Digital Camera-ing

[108]

Looking to buy a Digital Camera and am tossing up between the Canon S400 and S50. Anything particularly bad or any hidden gremlins that I should be aware of before I decide? And how is the brand Canon received? Good/bad/okay reputation?

Also, I did a quick check on eBay for prices (I'm not planning on buying from there though) and the S50 was selling for around $750 Aus. Almost $500 off the RRP. HOw do they sell so cheap? Is it safe to buy this stuff from eBay? I have a sneaking suspicion that they're buying and selling from Asia and just listing the items in the ebay.au site.

Any comments/reccomendations are welcome.

[IML337]

can't comment on the camera's, but definately buy locally. I bought a Canon Powershot G3 (about 6 months ago) and it was faulty from day 1. If I bought OS I would have had no warranty and the cost to repair would have been upwards of $500...

just my 2 cents :)

[BlueBoy]

I've got a Canon A40.
Good camera for the price, only 2 mega pixel though.

The shots are pretty good. These should give you an idea:

http://www.zgeek.com/gallery/album32
http://www.zgeek.com/gallery/album33

Like he said, buy locally. If the camera stuffs up, it's a lot cheaper to send it for repairs ;)
I'm almost sure that you won't get a warranty buying through ebay.

Check out this site before you buy as well:

http://www.dpreview.com/

[PullMyFinger]

I have a Sony DSC S75. It's great. Lots of flexibility.

Only thing to watch for is to get a decent memory stick/card/whatever. The shitty 8 MB stick that comes with most is way too small because you'll want to take photos at max resolution so you can crop/edit them later. Small resolution makes them pixellate when you blow them up.

[Holster]

I just bought a sony dsc p8 (3.2 mega pixel), i love it. :D

I got it for $800 with the 16mb stick (standard) and i got a 64mb for free

21 mins of video with a 128mb stick

And you can buy magic gate 1gb sticks for it too, a full underwater cover, and a few lenses and filters.

the 5 mega pixel (p10) comes with 32mb stick and retails for around $1000

[108]

I work at a Duty Free store so I can get the things at a whisker above cost price. Of course, bigger stores buy in bulk and sometimes give huge discounts. I'll most probably be getting them at my store though.

Here are the things that I have to weigh up between the two moedels I am considering.

Both Include:
3x Optical Zoom
32MB Compact Flash in box (standard)

Canon PowerShot S50
5 MegaPixel
Takes Compact Flash Type I and II
(Type I limits at 256MB, Type II can go from 512MB up)

Canon PowerShot (IXUS) S400
4 MegaPixel
Few hundred dollars cheaper
Smaller size
About 100g lighter.

Im leaning toward the S400 because of the cash factor, but I'm also tempted by the Panasonic Lumix with 12x optical.

[108]

Originally posted by BlueBoy
Check out this site before you buy as well:

http://www.dpreview.com/

Great. Now I have the Pentax Optio 550 (http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/pentaxoptio550/) on my mind as well.

5 MegaPixels
5 Optical Zoom
Small, but not as small as the IXUS 400
No 3 minute movie limit like the Canons
Most likely will cost a bucket load of cash though.

I've got a bit of price scouting to do on the weekend :)

[druid]

To confuse you even more, visit Digital Photography Review (http://www.dpreview.com), a great site for in-depth reviews. :: oops, BlueBoy beat me to it ::

Recently I was struggling with the very same questions and models discussed in this thread.

First I wanted a 5 megapixel camera, then I looked a lot if images and decided it's not really worth it. The quality of the optics and the CCD affect a lot, the pixel count shouldn't be the key factor when buying a digicam. Personally I can't see much difference between pics taken with a 3 Mpix camera and a 5 Mpix camera. Think about it, the resolution of the biggest image with a 3 million pixel CCD is around 2048x1536 = 3 145 728 pixels. With 5 million the resolution is 2560x1920 = 4 915 200 pixels. Both sizes are HUGE imho. What you want and need depends of course on your purpose: will you be printing the pictures a lot? Will you shoot "professionally" (if you did I guess you wouldn't be asking :p), or like a tourist. If you want big prints then you'll of course want as many pixels as you can get.

