Please Please Help me decide

Earlsie

Hi Folks,

First time posting in the Photography section so please be gentle, I have a Cannon Powershot A80 that I have been using for the last few years for family photos which I am looking to replace.

I have narrowed my search down to the following compact digital cameras

1),Canon PowerShot S95
2),Olympus SZ-30MR
3),Lumix DMC-ZS20
4),Nikon Coolpix S9100

I am leaning towards the Canon or the Olympus, based on what I read on the web the Canon takes the better quality pictures but I love all the gadgets and wizardry of the Olympus.

I would appreciate any feedback on my dilema,

Cheers
Earlsie

5uspect

Get the one you find most comfortable to use.

Prenderb

You are replacing a camera, so I would suggest you ask yourself:

What do I like most about the current camera, and couldn't live without on a new one;

What do I like least about it, and would love to see done differently on another brand;

What do the other ones handle like (as mentioned above) and which has a better "feel" in the hand.

DPreview is a very useful site - you might be able to compare all 4 cameras side by side for features (and find that they're all almost exactly the same!).
http://www.dpreview.com/

emrys

I would go for the s95 - I have the s90 and it is a great p&s - i presume the s95 is even better

Prenderb

Sssh, don't tell anyone, but I did it for you...


Olympus has nice optical zoom and macro range, (according to the dpreview info!)
Canon has better low-light performance with f2 aperture and better flash (according to the link!!!)
And other than that there's not much to pick between them.

dmg1982

S95

Earlsie

Appreciate all the excellent feedback, I called a Photgraphy Shop in Dublin to arrange a visit and take a look at both cameras.

1),Canon PowerShot S95
2),Olympus SZ-30MR

Unfortunately they did not have the S95 in stock and Canon had not provided a supply date for the unit but told me to call back in 2 weeks,what they did mention was the S95 was more taylored to the entusiast and to get the best from the Camera I needed to know what I was doing which sounded like good advice, he mentioned things like ISO settings \ aperture \ i-Contrast \ aspect ratios which really do not mean an awfyul lot to me.
He siad out of the box the picture quality would be pretty much the same as any other Camera.

That said I am leaning towards the Olympus now, any comments on the above.

Cheers
Earlsie

5uspect

ISO Sensor gain, higher ISO makes the camera more sensitive to light at the expense of a more noisy image. Better cameras can handle the noise better.

Aperture The size of the iris in the lens. It control the depth of field (background blur) and influences the sharpness. A wide aperture lets you shoot in low light.

i-Contrast Irrelevant, it's just something you can do on your computer.
aspect ratio Irrelevant, that's just the size of the image, height:width.
You can simply just crop your images in any photo editing software.

Earlsie

Thanks 5uspect,

I think you have confirmed my suspicion that I need a simple point and shoot with as little manual intervention as possible.

Appreciate all the great feedback on this thread,

Cheers
Earlsie

5uspect

I'm all for manual intervention!

Do you not want to have to deal with things like ISO, f-number and shutter speed? Do you simply just want to snap? :mad:

If so I'm sorry.