Digital Cameras
I’m looking into purchasing our 1st digital camera, I need from all my technical friends what in your opinions is the best buy for the money, I don’t want to have to mortgage the farm, and is the easiest to use and download off of. Your recommendations please.
February 12th, 2007 at 12:37 pm
Depends on the quality of the finished pic you want….. I saw a key-chain digital camera at Wally-World that takes over a hundred pics, has the USB download cable, and the software for $14.95….. It didn’t give any quality details on the package…… It was located at the check-out stand……. It caught my eye because of the price…… I’m sure you are probably looking for something a little more on the higher-end, but from this I can assume that digital cameras are a lot cheaper than they used to be…… I haven’t shopped for cameras in a long time as my Sony is still working great….. Hopefully someone out there can give you more info…..
February 12th, 2007 at 8:59 pm
One of my first stops when researching tech gear is Tom’s Hardware. They do a good job of reviewing things. The only unfortunate thing is they frequently review cutting edge stuff, which isn’t typically what I buy. You can find the cameras in the Gear Digest section.
That said, if you’re looking for a good deal on your first camera, buy last year’s model new. Here’s the Gear Digest Digital Camera Round-Up from December 2005. If convenience is a premium, take a look at the Kodak Printer Docks. These are not cameras, but printers. The idea is to print 4×6’s directly from the camera on high-quality, acid-free paper. Of course then you’d have to get a Kodak camera, which are mostly pretty easy to use.
I also suggest you go to a big electronics store that has a lot of working cameras on display. Touch them. Feel them. Take some pictures. What cameras fit the JJ hands and eyeballs? Give those cameras more weight in your choice.
February 13th, 2007 at 2:34 am
I have a Kodak DC215 that I’ve had for about 5 years. I’ve been pleased with it’s performance when I use the highest resolution setting, but it’s only a one megapixel camera. Now, you can get much greater resolution in that price range ( around $200. ). It also has only 4X zoom–my next camera must have at least 10X. I bought a 48 meg compactflash memory card when I bought the camera. It will hold about 200 photos at once, but that’s at one megapixel. Compactflash is one of the four types of memory cards which I can plug directly into my computer, so uploading is a snap.
February 13th, 2007 at 8:38 am
I’d strongly recommend that you visit your local library and check out the November 2006 issue of Consumer Reports. They have 7 pages devoted to picking a digital camera, including ratings of 64 cameras in 8 categories. Their “quick picks” based on “best value for most people” were the Canon PowerShot A620 and the Kodak EasyShare Z700. The “CR Best Buy” was the Fujifilm FinePix E900. But I would pick based solely on that, read the articles to determine which features are most important to you, then pick based on the rating of those features vs. price.
February 13th, 2007 at 11:43 am
A second on TTop’s CR recommendation. I have a few year old Canon S1-IS that I love; it was a CR recommended model. I wouldn’t hesistate to buy the current generation S3, whcih sports a stabilized, 12x optical zoom. The larger body size is nice for my big hands, though the smaller PowerShots are nice, too.
Also, http://www.imaging-resource.com has very thorough reviews.
February 14th, 2007 at 2:00 pm
Oops, meant to say I _wouldn’t_ pick based solely on that. Anyway, check out CR.
February 15th, 2007 at 8:23 am
J.J., you might also want to check-out refurbished cameras if price is a major factor….. Jek bought me my first digital camera, which, being rebuilt, was 50-60% cheaper than a new one….. It was a Toshiba and it has since been passed on to Robo and he still uses it today….. It was a tough little camera too….. I once dropped it 20 feet off of a ladder on to a lower roof deck, picked up the pieces, stuck it back together, and everything worked!….. I was impressed and relieved as I had had the thing only a few days when that happened….. Needless to say, Toshiba products are at the top of my electronic devices list…….
February 16th, 2007 at 10:12 pm
Thanx everyone, I will take all these into consideration, Right now I’m (we) are leaning toward the CR research and then finding a good refurbished based on previous CR recommendations. Hopefully I will be posting some photos soon.
February 20th, 2007 at 3:55 pm
Won’t you need a second camera to take photos of your new digital camera? :-p
February 23rd, 2007 at 7:28 pm
Details, Details, Details.