However as the pixel count increases so does the noise (graininess) in the picture, 5 Mpix cameras generally have more noise than 3 or 4 Mpix cameras. Also different manufacturers tend to have different "interpretations" of good color schemes. You should search for pictures taken with the cameras you are interested in and decide if the quality is satisfactory. As BlueBoy's pictures show, even 2 million pixels can be very good if you have good optics (Canon traditionally has), a bigger pixel count doesn't make anyone a better photographer. Speaking of optics, when you compare the zoom factors in different cameras, never pay attention to the digital zoom or the "total combined zoom", it's the optical zoom factor that matters.

Next thing you want to consider is the amount of features that you can tweak. Will you be satisfied with full auto and a few pre-programmed scene modes or do you want a full manual mode too? At least you should be able to adjust the white balance (see differences between pictures 1 (http://www.niksula.cs.hut.fi/~jkaarlas/canon/whitebal1.jpg) and 2 (http://www.niksula.cs.hut.fi/~jkaarlas/canon/whitebal2.jpg), both taken only moments apart but with different white balance. The movie mode is nice but if you want digital video you should get a video camera, the framerate in still cameras is always something like 16 FPS anyway.

After reading many reviews and examinging features side-by-side I decided that Canon "MoneyShot" A70 is for me. Since it is a 3 Mpix camera it's considerably cheaper than the new 5 Mpix ones and has had more time to evolve. It has a moderate number of features of which I will mention the full manual mode where you can set the shutter speed, focus, and aperture all manually. A feature that may extend the lifetime of the camera in my use. I'm just a n00b in photography but having a little room to evolve in the hobby is always assuring.

I uploaded some of the first pictures (http://www.niksula.cs.hut.fi/~jkaarlas/canon/) I have taken with my new camera for your consideration. The lily picture was taken on the first day in full manual mode and I didn't quite get the focus right there. The jazz band is blurry because I didn't want to use the flash and couldn't keep my hands steady long enough. Some pictures are cropped and/or resized, some are as they came out from the camera. Some are taken in full auto mode, others with some amount oh manual tweaking (I like to play with aperture and focus.)

Have fun with whatever camera you decide to buy, imho not one is clearly over others. Personally I would not get the Canon S50 because it's too expensive and the example pictures I saw were not too impressive, same goes for Olympus C-50 Zoom. Generally I'd consider the Canon brand cameras quite good, also they tend to use non-proprietary memory like the CF card in mine so buying some extra capacity will be cheaper than those bloody MemorySticks.

[108]

Thanks for the advice Druid. Of course that essay you wrote went a little wasted because I already bought my camera :p

I went for the Canon IXUS 400! Yay for me! First thing I did was bring it home and tried to jam my dick in the battery compartment. Y'know, to break it in. Then I went to the Auto Saloon and took these (http://members.optushome.com.au/phonghuynh/Photos/) photos. Note that I am not a rev-head and knew nothing about anything, so I was relegated to taking pictures of pretty paint jobs.

I made my decision based on megapixel count/optical zoom, camera size (dimensions), work on the internet, and salesman advice. I was tempted to go for the Pentax Optio 550, but it was just too expensive and the 6 second start up time kinda kills the point-and-shoot aspect. Powershot S50 was just too expensive and the Sony's were kinda too big and bulkier.

Canon IXUS 400 RRP = around a grand
Price on the street = $950-$1000
I paid $850. They were a bit sour about me using my credit card though :)

[druid]

Haha, I know the feeling: when you get the urge to buy one you don't want to wait too long. I was fortunate being able to wait whole two days after my friend got one. Hopefully the "essay" will of use to someone else then. No essay can beat dpreview.com though...

Interesting pics btw. Do post some outdoor and portrait shots too. One thing I noticed that some dark areas had some JPEG artifacting (blockiness), you might want to tweak your image quality settings a bit.

[no_dice]

I got a Canon S100 about 2 years ago and have no complaints. I've been looking into getting either a Digital SLR or a regular film SLR as of late as I would really like to delve a little deeper into the world of photography:P

[108]

Originally the pics were around 800k each so I used Photoshop to

-> Save As
-> .jpg
-> Detail 5 (out of 10) - Medium

So maybe that's what caused the pixelation.

