[im_noahselby]

Let me start out by saying that I've done a search and have been to all the major camera review sites. I'm in the market for my first digital camera. My budget is $400 Cdn. For those who don't know, HP's digital cameras have supposedly had a complete overhaul and represent a turnaround for them from their older junkier offerings. This and the fact that I own an HP printer is why I am now considering one of their cameras. I have read reviews, but require input from members here before I take the plunge.

Canon cameras I have always heard good things about, and their new SD200 strikes my fancy, but not if the HP blows it out of the water for the same price. I really like the small size, large LCD panel and Canons attention to detail.

I think I've narrowed my choices down to the following two cameras.

HP PhotoSmart R707
-5.1 MP
-3X optical zoom
-adaptive lighting technology
-1.5" LCD display

Canon PowerShot SD200
-3.2 MP
-3X optical zoom
-DIGIC II image processor
-2.0" LCD display


1) Does MP really matter that much when choosing a digital camera? For the beginner photographer, is there a large enough gap between the above two models for me to truly notice a difference in picture quality? I will mostly be printing 4X6 photographs and occasionally 8X10 pictures.

2) Can anyone comment on HP's new adaptive lighting technology. I've seen a live demonstration of this feature on TV and I'm sure it is something I would use and like very much, but if the Canon can handle low light indoor photography just as easily then this may sway my vote over to the Canon side.

3) Can anyone who has used an HP camera and PhotoSmart printer together comment on what the direct printing procedure was like? It sounds really cool to be able to just plug in my camera and print on the go like that....

4) Would a picture taken with a 3.2 MP Canon camera at 1024 x 768 produce solid desktop images for my PowerBook? I mean, will they come out grainy and of poor quality?

Another question I'd like to add to the list:

5) How do Canon 3.2 MP cameras handle indoor photography? I'd say half of the pictures I'll be taking will be indoor shots and I'm wondering if HP's adaptive lighting technology will edge out Canon in this area...

Thanks,
Noah

[kcourt]

All I can tell you is of my own experience. I am sold on Canon products. I had a powershot camera (non-digital) before and loved it. I now own a new Canon digital power shot A80 - got it for $349 a few months ago. Since then they have come out with a new model so you could buy it for less now.

It has 4 PegaPixels, 3X optical zoom, enhance movie mode, variable angle LCD panel, direct print mode. It takes wonderful pictures.

I also bought the Canon i960 printer - another great product.

I love my HP color laser printer but for photo needs, I will take Canon every time!

Good luck on your decision.

Kathy

[CatOne]

Megapixels matters if you're going to be blowing up photos to large sizes (say, 8"x10" or larger). For 5x7 photos, it doesn't matter. I think focusing on a good lens is a lot more important than megapixels, especially for a new photographer.

I like Canon. They are a company who focuses a lot of effort on cameras, throughout all price points (you can buy an $8000 digital camera from them). It's one of their primary lines of business, and they have lots of experience in this area. HP -- well, my opinion is they have a few low-end cameras that cater to hobbyists (I took this picture of my 1 year old and I want it to be easy to print out -- it doesn't need to be THAT good of a camera as most things can take decent snapshots).

If you take a liking to photography and want to spend more $$$ on equipment (for now, I'm eyeing a couple $1000 lenses for my Canon D60, but the wallet's saying "NO!" ) If you become familiar with Canon stuff it will be more familiar as you go on. HP doesn't appear to have any plans to get into the SLR market and it wouldn't actually make much sense, as they don't make lenses. Canon does, and they make some of the best lenses in the world.

So that's my 4.5 cents. I can't directly note the cameras you're quoting... never having used them. I did have an S100 Digital Elph and I thought it was pretty nice... very small and portable and convenient (unlike a dSLR )

An example of some pics a D60 can take -- from a trip I took last week:

http://blloyd.smugmug.com/gallery/226150

(just pimping my photos, hehe).

[daves666]

Save your money and get the Nikon 3700. $154 [US] at Butterfly Photo after rebate.

[Betox]

Go with the Canon Powershot A80:

1) A lot of powerful features for its category.
2) 4 mega-pixels are more than enough for 8x10 pics.
3) Great picture quality and color.
4) Nice price (349.00 in Amazon.com)

I have an A75, witch is 3.2MP and I'm very happy with my Canon.

