Digital camera recommendations.

[plonq]

atara and I have decided to spend some of our tax return on a digital camera this year.  I don't expect to see the return for a few more weeks, but that hasn't stopped me from researching the purchase.

I don't want to blow the entire tax return on a camera, so I've tried to limit myself to a 3-digit price tag (not counting cents).  Pending suggestions and further reading, I've pared the field down to a shortlist of three candidates:

Canon Powershot G5

(For the most part I like what I've seen in the sample pics from this camera.  It has a bit more purple fringing than I would like, and I'm underwhelmed by its zoom and macro capabilities, but it's the most affordable of the three cameras here.  I've found it priced at $899.99 up here.)

Nikon Coolpix 5700

(This one looks nice on just about every front, but it's the most expensive of the cameras here.  This one definitely violates my price limit - though not by much - at $1049.00.)

Olympus C-5050

(I really like this one too, and it's the one that I'm really leaning toward just now.  Nice zoom and macro, good colour, sharp in low-light - even at ISO400 setting.  I've found this one priced at $999.99 - which puts it just inside my price range - if you want to ignore sales tax and the like.)

If anyone out there has experience with these (or other cameras) and could offer this lad some advice, I'm all ears.  Well, maybe not ALL ears because that would be kinda weird, but I'm listening... er, reading.

I'm too young to remember the Vietnam war in any detail, but I wonder if this is just an aberration, or the start of a trend?  It's scary when you start getting draft dodgers... and there isn't even a draft.

Comments

[smrgol-t-kirin.livejournal.com]

Please consider the Canon 300D "Digital Rebel"

http://www.canoneos.com/digitalrebel/

It's a 6.3 megapixel camera with a nice lens for just under $1K (US)

You can check out some photos here:

http://www.pbase.com/canon_300d

(I've got a few under the name David McConnell or David Mc.)

So far I know of at least four furs with this camera - Myself, Panda Guy, Camstone Fox and J Badger.

[plonq.livejournal.com]

The 300D was actually the first camera that I looked at, but it comes in at $1500 up here, and that was a bit too rich. When I first suggested that one to atara she made unmistakable sounds of disapproval, so I decided to scale back to the "under a thousand" range.

I've convinced myself that, if the camera delivers decent colour and contrast and low noise, then I won't notice a huge difference between 5 mega-pixels and 6.

I almost furgot ...

[smrgol-t-kirin.livejournal.com]

One of the neatest sites for Digital Camera Reviews ...

http://www.dpreview.com/

Re: I almost furgot ...

[plonq.livejournal.com]

I'll check it out.

This guy does fairly extensive reviews too:

http://www.imaging-resource.com/

[furahi.livejournal.com]

I own an Olympus C5050Z
Overall, it's a very nice camera. Plenty of resolution, nice options, good zoom, good quality.
I would definetly recommend it.
Some bad things about it...
I would like to be able to have a bit less resolution, like 1600x1200 (my desktop size ;)
I don't know if this is called purple fringing, but I do notice purple-magenta areas surrounding oversaturated areas, like in this pic http://pics.3bassets.com/Graduacion/P1180580.JPG It's not that much, but it's more than I used to get with a Coolpix 960 (or something like that) that I used to have access to.
If you're in a quiet place and you turn it on forgetting to remove the cap, everybody will notice as it will "beep beep beep beep!" ;P
It's slow to focus, especially the darker it gets

Most of those are pretty unimportant, so I)I'd still recommend it. Feel free to browse around the subdirectories of http://pics.3bassets.com/3bassets they have unmodified images from the camera, and you'll get to know some of my pets ;)

[plonq.livejournal.com]

Urm, yes - I'm familiar with that particular aberration. All of the cameras in my price range suffer from that to one degree or another, so it looks like something I'll just have to live with and take into account when I am composing my pictures.

At worst I still have a very good film-based Canon camera that I can fall back on.

You're a cat-person I see. Heh. I expect I'll start posting up more pictures of my cats once we get this new camera.

[furahi.livejournal.com]

That defect isn't that bad, only in situations with shinny objects and poor lighting, but it /is/ something to consider.

A cat person? Well, more of an animal person.. <points to the page> I've got 6 dogs (Toby, Peggy, Cuqui (pronounced cookie), Pulque, Melanie and Spunky), 10 cats (Camilo, Kitty, Stimpy, Engracia, Juana, Romea, Albus, Fred, George, Muggle), a Furret (Virgilio), a Tarantula (Cleo) and 2 birds (Fito, a parrot, and Chocre). You can find pics of all of them there :D

[aerofox.livejournal.com]

Well, Loriana owns an Olympus C-3030 which is a fantastic camera!
I can't really say anything bad about it other than I wished it
used Compact Flash rather than "dumb media" as we like to call it.

I would definatly reccomend the Olympus.

[plonq.livejournal.com]

I've had a few people recommend the Olympus. A friend at work has the C-750 and he swears by it. He's produced some very nice pictures with it, though that's as much a testament to his prowess as a photographer as it is to the camera. I've owned some decent cameras over the years and still managed to crank out some pretty bad pictures.