Need recommendations!

decimal

My canon G7 recently packed it in, and I'm looking to buy a decent compact similar to the G7. But I have a few problems in deciding what to buy...

The first choice is a G9, it would set me back about €400, but I'm going to NY in 6 months and hoping to buy a 450D, so I don't want to dip into much of my savings as I want to get good lenses for it.

The only thing I wasn't too happy about with the G7 is the size of it, I like small cameras that I can quickly access and I found the G7 a little too big for my pocket. So, I'm wondering if there's a smaller camera that costs a little less than the G9 that I could be happy with and not feel that I've made a significant jump down in quality. Am I asking for too much? (small camera, manual controls and cheaper than the G9)

Any recommendations?

Oriel

Fujifilm, can't recommend their cameras highly enough.

Thirdfox

Their recent offerings (f50fd) haven't been as good as their earlier ones though (f31fd). I'm awaiting to see how the new f100fd performs though.

Other than fuji, there's Panasonic with the wide angle long zoom compacts 28-280mm in a small form factor - just don't shoot at high ISOs.

eamonnq

Have been playing about with an F100FD and must say I am very impressed, have the F50 but will be upgrading to the F100FD by the looks of things!!

Portrait Enhancement is an excellent feature, the low light pictures also and the 5x optical zoom.

Eirebear

Ive got a Nikon Coolpix p5100 and i like it a lot, it gets carried everywhere with me.

Zascar

I'm was looking for a nice compact camera a few months back, and the Fuji F31fd seems to be the best one for me, as I would mostly use it for photographuing people on nights out etc and it has Face Detedction and is aparently very good in low light situations.

However, the camera is quite chunky and so I decided against it. I was used to the canon ixus which is a lot thinner.

Are these new versions, the 50 and 100, any smaller?

PaulieC

Eirebear wrote: »

Ive got a Nikon Coolpix p5100 and i like it a lot, it gets carried everywhere with me.

I looked at this too when buying the G9 - it's nicely small, does RAW etc.

Eirebear

cambo_gueno wrote: »

I looked at this too when buying the G9 - it's nicely small, does RAW etc.

It doesnt do RAW unfortunately, its probably my one real complaint about it.

Although to be honest it mainly gets used for nights out etc, where RAW isnt really an issue.

Fionn

@ Eirebear the G7 doesn't have RAW the G9 does. Don't know if it makes a whole lot of good tho!! if you take low light photographs with any sort of ISO over 100 the results are mucky to say the least.

@ decimal what happened to your G7? I've got one but so far it's going ok!! should i be looking out for signs of impending failure??

I think i read someplace that 6 megapixels is the optimum on sensors in this range and that an increase in megapixels can lead to lower IQ especially in higher ISO settings. i'd like to see further development of APS size sensors in compacts. Sometimes it's just not practical to carry a bulky SLR.

FinoBlad

I've the G9 and find it amazing, you can get it for cheaper than your post says. And its much smaller than the G7.