[Severed Hand of Skywalker]

HP?? Have you gone totally mad?!!!!

The canon is the best way to go, don't just compare specs.

[kcourt]

Sometimes you can get the last years model at a reduced price. Canon is the best!

Kathy

[Lancer409]

Originally posted by im_noahselby:
Let me start out by saying that I've done a search and have been to all the major camera review sites. I'm in the market for my first digital camera. My budget is $400 Cdn. For those who don't know, HP's digital cameras have supposedly had a complete overhaul and represent a turnaround for them from their older junkier offerings. This and the fact that I own an HP printer is why I am now considering one of their cameras. I have read reviews, but require input from members here before I take the plunge.

Canon cameras I have always heard good things about, and their new SD200 strikes my fancy, but not if the HP blows it out of the water for the same price. I really like the small size, large LCD panel and Canons attention to detail.

I think I've narrowed my choices down to the following two cameras.

HP PhotoSmart R707
-5.1 MP
-3X optical zoom
-adaptive lighting technology
-1.5" LCD display

Canon PowerShot SD200
-3.2 MP
-3X optical zoom
-DIGIC II image processor
-2.0" LCD display


1) Does MP really matter that much when choosing a digital camera? For the beginner photographer, is there a large enough gap between the above two models for me to truly notice a difference in picture quality? I will mostly be printing 4X6 photographs and occasionally 8X10 pictures.

You wont need anything over 3.2 megapixels for pictures up to 8x10. more megapixels equals larger size image, not better image quality as far as i know. i think that has more to do with lens and sensor.. shrug

2) Can anyone comment on HP's new adaptive lighting technology. I've seen a live demonstration of this feature on TV and I'm sure it is something I would use and like very much, but if the Canon can handle low light indoor photography just as easily then this may sway my vote over to the Canon side.

no idea what it is. is it just switching iso settings? lol

3) Can anyone who has used an HP camera and PhotoSmart printer together comment on what the direct printing procedure was like? It sounds really cool to be able to just plug in my camera and print on the go like that....

shrug, no idea, canon has something similar with a canon printer ... not too sure how they work, but i figure if you have a computer conencted to the printer, it wouldnt matter much anyways

4) Would a picture taken with a 3.2 MP Canon camera at 1024 x 768 produce solid desktop images for my PowerBook? I mean, will they come out grainy and of poor quality?

i dont think it will. if anything, i think the canon would have better image quality (canon makes reeeeealy good camera's) .. if anything .. if u can try both, then connect those guys to ur pc after taking a few pics. canon makes solid camera's i'd be surprised if hp has anything that comes close. megapixels arent a big deal when u arent making huge printouts (larger than 8x10) ... also, gateway came out with a 5.1 megapixel for 150 dollars. it was rated mediocre by cnet because of crappy image quality. .... the 2inch lcd is very noticeably larger than the 1.5 =P .. i bet the canon's a lot smaller too.

Thanks,
Noah

Welcome -Lancer409

[Lancer409]

Originally posted by daves666:
Save your money and get the Nikon 3700. $154 [US] at Butterfly Photo after rebate.

good point, i have the very same camera and am very happy with it. but if u take a lot of night pictures, i'm sure the canon will be better (speculatively sure)

[KeriVit]

Originally posted by Betox:
Go with the Canon Powershot A80:

1) A lot of powerful features for its category.
2) 4 mega-pixels are more than enough for 8x10 pics.
3) Great picture quality and color.
4) Nice price (349.00 in Amazon.com)

I have an A75, witch is 3.2MP and I'm very happy with my Canon.

Apparently, I'm doing something wrong... I have a canon 5 MP and my 8x10s look like crap! I can't get better than a DECENT 5x7 outta my HP 1220 printer. (Yes- I'm taking them on the highest settings and on photo paper). I'm considering a$150 canon photo printer just to get decent prints than my $600 printer. Unless, I'm doing something wrong, I'd keep the printer and the camera maker the same.

[im_noahselby]

Originally posted by Severed Hand of Skywalker:
HP?? Have you gone totally mad?!!!!

