DC5 camera in jessops at the weekend. its 5m pxels, rechargeable,audio/video, 3x optical, 4x digital zoom, 32mb sd card and a stylish metal body. £200 buys you this but i don,t know anything about the quality of CENTON. i know centon makes memory cards and electronics but iv'e also seen centon lenses and flashes.who are they?

what were barn owls called before barns were invented?

quote:

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Originally posted by jason.g:
as i started the previous digital camera thread i still believe the new Nikon 3700 is far better than the 4300. albiet less pixels but 3.14 will be far adequate for your needs. also it has audio facility and is a far nicer,more compact shape. it is also metal bodied for longevity.only available in dixons/currys though.

what were barn owls called before barns were invented?

---

I'm with you Jason.

We bought a 3700 just after Xmas and are very happy with it. Easy to use, handily compact, good battery life, nice clean images. I think theres enough space for 150 odd images on a 256mb SD card.

Jay

Yeah...well it seemed like a good idea at the time.

I've just had a brief look at a Nikon 5400 and it looks very good indeed. My local shop has it reduced from £599 to £414 ! This looks like a bargain. Interchangable lens options, apparently excellent pics, etc. And they'll trade in my SLR.

I would be inclined to keep the SLR. A lot of people prefer SLR to digital and you could be one of them.

Having two cameras is always useful and you will get better results with the SLR.

I bet the trade in is peanuts.

Regards

Mick

Ronnie on the other digital camera thread mentioned the Minolta F200. This looks like a very nice camera and does everything you need from a digi camera. £222 on line price.i'd still like to know more about the CENTON DC5 though before commiting. Wheres "PR",I need your advice.

what were barn owls called before barns were invented?

To comment on the Rockingdoc observations:

Batteries are a problem with my, now old, digital camera (Olympus Camedia 2.1 megapixels).

It uses standard AA batteries. Most types of AA battery do not have enough power to even motor the lens out. More expensive types have enough power for two or three pictures, but can be used to take more if allowed to rest for a few minutes between snaps. You have to be really fast taking the pictures because if you take too long the battery cannot motor the lens back in.

There are some really expensive AA batteries, about 7 to 8 GBP each (the camera takes four), which allow over 20 pictures to be taken. I think I got about 40 out of one set. Another set did not fare so well.

AA size rechargeable batteries do not even power the camera up. I have tried several different types.

I now use a solid lead-acid battery, about the size of a small motor-cycle battery, which I carry in a ruck-sack. That sorts the camera out and causes much amusement.

Not very impressed really. Last year the screen split from inside. It wasn't bumped or knocked and there is no external damage.

If I were buying another digital camera, the most important aspect for me would be battery life.

I have gone back to using my OM10. It's so much more convenient, even with spare films, lens and so on, the weight is so much less (!).

Regards,

Paul.

Obviously digi-cameras have a role. I just object to the marketing hype that suggests they are better for all domestic users in all situations.

paul99 - have you tried a set of 1700mah NiMH batteries with a fast recharger - I can get more than 150 pictures from a recently charged battery -

Non rechargeable batteries (apart from Lithium) should not be considered for use in a camera

Check out
About batteries

Other commercial websites
Budget Batteries

Nevada

Derek

<< >>

2300mah AA rechargeables are now available - sufficient to light up a small city (but not for long!). About 6 quid a set of 4 on eBay.

Paul,
If your Oly is eating up batteries that quickly maybe there's a fault with it. I had similar experience with my first Canon Pro90is about 2 years ago. Eventually Canon exchanged it for a new one and the problem went away.

David

Derek,Thanks for the battery information. I note that one of the rechargeable batteries has a terminal voltage of 1.5 volts. I think that was my problem, the rechargeables I tried were 1.3 volts. My Olympus seems to need the full 1.5 volts per battery and not a whisker less.

David, You may be right. The camera may have been faulty from new. I live in Germany but bought the camera during a visit to the UK. The effort required to return the camera was just enough to disuade me and it took a long time to try out every type of battery I could find, before I plumped for the ruck sack battery.

I may try some of the 1.5 volt rechargeables.

Regards,

Paul.

If your camera is faulty, it may not be that it's draining the batteries. Electrical cameras have a voltage level set at which the camera is told to shut down, because of too low energy. This level is adjusted by the manufacturer only and could have been set at the wrong level.

My Nikon F5 was one of the first few released and had this problem. The camera would tell me there was no power even though the batteries were still OK. I took it back to Nikon UK and they adjusted it while I was there. They then realised that the whole first batch of F5's had been set wrong and they recalled them a couple of months later. The metering was also 1/3 stop too dark, which they also adjusted.

Different manufacturer's batteries discharge at different rates. Some batteries discharge rapidly too a certain level, then stay around there for most of it's useful life. Others slowly discharge at a constant rate.

Panasonic are regarded as the best. Duracell are terrible. Lithium AA are excellent. Rechargeables in a camera are not advised unless it says so in the manual. They have far too high initial voltage when new and can damage cameras. They are perfect for flash.

The Canon Pro90is at one time suffered from the problem of having the low voltage trigger level incorrectly set. Luckily it was fixable with a microcode patch, but in my case the problem persisted until the camera was replaced.

It seems most digital cameras now recommend the use of rechargeables, particularly the NiMh variety, presumably because of their higher capacity and lack of memory problems.

On a different subject, just heard on R4 that Kodak are making 15,000 redundancies in the film/camera divsion due to the falling market and increase in take up of digital, which they now plan to focus on.

David

"Try not to get overly attached to a hypothesis just because it's yours." :Carl Sagan

well, i took the plunge and went against everything i believed. i purchased a CENTON DC5 from Jessops at the weekend (£200). its 5 megapixels, 32mb card, audio+video, metal bodied,rechargeable and comes with a soft case.i,m very happy with it and the endless features it has.i can't find a camera with the same spec for anywhere near that price.i researched Centon and found out they make camera lenses, binoculars and other photographic equipment, but are really.....PENTAX.

what were barn owls called before barns were invented?

Jason
Let us all know what your pics are like, battery time ,handling etc. It certainly looks a lot of camera for the money, one guesses there must be a compromise somewhere.

Howard