Compact Digital Cameras

Mick,

Can you please give a budget for Mrs Mick's camera?

Count'd

I am unconcerned about the budget. I want to buy her a good camera that suits her needs.

Regards

Mick

hi,

I bought a Canon IXUS II about 18 months ago and still think it's great - small, not too heavy on the battery, point and click when you want that, SD card storage. No complaints here.

Probably been superceded by now but there must be an ixus III or XX by now.

Cheapest price I found was on amazon.

Ian

Mick

I suggest a Canon Ixus 40 would be right up her street. Have a look here for a review.

Don't be oversold with pixels, 3MP is plenty for most users; this camera is 4MP and would produce nice 6x9's fairly easily.

It will generate a file size of around 2MB for a best quality/maximum resolution image, so a minimum 256MB card would be a good idea and perhaps a 512MB (or second 256MB) for holidays.
Also, you must get a spare battery and keep it charged ready to go at all times.

Julian

....and there was me thinking that XX would be high enough to be humorous and the reality is 40!

But that indeed seems to be the uprated model of the II.

Buy one now before you get a dissenting view !

The dpreview site linked to above has lots of good in-depth reviews.

Ian

Well, it's a tough decision when it comes to compact digital. You have to come to terms that whatever you decide, you will throw the camera away in a few years. If you can afford a high budget there are some great little cameras out there.

I've just bought the Nikon 8400 for myself at a cost of £460. The reason? Basically because it has the widest angle zoom lens on the compact market (equivalent to 24-85mm) and it has a tough and very nicely made cast magnesium body. It produces consistently superb results. The lens produces excellent results from corner to corner and doesn't suffer too much from chromatic aberrations. The external lcd monitor is great, the viewfinder is not brilliant.

I've just bought the Canon S70 for my Dad (£285)and it just doesn't compare. Tinny metal body, lens is just OK, firmware produces too contrasty and colourful images. It's just a different league away from the Nikon 8400. The difference £175 makes is dramatic. The Canon is smaller, maybe too small, as I think it's more difficult to handle.

Both these compacts are fairly easy to operate. Once the initial settings are chosen, one could quite happily shoot a holiday without touching many buttons.

Hi Mick;

This is a cracking little camera for £150.

Or, have a look at a Sony WSC-W12 at around £250. A friend bought two of them. Lovely big screen and excellent performance.

John.

Pentax Optio SV

The Canon IXUS or the Pentax Optio would be good options, and I've also had good results with an Olympus digital point and shoot.

Sony DSCs are fun and produce excellent pictures even on 1/2 a meg. My P71 (now P72?) has a useful optical zoom range.

Downside is their own memory cards/sticks are expensive compared to the more common universal types. I find them rather slow to download more than few tens of pictures.

Though using Picasa2 has helped greatly by auto-eliminating duplicates on each download. MS 'My Pictures' didn't and will cheerfully auto-duplicate every time you download! That means wasted time eliminating duplicates manually across a range of different folders. Picasa also auto duplicates images into "My Pictures" which is a better format for some image tasks compared with Picasa. (But not all tasks and Picasa2 is a nice free download which shows you all your pictures simultaneously.

All this hasn't stopped me from taking many thousand of great pictures over the last couple of years. My extensive Olympus/Zuiko film kit was rarely used over the years except for special occasions. But my Sony never leaves home without me.

Remember to have a turbo charger and spare battery sets. The batteries lose some of their charge over a couple of weeks even when idle. I found the original Sony batteries infinitely better than 'no-names'. (Which cost me the Mercury transit!!)

I'd recommend multiple, medium-sized memory cards/sticks over one huge one. (For greater flexibility and speed of downloading) But keep them safe. They are small and rather expensive.

quote:

I'd recommend multiple, medium-sized memory cards/sticks over one huge one. (For greater flexibility and speed of downloading) But keep them safe. They are small and rather expensive.

Good idea, far better than keeping all your eggs in one basket that can get lost, stolen or at worse self destruct. Although when boys talk about toys size does matter and bigger is often thought of as better.

What Nime said....

Sony are now making high speed memory sticks though, which may improve the downloading speed.

I recommend the Contax U4R.

It's fast, attractive and compact - only 19mm (0.55") thick. It fits easily into a handbag or a shirt pocket.

The Zeiss lens is excellent and resolution is easily adequate.

What I really like about the camera is the way you can configure the display. This allows you to place the camera on the table at dinner and take spontaneous shots of people without the usual self-consciousness.

Contax U4R

The only problem, Mick, is that you'll like it so much you'll have to buy another one for your wife.

Regards
Steve M

quote:

Originally posted by J.N.:
have a look at a Sony WSC-W12 at around £250. A friend bought two of them. Lovely big screen and excellent performance.

Seconded; very easy to use, great pictures, reliable.

One caveat with this and other digital cameras: they stop working below 0°C, if your wife enjoys taking winter photos she might be better off with a conventional one.

My Sony works at night for astro-photography.
You don't just lay a camera down in the frost and walk away. You keep it in a pocket which keeps it nice and cosy.

quote:

Originally posted by Nime:
My Sony works at night for astro-photography.
You don't just lay a camera down in the frost and walk away. You keep it in a pocket which keeps it nice and cosy.

At temperatures of 3-5°C below Zero, mine works for a couple of minutes. Then it decides it wants to be warmed up again for 15 minutes or so. Pretty annoying when you are a tourist who wants to take lots of photos.

Odd.I have never noticed any problems with cold down to (say) -5C. I'm often out there for hours, snapping away. I just put it back into my down jacket outside pocket between sessions.

If one of Mrs M's objectives is to take pictures of young third generation Parrys and potentially rapidly moving fauna (dogs, cats, birds etc) check the actual shutter delay of the chosen camera when exposing the picture - small digital camras still do have a reputation for delaying the exposure by up to 2 seconds (or so it seems) which is OK if you want to have a photo collection of dog tails)


Not taken with a small digicam

So people expect Mrs Mick to suffer with a maximum wide angle lens of 38mm (equivalent). She won't be able to photograph her holiday scenes properly.

I don't think Mrs Mick would appreciate the advice to buy credit card thin cameras. They're crap.

And what's all the rubbish about disadvantages of larger cards.

One large card: no taking out of the camera to lose and less removal = less contacts damaged. These are the most common failures.

Actual card failure is extremely rare and even then, you still have recovery software.

Large card = slower download!!! I'd be interested to hear your reason.

I'm still very happy with my new camera, takes great snaps so it does, as if I'm not even controlling it ?


Fritz Von Details on a thread about 6 weeks back, if anybody is the slightest bit interested

quote:

Originally posted by count.d:
So people expect Mrs Mick to suffer with a maximum wide angle lens of 38mm (equivalent). She won't be able to photograph her holiday scenes properly.

38mm is plenty wide enough. Are you sure you are a professional?

No it's not, dimwit.

Despite being used to using a 19-35mm zoom for 35mm film photography I've never found the 38-114mm zoom on my own little digi-can to be that much of a restriction.

Most point and shoot users will be used to that sort of zoom range and won't give it a 2nd thought. I have seen 35mm film point and shoot cameras with a 28mm wide end, but they're pretty rare.

Hehe, my little old mum finds the 38mm wide lens a restriction on her Holiday and she knows nothing about photography!

Shows how creative some of you guys are.

"Shows how creative some of you guys are"

The style and content of your postings really do make you a difficult character to like.