The canon is the best way to go, don't just compare specs.

I see I have a difficult decision to make. What makes the decision even more difficult is that I can't find a negative review of the HP R707. Every professional review I've read of this camera has given it a highly recommended rating. http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/hpr707/ It seems that HP has really surprised a lot of people...

Read up on it if you don't believe me, you may be in for a shock

Thanks everyone.

[im_noahselby]

Another question I'd like to add to the list:

5) How do Canon 3.2 MP cameras handle indoor photography? I'd say half of the pictures I'll be taking will be indoor shots and I'm wondering if HP's adaptive lighting technology will edge out Canon in this area...

Noah

[Athens]

MP don't really matter as much as the quality of the CCD, I have seen better pictures from expensive 3.0 MP cameras vs some cheap 5 and 6 MP cameras. But MP does matter for larger prints, and for low light level enviroments. Even if you are only doing 4x6 photos, if its low light, you may want to get a higher MP camera. I use to think correction I knew HP cameras in the past where worst then junk, but that new one is pretty spiffy Me personal if you want to bet on history canon is the way to go, me personal I would prob give that HP a shot.

[tooki]

Most likely it's the quality of the lens you're seeing, not of the CCD.

The optical quality of a camera is paramount -- it doesn't matter how good a CCD you put in if you have a crappy lens.

HP's stuff is not bad, but I think you can do better with a Canon, Nikon, or Sony.

tooki

[davidflas]

Originally posted by KeriVit:
Apparently, I'm doing something wrong... I have a canon 5 MP and my 8x10s look like crap! I can't get better than a DECENT 5x7 outta my HP 1220 printer. (Yes- I'm taking them on the highest settings and on photo paper). I'm considering a$150 canon photo printer just to get decent prints than my $600 printer. Unless, I'm doing something wrong, I'd keep the printer and the camera maker the same.

I had an HP1220c for a while, and it is a very so-so photo printer, even with good paper and on the best quality settings.. I recommend buying a $150 photo printer. I replaced my 1220c with a Canon i9900, and haven't looked back since. http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProduc...142&depa=0

[im_noahselby]

Originally posted by davidflas:
I had an HP1220c for a while, and it is a very so-so photo printer, even with good paper and on the best quality settings.. I recommend buying a $150 photo printer. I replaced my 1220c with a Canon i9900, and haven't looked back since. http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProduc...142&depa=0

Printer?

[mbryda]

Like the others have said, go with the Canon. Canon is a company that makes cameras first and other computer stuff second. So they know how to make a great camera. HP is a company that makes mediocre computer equipment and cameras as a sideline. I've used Canon cameras in the past and own both an SD110 and a 10D. Love both of them. Both are great at their purposes - the SD110 a great snapshot and take anywhere camera. The 10D a great workorse that puts film to shame!

But, I will disagree that in this class (snapshot P&S cameras), lens qality is important. I'd rather have more MP's or a better CCD than a better lens in this segment. Why? An inferior CCD will introduce NOISE into your picture that will be hard to get out, especially in indoors shots. My SD110 gets quite noisy in indoor shots, especially in backgrounds and shadow areas. My 10D is basically noiseless in the same conditions. And with more MP, you can crop a little more if you need it. This is important, as in this bracket, the optical viewfinders are terrible and the LCD's are close but not 100% of what you get on the final JPEG.

But, what I tell people is this: Get the cameras you like, find some images from them on the web (I use www.imagingresource.com) of the same thing and print them. Let your eyes tell you which is best....

[spiky_dog]

Originally posted by KeriVit:
Apparently, I'm doing something wrong... I have a canon 5 MP and my 8x10s look like crap! I can't get better than a DECENT 5x7 outta my HP 1220 printer. (Yes- I'm taking them on the highest settings and on photo paper). I'm considering a$150 canon photo printer just to get decent prints than my $600 printer. Unless, I'm doing something wrong, I'd keep the printer and the camera maker the same.

what exactly is wrong with the prints you are getting? i've coaxed many 8x10s (ok 10 x 6.66 since i have a 3x2 aspect ratio dSLR) out of 3.1 megapixels. i have 17 on my wall right now in fact. 3 megapixels works out to 180 ppi at 10 x whatever size i believe, so 5 should be more than sufficient.

