Digital Cameras

[shedite]

Can anyone reccomend any digital cameras that they find to be good. I'm looking at getting one for christmas. Willing to spend about €200-€300 on it.

What are the specs to look out for? I know all the stuff about shutter speed and ASA and all that crap but have never really looked into digital cameras. Suppose this is really aimd at James and Face.

[A face]

Shedite,

The bigger bummer about a digital camera is the delay.
It is a couple charge so it take a while (1 - 0.5 of a second) to build up. Ask about this when buying (most guys behind a counter wont expect this question either, so expect a mixed response) normally you depress the "click" button and let it build up and time the rest against the delay. Some cameras are really bad though.

Next thing is resolution ......... simple ..... the bigger the better, there aint now way around it. it is up to five million or more now.

The card that you use to store the pics is next up. SmartMedia is what i have. A 128 mb card stores 130 on mine with the res. up nearly full. The biggest concern is that you can use USB and Firewire to get the pics/clips from the camera. Most cameras are cool that way though.

Zoom ... optical, make sure that when zoomed in, that the quality is not compromised. I am not fully up to speed on this but i know it is an issue.

Functions ... Movie clips, etc .... my camera. It chews the batteries and card space. The clips have no sound and are not that good. If you want clips .... get a video camera basically.
Multi-photo shots .... you know 5-6 pics in a row to give any action sequence. Great to have it. Chews batteries, watch the delay. Great results. cool having it.
Black and white, sepia etc. just ask about it.

Batteries ......... go for AA rechargable .... any other will cost a small fortune. The other ones are better and have bells and whistles but at the end of the day you just want to take pics, you are not worried about what is actually going on inside. I normally have one set charging (18 hrs, 2000 ?? forget what they are measured in, bigger the better) one set in and one set ready to go in.

Software ...... maybe make sure you can download it from the net aswell. Just a thought .... saves you draging the disk about, and bandwidth in college costs nothing.

Get a bag for it .......... scratches are a bummer.

After that .... it is all the settings to be honest. Read the manual ... i haven't.

[dahamsta]

After a /lot/ of research, I've added a Canon ISUX 400 (http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/B00008PS6Q) to my Amazon wish list (http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/wishlist/2PMPW4MFHE3OH). Bit out of your price range shedite (works out to about €450) but I said I'd mention it because as I said, it took me a lot of time to find it. Before I found the Canon, I was looking at the Olympus MJU 400 (http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/B000087QQ6) or 300 (http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/B000087QQ4), which might be a bit closer to what you're looking for.

adam

[deise deserter]

Just to add to A Faces comments:

Zooms come in two distinct versions, optical and digital - some have one or the other, some have both. You need to get a camera with both.

Optical zoom is the lens zooming itself - this means that your picture quality is not degraded at all.

Digital zoom is zooming in and by doing so reducing the resolution of your picture.

Batteries - Don't go for AA rechargables - go for an ion rechargable battery. Most new cameras come with this as standard. It is quite similar to the battery for your phone.

I would advise you to go for a Fujifilm Finpix camera, or not managing that a Sony.

Another thing you forgot to mention is your OS (Windows/Mac version) as this will have an impact on how you source and manipulate the images. You should also mention the amount of RAM your machine has, as this will affect you if you insert high quality images into certain programs such as Publisher or Word.