Best compact 10meg camera?

Fabritzo

There's a new range of 10 megapixel camera about these days, taking this as a benchmark as such, which camera would take in the most information, like the gigapixel.org site...

The 10MP lineup:
http://www.komplett.ie/k/kcp.asp?sku=325058&sku=325941&sku=326534&sku=325331&sku=325058&sku=325941&sku=326534&sku=327036&sku=325331

Fenster

We have a forum for this, but eh.

I'd swear by the A640 except for the fact it only takes A4 batteries (y da h8?). It has an excellent swivel LCD screen, viewfinder, manual controls, and has an adapter to take lenses. I've seen a rash of lens problems with a lot of recent Samsung compacts, I'd avoid it. The Ixus is solidly built, recent models also have IS integrated. And I think you should bycott Sony for their insistance on proprietry media formats.

elven

We should invent a little song....

"It's not the megapixels,
It's the sensor size,
Buy a DSLR,
And a decent lens,
If you want...
Qualityyyyyyyyyyyy!"

Can we stop counting pixels? Please?

Sorry, I couldn't help it. I'll go and sit in the naughty corner now.

magicbastarder

elven wrote:

We should invent a little song....

i reckon they might be giants' istanbul would serve as a good template.

melekalikimaka

i don't think i could reccommend a 10 mp cam, i think its even been mentioned it degrades quality in the image does it not in p&s cameras.

www.dpreview.com

best advice there, flick around the cams, you'll get proper reviews

Fabritzo

I'm leaning towards the Canon Digital IXUS 900 Ti but it's the most expensive of the bunch at 409 euro, the sensor sizes are all the same, but the specs on the 900 seem above the rest and the cost of the card doesn't contribute very much as with the 1 gig with the Olympus. What would be the best of the komplett lineup?

ozt9vdujny3srf

I won a digital ixus 900ti recently and it's not a great camera. whats teh point of having a 10mp camera if the lens is bollocks?

mathias

All of these cameras are equally Bad/Good , all of them will produce useless pictures swamped with noise above ISO 400 , I would not recommend any of them , choose a lower MP compact , it will give better pictures.
If you are really into photography and are going to spend nearly 400 , dont waste it on any of these , get an SLR.

nilhg

For round about €500 you could have an Olympus E330 from DigitalDepot, in my opinion it would be much better value than any compact.
Well worth considering anyway, even has live view.

mathias

If you must go with a compact then get this , this is by far the best value compact on the komplett list ,

http://www.komplett.ie/k/ki.asp?sku=319066&view=detailed

There is also a very good reason why the 5MP is better than the 10MP for that sensor size , it has to do with the size of the light gathering elements , ( or to dumb it down , each pixel ).

http://scien.stanford.edu/jfsite/Papers/ImageCapture/Farrell_Feng_Kavusi_SPIE06_final.pdf
http://www.bobatkins.com/photography/digital/size_matters.html

It will produce prints up to A4 at least as good if not better than any of those 10MP and is half the price.

Beano

If you are going buy a 10MP compact take a serious look at the Samsung NV10. I've seen some excellent reviews of it in a couple of magazines. And check out the prices on http://www.technikdirekt.de before you buy. The NV10 is €50 cheaper there than it is on komplett.ie

digitalbeginner

Beano wrote:

If you are going buy a 10MP compact take a serious look at the Samsung NV10. I've seen some excellent reviews of it in a couple of magazines. And check out the prices on http://www.technikdirekt.de before you buy. The NV10 is €50 cheaper there than it is on komplett.ie

I got the NV10 2 weeks ago and it's a wicked camera. I can't bring my Nikon D70s with me everywhere, but this slips in my shirt pocket and lets me take the kind of street photography I love, whenever I want.

I've put up some shots I've taken with it on my Flickr site here if you want to have a look: http://www.flickr.com/photos/davemckane/sets/72157600030347491/ and I've put some thoughts on this very topic on my blog here: http://digitalbeginner.blogspot.com/2007/03/should-photography-fit-camera-or-camera.html

As to quality, well they're not as good as a dSLR, how could they be, but they let me take shots I wouldn't otherwise have been able to. Also, because it looks like a tourist camera, people on the street ignore me. Perfect:)

mathias

I too , as I suspect most people do , have a point a shoot for awkward places , so I would be in total agreement with you on that aspect, mine is a Sony DSCP100.

The point here is not really point and shoot vs SLR , but cramming more pixels into a 1 /1.8 size sensor , which only degrades quality in most cases , a 5MP camera with the same size sensor produces equal ( and a lot of times better ) pictures than a 10MP camera with equivalent sensor.

As many reviews of these 10MP cameras have pointed out , and for the same reasons , the extra megapixels add nothing with this size of sensor , and in most cases make the camera a worse performer than earlier models.

Edit , this is from www.dpreview.com on the NV10 , which gets a recommended by the way ,
http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/samsungnv10/page8.asp
however ,

Image quality (contrast and saturation issues aside) is pretty much on a par with most 7-10MP competitors (there's little if any advantage to be gained from the extra pixels) - and at ISO 100 the soft touch approach to noise reduction actually produces better than average low contrast detail. At ISO 400 and over noise is a real problem, but for small prints high ISO results are just about usable if the light is so low you've got no other choice. It's not the best quality in the world, but it's by no means the worst and for the price it's surprisingly good.