[KeriVit]

Originally posted by spiky_dog:
what exactly is wrong with the prints you are getting? i've coaxed many 8x10s (ok 10 x 6.66 since i have a 3x2 aspect ratio dSLR) out of 3.1 megapixels. i have 17 on my wall right now in fact. 3 megapixels works out to 180 ppi at 10 x whatever size i believe, so 5 should be more than sufficient.

grainy- dark drab- even at 4x6. I'm a designer and know what a good photo is supposed to look like. I wish I could post a sample but they look great on screen- of course.

[KeriVit]

Originally posted by davidflas:
I had an HP1220c for a while, and it is a very so-so photo printer, even with good paper and on the best quality settings.. I recommend buying a $150 photo printer. I replaced my 1220c with a Canon i9900, and haven't looked back since. http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProduc...142&depa=0

Thanks- close to what I've been looking at. I still need the 1220 for my large proofs but for photos- I want to move on. Do you have to do any manipulation or do they look good from DirectPrint?

[davidflas]

Originally posted by KeriVit:
Thanks- close to what I've been looking at. I still need the 1220 for my large proofs but for photos- I want to move on. Do you have to do any manipulation or do they look good from DirectPrint?

I haven't used direct print yet, but I have printed some nice tabloid sized photos on my i9900 and they look great. My camera is the 6.1MP Nikon D70. I have the i9900 connected to my G5 via firewire, and its very fast! This printer will support direct printing from any Pictbridge compatible camera.

[spiky_dog]

Originally posted by KeriVit:
grainy- dark drab- even at 4x6. I'm a designer and know what a good photo is supposed to look like. I wish I could post a sample but they look great on screen- of course.

and you're using the super expensive glossy photo paper? as for grain, are you seeing sensor noise from your camera? running a gaussian blur on the a and b channels in Lab color mode in photoshop cleans up color noise quite well.

[tooki]

Originally posted by mbryda:
But, I will disagree that in this class (snapshot P&S cameras), lens qality is important. I'd rather have more MP's or a better CCD than a better lens in this segment. Why? An inferior CCD will introduce NOISE into your picture that will be hard to get out, especially in indoors shots.

Here's why I think you're wrong:
Fact #1: At a given image sensor size (e.g. 1/3" diagonal), a higher-MP CCD will be noisier than a lower-MP one because the individual photosites are smaller. Typically, when a model is given a MP increase but otherwise left alone, the CCD size is not changed.

Fact #2: If you increase MP without increasing the sharpness of the lens, then the high-res CCD is simply capturing extra pixels of blurriness, not extra image resolution. The effect is similar to taking, say, a 3MP image and interpolating it to 5MP in Photoshop.

Fact #3: Cheaper lenses aren't as bright ("fast") as more expensive ones, which means that less of the light that goes in the front of the lens comes out the back. Less light=more noise. A lens listed at, say 1:3-5.6 means that at the widest angle, only 1/3 of the light actually makes it to the CCD, and that at the tightest zoom, only 1/5.6th makes it through to the CCD! Contrast that with, say, a nice lens that is 1:2.6 throughout, which means that no matter what zoom setting it's at, 1/2.6th of the light makes it through to the CCD, which means it doesn't have to amplify the light as much, which means less noise.

Fact #4: Megapixels are overrated. MP is not a linear progression in quality -- to double the printable image dimensions, you need four times as many pixels, since you need to double the dimensions in both directions. So a 5MP camera's printable size is only slightly larger than that of a 3.2MP model's!

So, in fact, to get nice sharp pictures that will print nicely, you want the camera with the best lens. No camera company is going to pair a good lens with a cheap CCD (since the lens is costlier!), and megapixels are overrated. I'd choose a high-quality 3.2MP camera any day over a 5MP camera of the same price, since I'd be capturing the same amount of effective, usable image data, and have it be less noisy. And to boot, it'd take better pictures in low light.

