digital camera discussion

[jono]

hey everyone

well the time for me to get a new cam has arrived.

budget = 1000

what i want : lightweight, long battery life, ability to take a burst of pics, ability to take short movies, quick startup time etc etc.

i really dont know whats that good and whats not. im gonna start to do my research on whats out there now..

anyone got any reccomendations/suggestions ??

[westie]

I am not up to play on the latest models.But i have a kodak dx 4530 which is very good .The only draw back is taking photos in quick sucession, you have to wait atleast 5 secs. I believe this down to writing to the memory card. The only way around this would be a camera with a large internal memory.other than that get a camera that will take the fastest memory cards available.

[Pseudonym]

IMO a good zoom is more important than a lot of megapixels.

Theoretically, if your image was large enough, you could crop it to create a zoom effect. But the catch with having a high-res image is that it takes significantly more space - which means you can fit fewer photos on the card.

I think a 6M pixel image is more than enough - in fact, most of the time, I only use 3M (and you can still blow it up it to A4 size at a good quality). I would want at least a 6x zoom though, and make sure that figure's for an optical zoom, not a crappy software zoom.

[deegee]

I use a Sony good products nice colour you can adjust the number of pixels to fit more shots on a stick. there are not many quickfire digital cameras I dont think you will find one for under a grand.

[jono]

I use a Sony good products nice colour you can adjust the number of pixels to fit more shots on a stick. there are not many quickfire digital cameras I dont think you will find one for under a grand.

i read on the sony website some of its cameras have a burst mode, how far apart are the pics do you know ?

[deegee]

A mate of mine has one I think it takes a pic about every second or so not fast but then it is a feature I would not use. I have a sony handicam that i use for motion shots

[Growth]

I had a kodak dx6430 i think it was, it was pretty damn good. At the time (about a year ago) it cost 700. It was 5mp, had a decent zoom, took burst pics like you said, very quick succesion, it was a setting you selected and it would take 3 very close pic, chik-chik-chik.

I think it will have been superseded by now, or if it was still available it would be a bit cheaper.

After a little look around heres what i came up with,

Olympus C-765 $850 4MP 1.5 frames per second burst up to 8 frames in HQ mode;

http://www.digitalcameras.co.nz/product ... oduct=1874

Kodak Dx7590 $750 5MP Burst mode - 2.5 fps, up to 4 frames in sequence

http://www.digitalcameras.co.nz/product ... oduct=1637

Or if your looking for something a little different

Sony Cyber Shot DSC-M1 Camera-Camcorder $1000 5MP High-Speed Burst (x4) 3.0 fps

http://www.digitalcameras.co.nz/product ... oduct=1677

[jono]

I had a kodak dx6430 i think it was, it was pretty damn good. At the time (about a year ago) it cost 700. It was 5mp, had a decent zoom, took burst pics like you said, very quick succesion, it was a setting you selected and it would take 3 very close pic, chik-chik-chik.

I think it will have been superseded by now, or if it was still available it would be a bit cheaper.

After a little look around heres what i came up with,

Olympus C-765 $850 4MP 1.5 frames per second burst up to 8 frames in HQ mode;

http://www.digitalcameras.co.nz/product ... oduct=1874

Kodak Dx7590 $750 5MP Burst mode - 2.5 fps, up to 4 frames in sequence

http://www.digitalcameras.co.nz/product ... oduct=1637

Or if your looking for something a little different

Sony Cyber Shot DSC-M1 Camera-Camcorder $1000 5MP High-Speed Burst (x4) 3.0 fps

http://www.digitalcameras.co.nz/product ... oduct=1677

thanks for that man.

ill do some more research, look at some reviews etc

[deegee]

Prices have come down a bit. some nice cameras there, I dont think you could go wrong with any of them though I just took a quick look at the links

[Pseudonym]

http://www.dpreview.com was a website someone suggested to me. You may find it useful.

[sartorious]

Hi just upgraded from a 2MP Fuji Film

DPreview is a brill site to do a comparison. We just got a Canon A520 its small, takes 2 AA's (so no probs if battery goes flat - to find a spare). Does rapid shots, quick start up and movies with sound, great Macro and can be fully manual.

4MP, takes SD cards and 4x opitical zoom

How much - we picked it up for $450 new.

[westie]

Some people may not agree but i really like my docking station that i bought for my camera.It charges my batterry as well as connects to my pc for transferring photos.

[ExpensiveUrine]

How would you find a balance between Megapixels and Optical Zoom? For what would you use High Megapixel and Low Optical Zoom camera and vice versa? What are draw backs in using High Megapixel/Low Optical Zoom camera and vice versa?

[Pseudonym]

A high megapixel camera will take good detailed photos. Because of the high detail, you can enlarge a portion of the image by digitally blowing it up and cropping it, but you lose the quality when you do. (Think of it as having captured a certain level of detail in the first photo; you can't add more detail by selecting only part of the image).

A good zoom lets you enlarge a portion of the image without blowing it up digitally, and because of this it doesn't lose any detail.

Ideally, you'd get a camera that was strong in both attributes. But obviously that costs more, so failing that...

High Megapixel/Low Optical Zoom

- May be cheaper

- Good for shots that you don't need to enlarge part of the image

- The extra detail makes it good for high quality prints.

- An example: a professional "school photo" camera, or a happy-snap holiday camera.

Low Megapixel/High Optical Zoom

- Good for closeups and shots where you need to enlarge parts of the image

- Most "low-ish" megapixel cameras still provide perfectly good print quality up to about A4 size.

- An example: any arty closeup shots

[ExpensiveUrine]

Excellent post.

To be honest, I'm not looking to become the next pro or anything like that. I'll mostly be using the camera for weightlifting shots and some scenery stuff for when I got to Samoa or wherever.

Probably the ratio of 4:4 or 5:6 (megapixels:optical zoom) would be okay for that sort of thing?

[Tehhaxorr]

You are going to want one with atleast 256mb memory onboard, with the capacity for great flash card expansion.

You are going to need something with high Megapixel rating, the higher the mpxls the higher the resolution, giving you more fredom and quality than you could ever achieve with just a zoom. Optical zoom is important if you only want to know exactly what you are taking a photo of, seeing all the detail and making a judgement about what you want to take, getting closeups can help, but with a high mgpxl camera you wont need to worry too much because the overall resolution of the image will be massive.

Autofocus will also be an iportant feature if you plan on taking rapid sucessions of photos.

This would be an excelent buy for the under $1000 market.

http://www.pharmacyexpress.co.nz/shop/p ... R-KIT.html

[deegee]

nice camera, but then the last time i bought a camera i spent a lot of money for a whole lot of features i never use which i am sure are all out of date now

:cry:

[Tehhaxorr]

nice camera, but then the last time i bought a camera i spent a lot of money for a whole lot of features i never use which i am sure are all out of date now

:cry:

All cameras have a whole lot of features. hehehe