Camera-y badness/goodness

[danaeris]

Well, the gentleman at Ritz Camera says that I'd have to send it away for a week or two and it would cost me $150-200. For that price, I can get a slightly less compact digicam of comparable quality new. So unless he was lying in the hopes of garnering a commission, buying a new camera seems like the plan.

I'm obviously not at all impressed with the quality of my now-defunct Casio camera. I'm wondering what experiences y'all have had with various brands.

Ultimately, I'm looking for a camera with at least 3 MP and 3x optical zoom (since those were the two main specs on my existing camera). Oh, and it definitely needs to be able to take a memory card, hopefully the same kind that my old phone took.

I might not do anything about this anytime soon. As much as I'd like to have a camera, my finances aren't exactly fabulous right now. And then, of course, I have to ask myself, "Would I prefer to spend that money on a camera? An IPod? Other random merchandise?"

On another note it looks like I AM going to get paid for the Contract of Doom. At least, I received confirmation of receipt of my invoice, and I'm told the invoice has been forwarded to the accountant. We'll see what happens.

Tomorrow/today is a parent-teacher event at my school. Oh the joy! Since students received their interim reports over the weekend, I don't doubt at all that the parents will have a variety of questions to pose me. um, yay.

Comments

[plymouth.livejournal.com]

my Fuji Finepix sucks. Not that you would be buying the specific model I have, with only 2.0 megapixel and 3x zoom... I'm not sure if it says bad things about Fuji in general, but I had to send it back for repair twice during the warrantee. Fortunately it has not broken again, as the warrantee ran out last december. Poorly made. I have another friend who owns one who has also had problems.

cameras

[rightsock.livejournal.com]

I really like olympus. they're easy to use, the menus make sense, and they feel good in the hand.

if you get a non-zooming camera, I've seen 2-3 Mpix for like $100. otherwise the bill goes up to $200-$300 for 3x optical.

if you want low res, and your phone contract is up, perhaps a camera phone?

[athereal.livejournal.com]

I really like Canon. They make good cameras. I have an elph from a few years ago that is still working just fine (although I will admit that the software that comes with the camera is enh). New models are going to be decently expensive, but you can still find the older ones kicking around the internet and they've gone way down in price.

But yeah. Canon rocks my socks.

[dazzlynn.livejournal.com]

I have a cannon elph s400. and I love it. but it's a bit $$. I think i paid like $400 out the door on ebay, but I got loads of crap with it too. extra battery, 256 memory card, etc.

I highly suggest ebay too. you can get great packages on there with lots of stuff that ends up saving you a good amout of money.

[vokzal.livejournal.com]

There are websites that post reviews of cameras. Like, um, dhphoto.com? Something like that. Anyway, when I bought mine two years ago, it was down to Canon and Nikon, both excellent choices for camera-ness, and they both used compact flash cards. I ended up going with Canon because they had a rechargable battery.

I'd still vote for either of them. Sell off your old memory, don't let that pick your new camera.

[nytemuse.livejournal.com]

If you can manage to find one you like at Circuit City, let me know. I have a cousin who works there so she might be able to get it at a discount.

[tshuma]

I have a Nikon Coolpix 1200 I bought used from a friend, and I love it. It's a little older than what you want (less than 3 megapixels), but I recommend the Coolpix line in general. I've read pretty good reviews about the later generations.

[auros]

My Kodak has served me well in all respects but one: it uses only its own variety of batteries, and after having them for a few months, they stopped holding charge very well. I have problems with picking up the camera after it's been sitting around for a couple of weeks, and finding that the battery (which had been dropped in fresh, then used for maybe three shots) has lost its charge, so I have to swap in another fresh one and put the old one on the charger. It's a nuisance, though probably less of an issue if you're actually using the camera constantly, so that you have to swap-and-charge on a daily basis anyways.

I forget the model number, but I remember that it was pretty cheap for 3 MPx. And it does take quite good pics, and has a good UI.

[auros]

Oh, and I'll note that my cam has 3.3x optical zoom, and then uses "digital zoom" to go up to 10x total (though it loses some resolution in doing that). In any case, I took some very good close-ups of flowers, bugs, and so on, when I was in Oz.

[plymouth.livejournal.com]

I never understood the point of digital zoom. Isn't it just glorified cropping?

[vokzal.livejournal.com]

yes

[auros]

I'm not completely sure how it works, but it produces a picture the same size as the un-digitally-zoomed ones. I guess it might be just expanding each pixel into a grid of nine and then doing a gradient from the center of each set of nine to the next, but I think it may use some kind of time-divided sampling method (i.e. how many instants do you see a color more like a particular neighbor?) to make the filled in pixels slightly more accurate than a simple blend. I know that in order to get the digital zoom to produce a good pic, I had to either put the camera down, or hold it really, really steady.

cameras

[jnanacandra.livejournal.com]

I've had a couple of Kodak EasyShares; and while they take decent photos, the manufacturing quality sucks. Little pieces break off or stop working, and it costs as much to repair as to get a new one, even if the repair should be really minor.

I've heard good things about Sony and Olympus, though I don't have personal experience with those.

Canon, however, *rocks*. I've never had any problems with the Canon cameras that I've owned and used (Eos Elan, G2, Powershot). Their online tech support is even decent, which is rare these days.

Re: cameras

[auros]

Huh. Mine withstood fairly rough usage in Oz. *shrug*

I think my mom has a Canon film camera, which she's had for something like a decade, and still loves...