A prime example of a bad high-MP camera is Concord Camera's 5MP models. The lenses aren't sharp enough for 5MP, so the actual perceptible image data is comparable to that of a 3MP camera, but with bigger file sizes. The lens is slow (dim), so the pictures have lots of noise, too.

tooki

[spiky_dog]

Originally posted by tooki:
A lens listed at, say 1:3-5.6 means that at the widest angle, only 1/3 of the light actually makes it to the CCD, and that at the tightest zoom, only 1/5.6th makes it through to the CCD! Contrast that with, say, a nice lens that is 1:2.6 throughout, which means that no matter what zoom setting it's at, 1/2.6th of the light makes it through to the CCD, which means it doesn't have to amplify the light as much, which means less noise.

i agree with tooki's analysis, but this is not quite correct. f/5.6 means that the maximum aperture (measured in linear distance, the diameter of the aperture in other words) is 1/5.6th the focal length, f/2.8 (chosen because 2.6 is uncommon) would indicate a maximum aperture of 1/2.8 * focal length. this is not the same as 1/5.6th or 1/2.8th of the light. this is because the light gathered is dependent on the area, and area is proportional to radius^2, not just radius^1.

net result: it's even more significant. each "stop" you get slower causes you to lose half the light. progression of common stops from faster to slower: f/1, f/1.4, f/2.0, f/2.8, f/4.0, f/5.6, f/8. ok, maybe f/1 is a bit rare

[tooki]

Oh, thanks for the clarification!

Yay, tooki learned something! :shrieks and jumps up and down:

OK, so maybe that's a bit of an exaggeration. But I do like learning things!

I used to have a 50mm f/1.8 lens for my SLR, but it broke. The pictures from it were, umm, about eleventy billion times better than the ones from the cheapy 35-80mm f/3.5-5.6 the camera came with. The good lens made the difference between pictures that looked professional and pics that looked like they came from a cheap point-and-shoot.

I can't emphasize enough how important the lens is in any camera, because no matter how good the image sensor or film is, it can only record the image that it's given from the lens. If that image is lousy, nothing the image sensor or film can do can ever fix that.

tooki

[tooki]

P.S. Another reason for wanting a fast lens: if it lets through more light, it means you can use the flash less often! Most indoor pictures have that "snapshot" look because of the shadows on the walls behind people's heads, combined with overexposed faces and underexposed backgrounds. Being able to take ambient-light photos even indoors is just a revelation. On my SLR, using the f/1.8 lens with high-quality ISO 800 film was just amazing.

[im_noahselby]

After reading through this thread, I'm probbably going to wait for the Canon SD200, over buying the HP. Most of what I will be printing will be 4X6 photos, with only the occasional 5X7 and 8X10. I just didn't want to buy a digital camera and have all of my indoor shots turn out grainy and dark, so I hope the Canon camera works out fine for me.

For those who aren't aware of the lens used in HP's cameras, I believe they are made by Pentax.

Noah

[rozwado1]

Originally posted by spiky_dog:
net result: it's even more significant. each "stop" you get slower causes you to lose half the light. progression of common stops from faster to slower: f/1, f/1.4, f/2.0, f/2.8, f/4.0, f/5.6, f/8. ok, maybe f/1 is a bit rare

Could somebody explain/link to an explanation of these terms? I'm new to the photography terms, and all the sites I've found explain everything like you know what they're talkig about. [/n00b]

[spiky_dog]

http://www.cybercollege.com/tvp012.htm
http://www.gbbc.org.uk/crh/fstops.htm

http://www.cs.mtu.edu/~shene/DigiCam...-of-field.html
http://www.mir.com.my/rb/photography...mls/depth.html

http://www.kenrockwell.com/tech/bokeh.htm

that should get you started

[Mithras]

One other Canon camera I submit for your consideration:

Canon S1 IS
It's a regular 3MP sensor, but it has a 10x optical zoom with optical image stabilization, which means that the 3 megapixels you capture are really the 3 megapixels you want.

The most prominent feature of the S1 IS is its 10x Canon zoom lens, with a focal length coverage of 38-380mm in 35mm equivalence. That's a lot of lens by anyone's standards especially when the vast majority of other digicams only have 3x zooms, and today's 8-megapixel cameras offer 7x or 8x zooms. Anyone who has used a digicam with a long focal length zoom knows that these lenses really add to the overall "fun factor" of using a camera.

