Digital Camera recommendations

Thinking of getting one but i am new to digital camera stuff. It will be multipurpose camera for general usage, not professional photography. It also should pretty low cost but with above average features and quality. Most widely available brands on my local consumer electronics shops are Sony, BenQ, and Canon.

Take a look at the sites like Digital Camera Review and ComputerShopper. I bought a nice high-end 'point & shoot' for my wife last fall, and we just picked up a low-end one for my younger son. You can do very well in terms of general purpose for cheap money - you will have to figure out your priorities and buy the camera that works best for you.

Originally Posted by Remus
Thinking of getting one but i am new to digital camera stuff. It will be multipurpose camera for general usage, not professional photography. It also should pretty low cost but with above average features and quality. Most widely available brands on my local consumer electronics shops are Sony, BenQ, and Canon.

Hey, photography is one of my main hobbies too -- I've even reviewed some stuff (see http://www.prime-junta.net/ for things I've written about and around that subject). So, I'll give you not just one answer, but four:

First, you can't go terribly wrong with any of the big brands -- they're all good nowadays.

Second, if you want to do the homework yourself, check out [ http://www.dpreview.com/ ] and [ http://www.imaging-resource.com/ ]. They have the all-around best reviews around.

Third, if you want a simple recommendation, get a Canon A series. In particular, the A720 IS punches way above its weight -- it has an excellent feature set, excellent image quality, a pretty compact form factor, and a very attractive price. It's also a very well-rounded product: while you'll certainly find something on the market that'll beat it in any individual respect, it really has very few weak points in its class.

Fourth, if I was buying a compact camera for myself right now, my short list would be:

* The Fujifilm F50D. This one's highly compact, has very good image quality especially in low light (for its class), a solid feature set, and it's very snappy in operation. (I have a previous model, the F30, only my wife monopolized it. My review of it is here; several of my friends bought F50D's, and they're on the whole pretty happy with them.)

* The Sigma DP-1. You probably don't want one of these, though -- it's a highly specialized camera -- no zoom and such -- but it's in a class of its own for picture quality.

* The Canon G9. This one's a "photographer's camera" -- it has full manual control with all the controls at your fingertips, it's fast, it's built like a solid block of brass, and it has class-leading image quality (not counting the Sigma above). Shoots RAW too, which is nice if you want to mess with stuff in Photoshop.

From the reviews both Canon A720IS Fujifilm are very good choices; Canon has more features, more ergonomics and easier in handling, while only slightly lower in picture quality than Fujifilm. Would take some pictures with Canon when i get it.

In terms of picture quality, if you're like most people you can pretty much safely ignore the differences. Just about all of the (major-brand) digital cameras are better than most photographers -- meaning, the picture quality is limited by circumstances and your skill rather than the camera's capabilities. Handling, responsiveness, and reliable automation are more important. The nice thing is that most cameras nowadays are pretty good in these respects too.

I would emphasize the response time. Feature sets don't vary that much from camera to camera, but response times do. With a cheap camera, you'll hit the button and the image capture will occur as much as 2 seconds later. That doesn't cut it. The kids will already be done "saying cheese" and start picking their noses in 2 seconds. You don't have to spend a ton of money to get good response time, but make sure you at least take note of that spec.

I agree. Fortunately most of the major-brand cameras nowadays are reasonably responsive. Three or four years ago this was a major PITA, though -- there were only a very few models that didn't feel sticky. My first digital camera was a Canon PowerShot S40, which is still in active use by my mother-in-law; the picture quality is excellent even by current standards (at least at low sensitivities), but boy is it s-l-o-w.

If you're especially concerned about responsiveness, do check out the Ricoh cameras as well -- they're generally speaking extremely fast, even the cheap ones. (They've lagged in image quality, though, although they've been closing the gap fast in the later generations.)

shutter speed:

Canon A720is = 15-1/2000 sec (With noise reduction for exposures over 1.3 seconds)

Fujifilmf50fd = 8 - 1/2000 (depending on exposure mode)

How's the speed for both & which one has better speed?

I'm not talking shutter speed. FYI- the Canon is technically better, but either of those will be well beyond your needs.

I'm referring to cycle time. For your Canon, that's 1.6 seconds. Don't have time to find it for you, but you'll want to see what the others are. Lower number is better.

Actually, cycle time is less important IMO than focus and shutter lag. Cycle time only bites when you're shooting several pictures in a series, whereas focus and shutter lag bit you every time. What's more, both of these cameras have buffers and continuous shooting modes for this situation that pretty much make the cycle time irrelevant -- the Fuji can manage 3 frames per second in "Top 3," or "Final 3" mode, while the Canon does 1.3 frames per second until your card fills up.

You can find these timings here [ http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/canona720is/page11.asp ] for the Canon, and here [ http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/fujifilmf50fd/page4.asp ].

Agreed, although my intent was that cycle time would be a single number that would encompass the other factors and be far less easy to confuse with something like shutter speed. If the specific lag numbers are readily available, then I (sit) corrected.

They're behind the links I provided, between 0.3 and 0.6 seconds for the Fuji, 0.5 and 0.6 seconds for the Canon. In practice, the Fuji will feel somewhat snappier when shooting at the wide end in decent light; in all other conditions, they'll feel about the same. A half-second lag is well within tolerable bounds; it only gets annoying around one second and beyond.

Just received my Canon A720IS and took some photos with it, and the feeling of satisfaction from taken a nice photos is awesome!.

Heh, i took those on ungodly 3254x2448 resolution (pixels? or whatever), so i had to shrink them down…

Congratulations. I hope you enjoy it.

Do keep using that "ungodly" resolution, though -- you can always shrink them, but if you get a really nice one that you want to print big, you'll need all of them.

Howd'you get Bruce Willis to pose for you btw?

The camera indeed rather user-friendly. The auto mode provides operating help on features such auto-focus and flash adjustment, so even a newbie could start shooting and get very good pictures within minutes. The fidelity and color quality IMO very good - the pictures below for example if enlarged - you could see the flower's texture, stems, seeds, or the veins of a leaf. Here're some outdoor pictures i took along a jogging tracks.

I didn´t see this thread before. We have an older, similar looking Canon. It´s an excellent camera. Comfortable and robust.

Something I found for you camera fans: Another DIY light box, with build and test pics. It's a huge thread and apparently there's been some modifications to the original box design, but it's still pretty nice.

Hee, camera hacking is fun, even if the results are usually more educational than actually useful. Here's one of mine: [ http://www.prime-junta.net/pont/How_…he_Pop-up.html ]

I also tried to make a Patented Dirt Cheap Slide Copier out of a cardboard box, white paper, a $10 1970's 50 mm standard lens, and a Pringles tube, but ran out of patience. I did get to the proof of concept stage, but figured that I'd have to make it out of a harder material (such as wood) to make alignment and focus easy enough to be feasible.

Here's a macro shot I took with it:



And here's a slide I copied with it -- that's my father some time in the late 1960's: