G'day Folks,

I need some help choosing a new digital camera.

The internet seems to be flooded with sites that are meant to help but I can't find one with out BS. Does anyone know of a good site?

All I want is a 10mp+ point and shoot camera preferably that runs on AA batteries that can take several shots per second and does quite a good job in poor light.

I've used canon point and shoots for years but they all seem to suffer from poor light problems and boy have they been slow. Press the shutter button => child gets bored wanders off, goes to school, leaves for university, gets married... then the bloody thing takes a picture...

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1992 W201 190E 1.8 171,000 km - Daily driver
1981 W123 300D ~ 100,000 miles / 160,000 km - project car stripped to the bone
1965 Land Rover Series 2a Station Wagon CIS recovery therapy!
1961 Volvo PV544 Bare metal rat rod-ish thing

I'm here to chat about cars and to help others - I'm not here "to always be right" like an internet warrior



Don't leave that there - I'll take it to bits!

1st, how old is the Canon you were using that had the delay issues. Just trying to get a benchmark, since cameras get better every three to six months.

2nd, what's your budget for the P&S?

I purchased a replacement digital camera for the wife.. Specifically because it had the shortest ramp up time in it's class at the time. Without it you cannot photograph many things. She does like the 18X zoom with an additional 4X digital zoom though. The image stabilization seems to be well above average as well. Even at 18X zoom.

People are not estatic about their digital camera purchases so all brands and models appear on ebay as used very frequently after. Hugely discounted compared to new. This was a panasonic by the way I got her. So far she is basically happy with it.

Still a comprimise as certain other features are better on other brands of cameras in the same class. I have not kept up so do not know if low light imaging has really improved a lot. It has been a sore point for a long time with digital cameras. Or I have heard many endless complaints of it.

As was mentioned by another poster MTI they are refined fairly often so anything aquired that is a straight diogital is going to be fairly obsolite in a short enough time. That is why I decided to limit the cost by using ebay. Most of these cameras also have a point and shoot function. The problem is they are a little larger. Not as large as a single lens reflex digital. Perhaps half the size though.

I totally understand that there is a vast difference overall between a single lens reflex digital camera and a normal digital camera. So much so that if I wanted a digital camera for myself I would go for the slr. Unfortunatly in my opinion there is still not much comparison between the two. Straight digitals are always going to have some things you possibly really do not like still at this point of their evolution.

I've got a canon powershot A480 at the moment. It is a 10mp camera which takes great pictures of things that are not moving when it is sunny!

Budget-wise I'm right at the bottom of the food chain! (Say up to $200)

__________________
1992 W201 190E 1.8 171,000 km - Daily driver
1981 W123 300D ~ 100,000 miles / 160,000 km - project car stripped to the bone
1965 Land Rover Series 2a Station Wagon CIS recovery therapy!
1961 Volvo PV544 Bare metal rat rod-ish thing

I'm here to chat about cars and to help others - I'm not here "to always be right" like an internet warrior



Don't leave that there - I'll take it to bits!

Get it on Ebay for $190. Takes 2 AA's, has 10X zoom (optical), durable, 12 MP imaging chip.

Finding a decent P&S that runs on AA's is not easy. Everyone has gone to Lithiums, which IMHO suck for durability ion cold and using flash and cost $$$ for a spare or replacement. Plus Chinese knockoff Li-on batteries have a tendency to explode (ask any Android Smart Phone user).

Check out Ken Rockwell's site

Search KenRockwell.com

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http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7271/7...144c3fc1dc.jpg

Thanks for the link Patrick and thanks for your input Barry - point and shoot is all about compromise as far as I can make out... well unless you believe what they say about the Nikon 1.

I don't want a bulky SLR thing - I don't want the weight of that thing around my neck and I don't want the "oh look tourist" or "oh look rich kid" effect.

50% of the time I'm taking pictures of the daft things my three children are doing - and the rest of the time I'm usually crawling about in the dirt taking pictures of car parts / machinery.

__________________
1992 W201 190E 1.8 171,000 km - Daily driver
1981 W123 300D ~ 100,000 miles / 160,000 km - project car stripped to the bone
1965 Land Rover Series 2a Station Wagon CIS recovery therapy!
1961 Volvo PV544 Bare metal rat rod-ish thing

I'm here to chat about cars and to help others - I'm not here "to always be right" like an internet warrior



Don't leave that there - I'll take it to bits!

I'm fond of my Panasonic Lumix DMC ZS7, altho it takes a dedicated battery. I bought another and it stays in the charger. If you go on a trip, take a fully charged battery.

I picked up a BIG SDXC card too, cost almost as much as the camera. HOWEVER, that card can't be read with a Mac Leopard, but works fine with Snow Leopard, I upgraded my laptop, so both computers can read the pics and videos.

Has GPS, I think I used it once, but I don't travel.

Has an automatic macro setting.

EDIT: http://www.dpreview.com/news/2010/1/26/panazs7

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83 SD

84 CD

I bought one of these several years ago and it still works great. I can highly recommend it unless you do a lot of shooting at 2mp. 2mp is considered the best for Ebay and a lot of other sites, but if you need a 2mp you can get a good one super cheap and save the Panasonic for real photos.

I scored a Fuji AX200 on closeout at Walgreen's for $21 a couple of months ago. 12mp. AA batteries .Does the job and don't need to worry much about it. Replaces a Canon A340 (?) that I paid $150 for 5 years ago.

They do seem to be going away from AA batteries, just as they did away with eye level viewfinders. Pity- I must be getting old. Still have my Rollei 35, but who needs it?

I cut my teeth on blind focus 620 film format folding cameras. Got an AA in photo and spent countless hours in a darkroom processing Kodak C4, C6 etc. Color printing.....view cameras, SLRs, TLRs .... Any idiot can do it now. Another craft shot to hell thanks to technology.

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80 300SD (129k mi) 82 240D stick (193k mi)77 240D auto - stick to be (153k mi) 85 380SL (145k mi) 89 BMW 535i 82 Diesel Rabbit Pickup (374k mi) 91 Jetta IDI Diesel (155k mi) 81 VW Rabbit Convertible Diesel 70 Triumph Spitfire Mk III (63kmi)66 Triumph TR4a IRS (90k mi)67 Ford F-100 (??)

And all that stuff cost an absolute fortune I guess - back in the days when we all had to save up for our power tools eh?

__________________
1992 W201 190E 1.8 171,000 km - Daily driver
1981 W123 300D ~ 100,000 miles / 160,000 km - project car stripped to the bone
1965 Land Rover Series 2a Station Wagon CIS recovery therapy!
1961 Volvo PV544 Bare metal rat rod-ish thing

I'm here to chat about cars and to help others - I'm not here "to always be right" like an internet warrior



Don't leave that there - I'll take it to bits!

Interesting observation since it exhaults the ability of technology to advance a craft while sounding sour about it at the same time.

Pictures that are well exposed, in focus and otherwise technically well done due to technology is a good thing. While I may get nostalgic for hours under safe lights and the aroma of D76, Dektol and Fixer . . . I'm not prepared at this stage of my life to go back

As we used to say "Anyone can take a picture, but not everyone is a photographer."

I had always hoped to get a nice Leica rangefinder camera with a few lenses, just because they are so darn nice. It would be hard to justify doing that now.

I'm surprised nobody has invented a digital camera "film" that loads in old fashioned cameras just like it always did but saves pictures to an inbuilt memory card instead - just think you could still go through the ritual of opening and closing the back of the camera in the wife's hand bag just for fun just like in the old days! (before plugging in your USB cable to the film and uploading it all to facebook)

__________________
1992 W201 190E 1.8 171,000 km - Daily driver
1981 W123 300D ~ 100,000 miles / 160,000 km - project car stripped to the bone
1965 Land Rover Series 2a Station Wagon CIS recovery therapy!
1961 Volvo PV544 Bare metal rat rod-ish thing

I'm here to chat about cars and to help others - I'm not here "to always be right" like an internet warrior



Don't leave that there - I'll take it to bits!

There was a company that prototyped a drop in Digital Insert that was shaped like a 126 cartridge that fit 35mm SLR bodies. The memory was in one end and a C123 lithium battery was in the other end. It had around 2mb of memory.

The problem was the CCD chip was so small (they cost the earth back then) and the area covered was 20% of a standard 24x35mm frame. So a 50mm "normal" lens was a 200mm lens!

Even now only the top of the line Canon/Nikon line (D-90 and up) have a CCD that covers almost 85% of a 24x35mm frame so you still have a conversion factor. My 20mm 2.8 AIS Nikkor on my D80 body is different than the 20mm 2.8 Digital version. The older 20mm "sees" more than the CCD photographs...

I bet that you could make one now and market it for $500 and make money but the tool up would cost and the Chinese would clone it before the ink was dry on the US Patent application.