Digital Cameras

[kmEatr]

I have a Caon S230 digital Elphp 3.2 mp. I have had this camera since Christmas and it has been great. The size of a credit card, body made out of metal, and only weighs as much as half a penut butter and jam sandwich. It's been across Canada, dropped, and it's taken about 1800 pics and 30 mpeg movies with sound.

For the buck it has the best features.

Hope this helps.....

[solarbean]

I did a great deal of research last year prior to buying mine, and I settled in on the Canon G2. It is a 4 megapixel camera (which is all you will need to get great enlargements up to 8x10). It has a number of features that I use regularly:

Rotatable/flip-out display
Fully Auto to Fully Manual Exposure (and everything in between)
Auto focus and Manual Focus
Exposure Bracketing
Hot-shoe for external flash
Preset and customizable white balance (VERY IMPORTANT!!!)
Built-in flash
Many different image resolution and compression settings (including raw)
Comes with Rechargeable battery / recharger
Uses compact flash memory
Makes Movies
Slide-show mode for showing pics on the TV to family and friends
Excellent Canon G2 support forum

I won't get into the details, but the first 6 items in the above list have served me extensively in getting great pictures. My father-in-law had one of those walmart cheapo digicams that cost about 200-ish and it takes crappy pics, has no flash hot-shoe, and has few manual overrides to fix exposure issues.

I have found that I am a much better photographer with this digital camera than with my 35mm Nikon film camera. With the digicam, I take a shot in automatic mode then preview it. If it is not a great pic, I simply delete it and try again using manual overrides if necessary.

Regarding the number of pixels (i.e. ... 4 megapixel, 5 megapixel), here is how to determine what you need: A museum quality photo has 300 dots-per-inch, but to the human eye, 150 pixels-per-inch is just as good. Anything less than that will begin to reveal graininess. So to get a nice 8 x 10 print of an image, the size would need to be at least 1200 x 1500 pixels (1200 x 1500 = 1.8 Megapixels), but preferably 2400 x 3500 pixels (2400 x 3500= 7.2 Megapixels). As you see, 4 megapixels falls in between. I have printed an 8x10 and it came out absolutely gorgeous. It is important to bear in mind that the larger the image file, the more cumbersome they are to work with. Large images are memory intensive, take up a lot of disk space, can't really be shown on the web or emailed, and can't be fully viewed on a display.

I added a Lensmate (lens cover tube) and a Canon Speedlite 420ex flash to my G2.

Here you can see me talking a pic with the G2 (look in the reflection)

[Visian]

Originally posted by solarbean
I did a great deal of research last year prior to buying mine, and I settled in on the Canon G2.

You made an excellent choice. These are also called Powershots, which is what I had pointed Dave to above.

The image quality is quite impressive on these, and the overall quality of build, the software, etc. is at the top.

Canon vs. Nikon is one of those religious issues... and I have always leaned toward Nikon. Right now I am trying to decide whether to go for one of those 5700s, which with price drops and rebates, has reached the $700s level, or to spring the big bucks for the D1 (and use all my Nikon lenses).

My dilemma is that the "point and shoot" variety of camera are so much easier to deal with while touring on a motorcycle...

When I rode to Alaska in 1998, I took an early model Kodak digital (the first <$1000 megapixel camera) and my Nikon SLR w/ 5 lenses. I shot one roll of film the entire trip and god knows how many megs of digipics because the SLR was such a pain to get out and get set up.

What to do? What to do???

Ian

[solarbean]

My friend has one of those Nikon D1's. They cost about $5000, but man-o-man what a camera. They are built like brick shutzpah-houses. Very good image quality. I believe the CCD is larger on them and that helps with pixel clarity.

[bmwdean]

My Nikon D1x is fabulous, but pricey and heavy. Love the beast. It can do far more with photographs than that of which I am capable.

For a smaller camera that fits in a tank bag I use the now-discontinued Nikon Coolpix 990, which does a great job once I learned to use rechargeable nickel-metal hydride battries in it.

Today, however, there are dozens of fine digital cameras on the market from several good manufacturers, including Nikon, Canon, and others. The micro-cameras from Casio even look interesting. Don't go less than 3 megapixels, better yet more than 4.