polarbearit

Right, I currrently have a digicam and it isn't very good (despite being fairly costly at the time)...

So I'd like to buy a new one. I was thinking about a Fuji S602/6800 or similar, are these the best for the money? What else should I look for, I want a camera that takes great pics and can manage 100+ shots on one battery...

Also I'd like a DV camera, with DV In/Out. No idea where to start with these but the Canon MV500i looked ok for £471.69, are there better camera's for the money? Where else should I look? Are there any features I should go for? I've never had a camcorder before...

Are there any excellent promotions I should be on the look out for at the moment? Should I bother with ebay etc? Does anyone have similar items for sale?

Thanks,

Jon

SL2

That camcorder got quite a good review here

http://www.whatcamcorder.net/frame.h...onMV500iDV.php

polarbearit

eek...

just been doing some price research and the Fuji Cameras really do seem dear compared to others.

I can't get the 602 cheaper than £370 but a similar spec Kodak (DX4330) is £270 and HP 720 is similarly priced...

And for the price of the fuji I could buy a genuine 4megapixel camera instead of the Fuji's 3.3 (which it zooms to 6megapixel) - but which is better, I don't want to buy another crap digicam

Cheers,

boomer

Jon,

"...great pics and can manage 100+ shots on one battery"

...bear in mind that even a 4.1 megapixel output (i have the FinePix 40i) will produce compressed image files that are 1.7MB in size. As most solid state memory cards only go up to 128MB, you would then need to consider a microdrive - which puts up the cost and also limits your options.

To be honest, even my old MX2700 (at 2.3 MegaPixels) produced some pretty good images. Obviously not up to film standard, but good enough for me.

Unless you are seriously into photography, go for a cheap model from a well know brand (Fuji, Canon, Sony) to understand the various pros and cons, and if the bug bites - you will know what you really need in the future!

mb

King RA

The Canon A40 is meant to be really good, I've just ordered one the other day. Do a search on pricerunner.com for the best price.

JohnMcC

I got a Sony DSC P71 a little while ago and I'm pretty pleased with it. I understand it is towards the top of their lower range of digital cameras (if you see what I mean). Its 3.2 megapixels and I got it for about 300 quid off the internet (at the time it was £350+ on the high street - not sure about now).

I'm not a very good photographer and this is and the first example I found - not altered the camera settings or toyed with the image on the PC:


Feel free to peruse my albums here.

Si James

Go www.dpreview.com

I have a DFC-707 - 5 Mega pixels, a great camera,
but big and heavy.

Top quality Zeiss lens.

Si

AndyC_772

iTrader: (2)

I agree with Si - www.dpreview.com is the place to look for reviews.

Don't be swayed just by the pixel count - lots of pixels means you'll use up more storage, not that you'll necessarily get better pictures. Issues such as noise, colour rendition, dynamic range and lens resolution are all equally (if not more) important than pixel count. However, because those factors are harder to measure and explain, marketing people tend to ignore them and promote the number of pixels above everything else. (It's a bit like the way the Government tries to measure dangerous driving by looking only at speed )

I'd advise downloading some of the example shots from the reviews on DPReview.com and printing them out - that'll help you choose which cameras' images you like the look of. Once you've narrowed it down to a couple, try and find them in a shop somewhere to pick them up and judge build quality, comfort and so on.

Tip: if you go for a camera that uses standard Compact Flash or SmartMedia cards, you'll have a variety of manufacturers' cards to choose from which should guarantee the best prices in the long term. CF cards fit straight into a laptop with a very simple and cheap adaptor, and there's always the IBM Microdrive too.

Andy.

JohnMcC

Just that last bit about the storage media . Many people are put off my the Memory Stick (Sony) but in actual fact 3rd parties are manufacturing them now, and over the internet they arent too pricey. On the absolute maximum setting for picture quality I got 91 or so pictures on the 128mb memory stick, which aint too bad.

Also I wasnt put off my the memorystick because my dad has a Sony miniDV that uses it, so he had a big fat proper memory stick reader that I can use (although its just as easy to USB the camera up).

I beleive you can buy inexpensive readers that can take a veriety of media can't you? And I think there is a floppy disk adaptor so you can use your floppy drive.

[Edited by JohnMcC - 8/18/2002 5:09:26 PM]

polarbearit

The issues I have with my current camera are -
- no optical zoom
- battery lasts about 10-20 shots (Li-ion)
- the camera actually takes the piccy about 0.5 secs after I press the button [img]images/smilies/mad.gif[/img]
- The lighting is always wrong

So for my next digicam I need-
- at least 3x Zoom
- instant piccy taking (without delay)
- battery that lasts a whole day's worth of shooting (~100 shots)
- probably 3million pixels so I feel I am getting an upgrade (though I'll probably scale my piccies down to 800*600 or something most of the time )
- sensibly compact size - don't need an SLR

Also what sort of quality do stills from a DV camera come out at? Am I better spending my money on a decent DV camera with stills facility or a cheaper DV cam and a decent digicam?

Thanks,

JohnMcC

I'm no expert but...

AFAIK DVs will not take as good stills as a 'proper' digital stills camera. My dads doesnt and his was pretty near the top of the range although it is a couple of years old now. I would imagine that if there are any DV cameras that take good still pictures they will be pricey - I may be wrong but I think you would probably get better results with two separate cameras.

As for the delay, again AFAIk you will always get that to a degree, but I think that it will be negligabe on the better ones. As mentioned that DPreviews site has a whole load of info (much of it too technical for me!! ) and I beleive this is an area they look at - as well as baterry life etc (although when I was looking there for my camera some of the reviews hadnt been updated as promised). It also gives you a timeline of when the cameras have been released (in the US though I think) so you can see if the camera that looks a good deal is cheap because it has been old/surpassed etc....


[Edited by JohnMcC - 8/19/2002 12:03:12 AM]

JackClark

You can get a memory stick reader built into a mouse - way cool.

polarbearit

Some food for thought on Digicams there...

What about DV Cams?

Cheers

normarker

The best resolution from a DV will be around 1M so stills will not be much good. My DV takes stills on a multimedia card and they are not as good as my MX1700 (1.5M)and way short of my MX6900 at 3.3M. Plus you have very little manual control with a DV.
I had a floppy converter and I found it slow and rather unreliable so I got a USB card reader, much faster but it has been known to corrupt the low level format on a few cards.
I now use the built in USB on the MX6900which is slower than the card reader but more reliable.
Also the MX6900 has been able to reformat the cards messed up by the card reader, the MX1700 could not do that.

normarker

....and get the best optical zoom you can, take no notice of digital zoom, it just crops and you can do that better with the PC.

normarker

Also have a look at steves-digicams.com (something like that, check on google) and megapixel.net.Very extensive reviews and information. There's also some good stuff on shortcourses, don't recall the URL