If I'm not forced to work, I'll go out and take some outdoor pics during the weekend. It'd be a good chance to work out what all the manual settings do. *Prays for sunshine*

[sagit]

you might find something here:

http://www.digitalcamerawarehouse.com.au/

[peril]

Errrr some of you already know that I work for Nikon,

......So I wont rant and rave, But I use a few of the Coolpix range of cameras(950, 885 and 5700) and though I may take this opportunity to pimp a mates (McBain) site where our pix are posted, the site is still "under development" but its getting there :p

Most of the pix there were taken with the 885 3.34megapixel camera (using various setings and experimenting a bit ;) )
so you'll get a basic idea of whats capable with the camera day and night and under weird lighting conditions ..coloured/fluro/incandescent and ultraviolet and sometimes all at once, day and night...(hey we're still learning too!)

...anyways check out our pix, they're all from Psychadelic Trance parties (mostly out doors :D ) from the last year and a half or so.

~Peas, Chris:)

www.psychoactive.id.au
or
www.looseunit.net/~bain

*not all my pix have been labled correctly yet...

[Felix]

If anyone's still wondering about digital cams, I got a Canon Powershot S50 a couple of months ago, and it's the bomb. (Got it in Singapore, for $930 with a 256mb compact flash card. I love that place.) A friend of mine got himself an IXUS 400 at about the same time, and he's well pleased with that too.

The Powershot's got a lot of advantages over the Sony's in the amount of control you have over the image you're taking. You can see exposure up to 15 seconds, as opposed to Sony's max of 1 second. Also the amount of grain in the images is excellent, even with quite long exposures, the Powershot shows very little grain, much better than any other digital camera I've seen before. Not so sure about the IXUS, but I'd assume so as I'm pretty sure they use the same image processor...

If people want to see full size images, let me know.

[oracle]

I'm the king of hasty purchases. I originally bought an Sony S30, thinking it did short movies too... It does not. After a few months I sold it to a workmate for $200 cheaper than I bought it for, and then bought a Sony S50 instead, which does do short (albeit, low quality) movies. By this time the Sony S50 was $200 cheaper too, so it all worked out.

It's a pity more manufacturers don't make flip LCD screens anymore; it's really handy when you want to either want to take a high shot with the camera above your head (tilt LCD down) take a low shot (tilt LCD up) or take photos of yourself (and maybe someone else) by holding the camera out and facing the LCD backwards. Does anyone know of any newer cameras with a flip LCD?

For now, I'll dream of this (http://www.dpreview.com/articles/sonydscf828/)!

[sagit]

Originally posted by oracle
[B]...

It's a pity more manufacturers don't make flip LCD screens anymore; it's really handy when you want to either want to take a high shot with the camera above your head (tilt LCD down) take a low shot (tilt LCD up) or take photos of yourself (and maybe someone else) by holding the camera out and facing the LCD backwards. Does anyone know of any newer cameras with a flip LCD?
..


Pentax Optio 33L has this

http://www.digitalcamerawarehouse.com.au/prod530.htm

[BlueBoy]

I'm looking at upgrading my camera. The shutter speed on the A40 is a bit slow for my liking now.

Anyone had any experience with the Canon G3?

[Rod]

Originally posted by BlueBoy
I'm looking at upgrading my camera. The shutter speed on the A40 is a bit slow for my liking now.

Anyone had any experience with the Canon G3?

The G2/G3 is a nice nice camera. I look at it closely about 18 months ago before I settled on a Minolta DiMage 71 (http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/specs/Minolta/minolta_dimage7i.asp) which is superb. I have had a lot of fun and taken some grest shots.

The Nikin CoolPix 5700 is also very nice.

I am waiting for the DSLRs to come down a little.
Anyway, if the G3 is what yu are after, you really can't go wrong with it or any Sony/Nikon/Canon/Minolta camera.

[BlueBoy]

Originally posted by Rod
The G2/G3 is a nice nice camera. I look at it closely about 18 months ago before I settled on a Minolta DiMage 71 (http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/specs/Minolta/minolta_dimage7i.asp) which is superb. I have had a lot of fun and taken some grest shots.

The Nikin CoolPix 5700 is also very nice.

I am waiting for the DSLRs to come down a little.
Anyway, if the G3 is what yu are after, you really can't go wrong with it or any Sony/Nikon/Canon/Minolta camera.

Thanks dude. I'll have a look at the Minolta as well.