I have this camera and really love the zoom, which allows me to take closeups that I'd otherwise simply miss.

Whatever you get, enjoy!

[im_noahselby]

Originally posted by Mithras:
One other Canon camera I submit for your consideration:

Canon S1 IS

Thanks for sharing, but I don't think I could afford that camera even if I wanted it. My budget is definitely capped at $400 Cdn, and that camera retails here for $650 Cdn! So I'm likely going to wait for the SD200, which seems like a good camera for my needs (I hope!). Maybe down the road, when I am a more experienced photographer, I will be in the market for a higher end camera, we'll see.

Noah

[zigzag]

What tooki said - a 3.2 MP camera with a good lens will probably be better than a 5 MP camera with a lousy lens. If the lens doesn't capture the information in the first place, the extra MPs do you no good.

However, it's difficult for a consumer to evaluate the quality of a lens on a point-and-shoot camera. Canon is a high-end photography company, but at this price point I wouldn't assume that their lens is better than HP's. Canon does, however, seem to be more conservative than other companies when it come to engaging in phony MP wars, so I tend to give them the benefit of the doubt when it comes to camera quality.

That said, I have no reason to question the veracity of the sites that have reviewed and praised the HP - it looks like an excellent buy for someone who just wants to point-shoot-print, without using an image editor, etc. The adaptive lighting feature appears to work reasonably well. While a pro would prefer to accomplish the same thing in Photoshop CS, that costs hundreds of dollars and it sounds like Noah wants to keep things simple. My only reservation is whether or not that feature has to be set for each photo; if so, you might be less likely to use it.

And yes, a 3.2 MP camera would produce more than adequate images for a desktop. At its highest setting, the Canon would create a >2000x1500 image.

My advice is to go to a store, try out both cameras, and decide which one you like handling and using.

[mbryda]

Originally posted by tooki:
Here's why I think you're wrong:
Fact #1: At a given image sensor size (e.g. 1/3" diagonal), a higher-MP CCD will be noisier than a lower-MP one because the individual photosites are smaller. Typically, when a model is given a MP increase but otherwise left alone, the CCD size is not changed.

True, if all else is held equal. For the most part, the camera manufacturers will also tweak the NR algorithm that they use to somewhat counteract the effect of the noise. And you're ignoring the fact that CCD's get better WRT noise in each iteration/generation. Today's 5MP sensor is a lot better than 2 year's ago's 5MP sensor.

Fact #2: If you increase MP without increasing the sharpness of the lens, then the high-res CCD is simply capturing extra pixels of blurriness, not extra image resolution. The effect is similar to taking, say, a 3MP image and interpolating it to 5MP in Photoshop.

True, but if you note, I said "In this Class". We're not talking DSLR range here, but P&S. In the P&S realm, I'd rather have more MP to allow for cropping and/or putting more DPI on the common P&S prints (4x6). You can see the difference between 3MP and 5MP @ 4x6. I have plenty of 4x6's from my old Minolta D7 and comparing them to my 3.2MP SD110, you can see difference. But they both look great side by side. Heck, images from my 10D vs the D7 you can see the difference at 4x6, but that's to be expected.

Fact #3: Cheaper lenses aren't as bright ("fast") as more expensive ones, which means that less of the light that goes in the front of the lens comes out the back. Less light=more noise. A lens listed at, say 1:3-5.6 means that at the widest angle, only 1/3 of the light actually makes it to the CCD, and that at the tightest zoom, only 1/5.6th makes it through to the CCD! Contrast that with, say, a nice lens that is 1:2.6 throughout, which means that no matter what zoom setting it's at, 1/2.6th of the light makes it through to the CCD, which means it doesn't have to amplify the light as much, which means less noise.

True (you don't have to explain photo theory to me - it's been a hobby of mine forever), but again, in the P&S class most lenses are all about the same F-stop (give or take 1 stop), so that's a moot point.

We're not talking DSLR or Prosumer cameras here, where a fixed aperatutre is preferrable (and we pay premiums for that). We're talking P&S where the lens it has is the one you are stuck with.

