Digital Camera recommendations

[Xtro]

Morning

I'm after a digital camera and basically know fook all about them. I'm aware of megapixels woohoo great word but...duh Is that to do with resolution? Also the only other thing I know is they take ram cards or something? Pardon me for being thick.

I don't have wadges of cash to spend and I'm not mega fussed about astounding picture quality. I'm after one as I've realised haven't took any photos of me and my mates fooking about since 2001. So its just the usual pics that will be taken - hoilday snaps etc.

I'm on a tight budget atm due to holidays so looking for something around £100 or so, preferably lower (preferably 50 quid but that will prob be total SHITE). Any things I should be looking out for?

ttfn

 

[Sibanac]

www.dpreview.com for all your digi cam info

few hints :
try to buy one with Compact Flash memory, its by far the cheapest .
look for one with buildin bateries otherwise you will have to run around with 30 packs of AA bateries for a day trip

 

[Xtro]

OO ta for the link mate

I'll have a butchers at it when I get home from work. If anyone else wants to contribute feel free

 

[Xtro]

Welllll...stuck an ad up on another forum and been offered this for £80 inc delivery, see what you think:

http://home.fujifilm.com/products/digital/digitalcamera/mx1500/feature00.html

Seller is flogging it to me (if I agree) with:

3 sets of extra strength batteries
Bettery charger
A USB media card reader
64MB media card


Anyone reckon this is ok deal?

cheers.

 

[Tom]

1.5Mp isn't great m8, kind of like buying a Pentium 3 to play HL2

 

[Xtro]

Thanks Tom, well I've been told by a friend that its not amazing but its an ok price and I only want it for holiday type snaps so I'm gonna have it I reckon.

If its shit I'll blame ECA, he seems good to blame for everything atm.

 

[mank!]

Before you buy it look around the net for price comparison websites (kelkoo.co.uk is good) and see if you can get it cheaper, then trundle off to Jessops and they'll price match it for you. I ended up getting my Sony DSC-P71 for about £30 cheaper doing it this way.

 

[Sibanac]

Originally posted by mank!
Before you buy it look around the net for price comparison websites (kelkoo.co.uk is good) and see if you can get it cheaper, then trundle off to Jessops and they'll price match it for you. I ended up getting my Sony DSC-P71 for about £30 cheaper doing it this way.

those sony's are ace, shame about the memory stick prices tho, its the only thing that makes me regret getting the dcs-f707

 

[mank!]

aye, I love my sony camera I've got a 64 mb and a 32mb card which I carry around with me, I've only managed to fill the 64mb one once but I'm off on Holiday to Ireland next week so I imagine it'll be full in the first few days. At least you can delete duff ones.

 

[Sibanac]

Originally posted by mank!
aye, I love my sony camera I've got a 64 mb and a 32mb card which I carry around with me, I've only managed to fill the 64mb one once but I'm off on Holiday to Ireland next week so I imagine it'll be full in the first few days. At least you can delete duff ones.

problem is on those 5.2MP settings i can get about 60 shots on a 128MB. i usualy shoot one setting lower to save some space on memory stick.
And i hate it when ppl tell me not to shoot at 5.2MP becuase you dont need it, i mean whats the point of buying a 5.2MP if you're not gonne use it .
I might buy a Lexmar stick they are a bit better priced then sony ones

 

[Rubber Bullets]

Changing quality settings on a camera will not necessarily change the resolution.

I have a 2.2Meg Nikon that has 4 main quality settings Best, Fine Normal and Low. They are all full resolution i.e. 1600x1200. Fine down to Low are simply the best quality image compressed as jpegs. Fine images (the setting I use) are roughly 700Kb each. The Best setting is an image stored as a tiff and each image is roughly 5-6Mb. At the level of compression I use the images are perfectly OK, and I always compress and reduce them far more when I come to use them for e-mail or web site.

The camera does have other settings, down to 640x480 resolution etc but these are for fast shots and such, I've never really played with them.

As for people telling you not to use the full 5 meg images, what people?

What resolution you want to use is entirely dependent on what you do with the image in the end. If you want to take a pic straight from a camera and e-mail it then yes, a low res is fine, but if you want to do any sort of image manipulation first it is always best to have the highest resolutin possible.

Accurate editing is far easier the further you can zoom into a picture before edges just turn into huge blocks.Even something as simple as redeye removal is a lot simpler if the offending red area is for instance 10x10 pixels as opposed to 5x5.

s

 

[smurkin]

1.5Mp isn't great m8, kind of like buying a Pentium 3 to play HL2

true...you'll get the equivalent of a "fun cam" - but sounds like that what you want (although it will be better quality)...I bought a £100 Konica 1.3 MPix (although I wouldnt recommend this camera as there are operating system issues)...it ruled, developing costs ? bollox ! I stuck the piccies on my website, e-mailled them around, my ftp sever....it was cool.

But recently, I got pissed off with the quality. The key thing is not, imo, the MPixels, but the size of the lense...Mpixels come cheap...cameras with loadsa Mpixels and a big lense...now your talking big money !

.....so I went back to my cannon eos (bugger the developing cost and the unweildy black metal thing )