[yzeater]

Hey Guys-
We're in the market for a digital camera now. Here are the issues:
1. Quantity. Can the camera hold 40 or 50 high quality images? What are the different options here?
2. Quality. Are the pictures clear? How do we print them? Buy an expensive printer, use some online printing resource, local photo shop? What's the cost on these different options?
3. Zoom. We'd like on that has good zoom capabilities. Do we HAVE to have optical zoom, or will digital work just fine? How many times zoom do we need?
4. Cost. What am I looking to pay?
5. Brand. Which brand to go to / steer away from. What model do we want to buy?
Thanks a lot
-yzeater

[CaseCom]

Forget about digital zoom. Optical zoom is what matters.

With "digital zoom" you expand the physical size of what you're looking at but you don't gain any detail; it just gets fuzzier and fuzzier the higher you go. It's pointless.

[SirCastor]

Optical zoom is defiantely the way to go, as mentioned, Digital zoom isn't really zooming in, it just maginfies the image.

As for the number of pictures you hold, most digital cameras these days use Compact Flash memory, which I think goes up to a Gigabyte. (really expensive though) You should be fine with 32 or 64mb cards. This is partially dependent on what the quality is.

For a higher quality camera, you're looking at $300-$600. I recommend at least 2 Megapixels. But if you're planning to be professional about it, go for Four or more. The higher the Megapixel count, the higher quality image you'll be able to get. Also watch for Cameras that have the ability to capture in more than one format. TIFF is good for printing (it's near zero compression IIRC) and JPEG is great for the Web and other low file size situations.

You can get a nice printer and some high quality Photo-paper, and you're prints will come out beautifully. I see little reason to take it to a shop and have it printed there.

Brand names.. Canon, Kodak. Personally, I avoid Sony, not because they may a bad product, but they force you to use Memory Stick rather than a CF card, and that ultimately means higher price for you.

[fudo]

1 & 2) The cameras from Canon and Nikon that I have used offer great picture quality I personally have the Canon Digital IXUS which is a 2.2MP camera and have used Nikon's CoolPix 5000 which is a 5MP camera. The difference is quite major, but you will find that most of the cameras in the 2-3.3 MP range give very high quality images.

I have with a set of 64MB Compact Flash cards. On a single 64MB I can get around 96 images at the highest quality setting which is 1600x1200.

To be honest I have not wanted to print any images, though most of the big picture developing chains offer hi-quality printing though it is fairly expensive. I end up burning CDs for friends or placing images on a website.

3.) Yes the important thing with zoom is most definitaly optical, digital zoom only give good results with landscape shot where detail is not important.

4.) This one really depends on you I would say £300 - £400 for a good Canon or Nikon. (You could treat these as dollar values because we get ripped off here in the UK.)

5.) I would have to recommend the Canon IXUS 330 or the Canon IXUS V3 there are only minor differences in specs, the big selling point of the Canon IXUS range is the size, the Sureshots have similar specs but are larger. The Coolpix 5000 is probably overkill, though you should probably consider the 4300 and 775.

Stay away from anything which uses SmartMedia.

[proux]

The canon S330 will easily fit in your pocket. I find that invaluable, you can carry it to parties for example...

[G4ME]

Damn straight the Canon S330 is a great camera I have it along with a 256 MB Kingson CF card and I can take about 240 pics with it highest rez and bigest file size.

Its a 3X optical Zoom, and a 7.5 digital zoom, I rarley use the digital but its nice to have.

I know for a fact that these internet, iphoto companies are making a killing by charging you $0.49 a 3X5, my uncle has a small photo develpoing studio in Rockland, and when I developed my trip rafting the Colorado River through the grand canyon, I developed my entire CF card about 240 pics, and he said it is the same cost for him to print a film pic or a digital pic, he got a new machine where it scans in the film and converts it into a digital file and then sends it to the processor and then prints it out on the paper, so he can send any image, be it film or JPEG and the processor will use the same techniques to print out the pics.

For the enire job of about 240 pics he only charged me 70 bucks to recover his loss of the Chemicals and paper, so that works out to be around $0.29 a pic not bad by my standards. It is a cool setup I just pop in the CF, he also takes SD, memory stick and CDR. and hit print all or select the ones you want to print or he can brun a CD for you if you want.

So if you are in Rockland Maine, I sugest you head to Prints Done Quickly and get some prints developed.

[Rainy Day]

Cameras range from $30 to thousands. All depends on your use.

You didn't say what you want to use the camera for, so i'll assume general snapshots, and maybe web pictures. Anything less than a 2 MegaPixel is probably not worth it. That puts you into the $200 and up market. Plan on spending close to another $100 by the time you purchase a decent battery charger with two sets of batteries, a camera case, and extra "digital film." Virtually all cameras in this range come with digital film cards (e.g. Compact Flash, SmartMedia, Memory Stick, etc.) Number of pictures depends on size of your digital film, and the resolution your camera is set at.

For a 2 MegaPixel point-and-shoot camera, you just can't beat the Canon PowerShot A40 (3x optical zoom, 7.5 optical/digital combo zoom). Great optics, great features, great camera. And you can display your pictures on a TV set, or print them directly to a Canon printer (without going through your computer). They offer very decent Mac software, and of course iPhoto is an option in MacOS X (as well as a beta version of the Canon software). It even takes "movies" (with sound), but this is really only a novelty feature, so don't throw away your camcorder just yet. More useful is the stitch feature, allowing you to "stitch" together several overlapping pictures to generate one large picture. You can even create QuickTime 360 degree panoramas with this feature/software.

For its class, the A40 takes the best pictures of any camera on the market. In fact, it puts most of its competitors to shame, IMO. It's a great little camera. Can't speak highly enough of it. Only complaint is that the UI for rotating pictures within the camera is cumbersome (too many keystrokes necessary). The A40 has wonderful automation capabilities, and lot's of manual overrides. It also has optional accessories available which are totally lacking in other cameras in its class, such as lens attachments, like a zoom doubler, and even an underwater shell. You'll want a larger/faster CF digital film card, than its stock 8MB card, most likely. You'll get at around 200-300 photos on the A40 off a set of 1800 mAH NiMH batteries (without being particularly frugal with power).

Make sure to use good quality NiMH batteries (with whatever camera you choose) and a high quality charger, such as the Quest Q2 charger. The great thing about the Quest charger is that it has individual charge channels (meaning each battery gets a maximum charge), and it comes with an car adapter too.

A note on the Q2 charger: The "platinum" package now comes with four AA 1800 mAH batteries. There is also a Minolta package (which many of the mail order houses are offering) which sells for about $10 less, but it comes with AAA batteries instead of AA's, so be careful and don't be fooled. Thomas Distributing is a reputable source for this charger.

Check out these sample A40 photos

And Steve's A40 review

And Jeff's A40 review

You can poke around Steve and Jeff's websites for reviews (and sample photos) of other cameras as well.

[yzeater]

WooHoo!! We just bought a 4.13MP Nikon camera with 3x optical zoom, 35s video mode. Awsome! I'll have some shots up next week. Thanks for the help guys!

[yzeater]

Nikon Coolpix 4300

Did I get a good one?