Recommend a camera for yours truly.

Karl Hungus

I'm looking for a decent camera, but unfortunately I'm a little clueless with what to look for, or what brand is better quality.

Basically, I've got some cheap lidl camera that barely has any detail at all, and I want to get something better, but not exactly looking for something professional. I'd really like something with good video functions aswell, so perhaps one of those little digital camcorders that also takes still pictures would be the thing? And definetly something that records sound aswell, that's quite important, so would decent sound be a reasonable feature without getting too expensive?

Thanks for any help people. :v:

larryone

I recently started looking at buying a camera. A friend of mine who's a bit more into it told me to start by looking at exactly what you're going to be using it for, then looking at what features you're going to need for that use.
Find a few cameras that have all of those features, and then start looking at prices.

I'm still trying to find more cameras that suit my needs... there was a casio exilim I was looking at and a pentax aswell.

steves-digicams.com has got reviews of a couple of thousand cameras

Oriel

I'd recommend the FuijiFilm S5500.
You can find a review here.

They're about 300 quid or so.

S.

peckerhead

I own that cost-effective little critter myself, and can't recommend it enough... — as long as you're not looking for something that fits in a shirt pocket? That baby is the best-styled little SLR lookalike on the market. Built for 'real men' with fat fingers.

larryone

I've heard very good things about the video mode on its successor, the S5600
A friend of mine has the S5500 and he's really happy with the shots it takes.

peckerhead

Yup, not bad quality video/sound quality at all. Only thing is, make sure to stock up on plenty of extra memory if you plan on shooting a lot of video — it records in uncompressed .avi, so about 8 mins fills a 256Mb card!

'Course, once you get them off the card and onto the computer, you can compress the clips to DivX without much noticeable deterioration (I use Dr DivX)

Apart from the picture quality, the killer features for me at that price are the 10x optical zoom and the rapid-fire 'burst' mode (like a motordrive — about 5 frames per second). Wonderful for sports/action photography.

Karl Hungus

Hmm... That definetly looks the business alright, what with the different exposures, optical zoom, and white balance. My current camera has none of that, and taking photos indoors always comes out very washed-out and blurry, not to mention the digital zoom is terrible.

I suppose the only thing is, I'll be travelling and I will want a camera with me, so if that might be a bit bulky, is there one with similar features that would be shirt pocket sized that can be recommended?

Thanks.

Oh, and what would be the best memory card to go with it? I'd probably be aiming for a 1GB card.

peckerhead

When I bought the S5500 I held on to my trusty old A203 (my first digital camera, a pressie) for those shirt-pocket situations and for the wife/kids to use. But the only thing in common with the S5500 is the xD card and AA batteries...:o

You won't really get more than about a 3x or 4x zoom on most shirt-pocket-sized cameras (open to correction here...). Then again, that might be all you want/need? See the other Fuji models here. I like Fuji. They're a pretty good price/quality deal, compared to Canon/Sony/Nikon...

Karl Hungus

Hmm... The Z2 looks interesting, but I can't seem to find whether it records sound or not. Any help there?

Edit: Never mind, it does have sound.

larryone

I've been looking at alot of those cameras that have the internal optical zoom, like the Pentax WP and that Fujifilm one.

The 2 major things that turned me off them:
- The lens is tiny. Smaller than most. I think there's a good reason why the best camera systems have large lens systems. Getting shots or videos with any reasonable quality with this lens is unlikely. The words "hit and miss" come to mind.
- There seems to be nothing to protect the lens when the camera is not in use. Most cameras have a wee cover on the lens that rolls back when you switch it on. This one doesnt have that. Tiny littly scratches over time will ruin it completely. Even a small finger smudge will seriously impair quality, and could be supprisingly hard to avoid.


Edit - also it's not tripod mountable, and there's no viewfinder only a screen so at some angles you wont be able to see what you're photographing...

Enygma

I had a Canon Powershot A70 before that I bought here on boards.ie (back when I wasn't banned from the Buy and Sell :P )

It was a great little camera for the size of it, small enough to carry anywhere yet it had all the features of the Fuji S5500, except the zoom obviously. I always got good quality shots out of her.
The 5500 is a really good camera, it's not really too big either if you take off the lens hood. It won't fit in your pocket, but it won't get in the way too much either. Go into a shop and ask for a demonstration.

As for memory, just buy the most you can afford.

tinka

Karl Hungus wrote:

Hmm... That definetly looks the business alright, what with the different exposures, optical zoom, and white balance. My current camera has none of that, and taking photos indoors always comes out very washed-out and blurry, not to mention the digital zoom is terrible.

i wouldn't worry too much about the digital zoom, it's the optical zoom you should keep an eye out for.