Somebody Help Me Pick Out A Digicam

[SST2707]

Whoooooooooooooooohoooo... parents have given me the choice to buy my own Christmas present this year and seeing as I already have every electronic gizmo imaginable, I've decided to complete the collection with a DIGIcam. I know absolutely NOTHING about Digital Cameras, but I for some reason like this one:



Can somebody make good suggestions on a digicam in the $500 - $800 range and give me some tips on how to buy one. Thanks.

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[tommyalf]

Greetings:

First things first, Mega Pixels. Do you plan on blowing up any of your pictures? If not a low mega pixel camera will do just fine and you'll be able to save money. If you do plan on blowing your pictures up or cropping you'll need a higher mega pixel camera.

1.3 MP- 4x6
2 MP- 8x10
3 MP- 11x14
4 MP +- Poster size

A 4x6 taken with a 1.3 mega pixel Vs. 5 Mega Pixel will see no difference in quality until you start enlarging and cropping pictures. The higher the mega pixel the more information you have to work with.

Second, ZOOM, Always look at Optical zoom over Digital Zoom. Optical zoom is what the eye sees; digital zooms can add artifacts that you don't want in your picture. Lastly when it comes to zooms make sure you understand the measurements of Digital camera zooms, example 4x optical 2x digital means you have 8x total maximum zoom.

Memory, the camera you were looking at MVCCD line does not use memory sticks, stay away from this line. I say this because these units use allot more battery power then models that use memory sticks due to the spinning motor. Combine that with the LCD screen, and zoom lens, bye bye battery. Also, it is much easy to carry memory cards around then CD's. If your on vacation you don't want to carry around a bag of batteries and CDR's. Trust me on this get a model that uses some type of memory card. If your computer doesn't have a memory card slot you can purchase a memory card reader, all you need is a USB port. Memory cards are the way to go, there cheap and easy to use. Lastly stay away from Digital Cams that use floppy disks!!!

As for as what brands to look at, keep it to Sony and Olympus. Higher end Sony's uses Carl Zeiss lenses and Olympus produces their own lenses, others factory out their lenses. Sony uses Memory Stick, which is Sony's own invention. Olympus uses Smart Media cards. Memory Sticks are somewhat smaller; Smart Media cards are a little more widely accepted. Otherwise, there's no real difference. Just when you shopping for memory cards make sure you pick up nothing less then 64 megs, everything else is not cost effective.

So, my conclusion on which cameras to look at there are two that I really like.

Olympus OLMC720UZ- Great optical zoom lens 8x, 3-mega pixels means you can blow up to an 11x14.

Olympus OLMC4000ZOOM- 4 mega pixel means poster size prints and great for cropping, ok zoom lens 3x optical.

Both sell for $499 and are good overall cameras for the money. If you can spend more then the sky's the limit!

For the entire low down on Digital Cams check out Cnet

Hope this helps.

Tom

[ December 01, 2002 11:32 AM: Message edited 1 time, lastly by Tom ]