Fact #4: Megapixels are overrated. MP is not a linear progression in quality -- to double the printable image dimensions, you need four times as many pixels, since you need to double the dimensions in both directions. So a 5MP camera's printable size is only slightly larger than that of a 3.2MP model's!

BS to a point. I've had an Olympus D360L (1.3MP), Minolta Dimage 7 (5MP), Canon 10D (6.2MP), and a Canon SD110 (3.2MP). I could crop away most of the D7's images and still have an image that is superior to that from the SD110. And the D7 had a very good lens for its time and the SD110 has a decent lens. Heck, I have mediocre glass on my 10D and it's images are way superior to the D7 (if you disregard noise, which the D7 had a lot of). I can comfortably (and have) blow up D7 images to 8x10 and beyond (I think I did a 12xsomething from Costco once or twice) while retaining detail in the image. I can get 8x10's from the SD110, but that's stretching it. The 3MP data just does not go that far at all once you get over 5x7 or so.

And we won't even discuss the jump in DSLR's from 3MP to 6MP. Even the D60 provides noticeably superior images to the D30. The D30 will still hold its own at 8x10, but there is way more detail in the D60's images that simply is not there in the D10.

One of the things I've done extensively each time I bought a camera is print out the same sample images at 8x10 and looked at the detail with a critical eye.

MP are not the only thing, but they are quite important, and in the P&S realm, I'd rather have a 5MP camera with a decent lens than a 3MP camera with the best lens.

So, in fact, to get nice sharp pictures that will print nicely, you want the camera with the best lens. No camera company is going to pair a good lens with a cheap CCD (since the lens is costlier!), and megapixels are overrated. I'd choose a high-quality 3.2MP camera any day over a 5MP camera of the same price, since I'd be capturing the same amount of effective, usable image data, and have it be less noisy. And to boot, it'd take better pictures in low light.

Sure, in the prosumer or DSLR realm, that would be the ideal camera. And they have pricetags of $700-$1000, which is not what the OP was looking at.

I'll still stand by my original statement - buy as many MP's as your budget will allow. But, print out some sample pics - let your own eyes be the judge.

A prime example of a bad high-MP camera is Concord Camera's 5MP models. The lenses aren't sharp enough for 5MP, so the actual perceptible image data is comparable to that of a 3MP camera, but with bigger file sizes. The lens is slow (dim), so the pictures have lots of noise, too.

And I'd bet if you were to take a 3MP image, crop out the left, say 1/4 and then crop out the same visual area (say a plant on the side) on the 5MP image and run an unsharp mask on both images the 5MP would print better at 4x6.

PS: Steve (http://www.steves-digicams.com/2004_reviews/iq5345.html) doesn't say anything really bad about the Concord 5345z.... Actually, the lens is quite good:

The unbranded 3X optical zoom lens produced sharp results throughout its range, with quite noticeable barrel distortion at extreme wide angle. The operation of the optical zoom is smooth and quiet, but not continuous; it moves through its 39-117mm range in 7 distinct steps, adequate for composing most shots but you might need to zoom a bit with your feet for precise image composition

[mbryda]

Originally posted by tooki:

I used to have a 50mm f/1.8 lens for my SLR, but it broke. The pictures from it were, umm, about eleventy billion times better than the ones from the cheapy 35-80mm f/3.5-5.6 the camera came with. The good lens made the difference between pictures that looked professional and pics that looked like they came from a cheap point-and-shoot.

That's to be expected as the 50mm is usually the sharpest and best lens that camera makers make. They have been making them forever and the design is 'perfected'. Same with 100mm primes. Actually, any prime is going to be better than a zoom. Zooms are just optical comprimises, and will perform a little worse than a prime.

We won't even discuss the kit lenses, as they are often quite cheap to get them into the kit and keep a particular price point. But some can take great pictures as long as you are mindful of how to get the best images (stop them down, avoid certain focal lengths, etc).

I have some mediocre glass on my 10d (not known for liking mediocre glass) and even @ 100% the images look good. Sure, I get my share of bum shots, but on the whole the images look good and blow up huge no problems.

Some day maybe I'll replace them with L glass, but for now I'm just looking to expand into some new focal lengths (more zoom) and maybe replace my mediocre wide angle lens.