i need a camera
[personal]
posted by tom / October 05, 2005 / 
I've coming looking for your wisdom, o great and powerful internet. Since I can no longer borrow Catherine's digital camera without involving Fedex, I think it's time to buy my own. I know that a lot of you are excellent photographers who are experts at this kind of stuff, so I'm hoping you can help cut down on how much of dpreview.com I need to wade through.
So here's what I'm looking for (besides the obvious stuff like USB2). I'd be grateful for any suggestions you've got.
- Something that can shoot in low light.
- Something pocket-sized (I do have a somewhat liberal definition of this).
- Something that can shoot photos in medium-to-quick succession.
- Something that produces pretty good pictures without expert knowledge — but also something with enough options to keep a one-semester-of-high-school-photo wannabe like myself from blowing my savings on a digital SLR in two months.
- Something that, ideally, costs less than $350. Cheaper is better, and if there's a last-gen camera that's worthwhile and can be had for $150, I'll opt for that.
- Extra bonus point: something that can take a lithium ion OR AA/AAA batteries. This is pretty unimportant, though.
- Extra extra bonus point: something with accessories that'll let it talk to my PDA, either via bluetooth or some other interface (in case I feel the need to blow additional money).
Anybody have any suggestions? I'm guessing 3 or 4 megapixels are enough to keep me happy. But if someone can make a case for a higher-res camera that eschews optical zoom for decent digital (and is consequently smaller), I could be convinced.
Comments
Check out Canon's A610. It's largish for a digital camera, but that keeps the price down, and it meets your requirements, except for talking to your PDA. And I recommend Canons generally; they're easy to use, well-built, and whatever algorithms their image processors use make nice-looking photos.
I have the Canon A95, which is an earlier model of the A610 (I think), and I think you'd be happy with it. It does as well as a digital camera can in low light and it gives you much more control than most cameras like it (setting the aperture, exposure time, etc.) And it takes AAA's. I have some nickel metal hydrides in mine that last forever.
Though I doubt there's any way to have it make sweet love to your Sidekick.
I've had a Sony and a Nikon and I think my next camera will be a Canon. They seem to take the best pictures, as far as I can tell. I'm thinking of upgrading my camera and was looking at this one:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B0007TJ5OG/qid=1128535460/sr=8-1/ref=pd_bbs_1/002-8169811-5892000?v=glance&s=electronics&n=507846
Although, Jeff was raving about his Sony last weekend while we got trashed at brunch.
And you don't want a camera that will run on AA batteries. They last like 5 shots before dying. My Nikon takes a CRV-3, which is like $12 for two. And they last about 200 shots, depending on how much you use the flash.
well, I know I don't want one that exclusively takes AAs, but I've owned some walkmen (and seen some digicams) that come with a lithium ion battery that looks like two AAs, offset, welded together. So you can use AAs in "oh shit I forgot to bring a spare battery" sort of situation, but have the lion battery available most of the time. That fad seems to have died out, though.
Thanks for the Canon suggestions, all. Catherine has a Canon A410 (I think?), and it seems pretty good. I guess I'll start browsing through their product line and see what looks good.
ooo... and I see that the A610 uses SD cards... so does my Axim. That's such a simple way to move the pictures around that I hadn't even thought of it.
matty really likes the optio, i know (i think, anyway) and he always takes gorgeous shots with it, but i'm pretty sure it's more expensive than you may be looking for.
I tried to leave a comment noting that I bought the item mentioned in Catherine's previous comment, but your bitch-ass thing thinks I'm spam. Where did I go wrong?
We went wrong. I think it might be fixed. If it isn't, please email me the specific error message it gives you.
I have the Canon SD400, it's an ultra-compact and takes really great shots though I have had some problems with blurriness at night (especially at concerts, but that could be a result of turning the flash off)... the price has recently gone down since they released a newer model (SD450) but the only difference is that it has a larger LCD screen.
http://consumer.usa.canon.com/ir/controller?act=ModelDetailAct&fcategoryid=144&modelid=11368
This is a sweet camera. The Canon Powershot S2 IS is running about $450. I've seen some work on Flickr using this camera and it's awesome. I want one desperately.
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