Good digital camera advice please...

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Posted: Wed Mar 28, 2007 11:57 pm

I said in an earlier thread a while ago that I will be going to Europe this coming summer. Now, after putting my schedule against my brother's, I find that he'll be taking part in a student exchange program in France, with him going to Lyon at around the same time I leave for London. He'll want the camera, so I was wondering what would be a good digital camera, for a good price, and also has a battery pack with charger. I would prefer a name brand camera (Simply because if it screws up while I'm travelling, it's internationally known), but if there's something that's really good, but not a name brand, I'll consider. Also, something that can take many many pictures between charges is also a big thing. What's your advice people?

Posted: Thu Mar 29, 2007 12:17 am

It will help if you give us an idea of your budget, so we can recommend accordingly Wink

Posted: Thu Mar 29, 2007 12:26 am

Right, forgot about that. I was thinking around $300-$400 CAD at most. I find plenty of them on the BestBuy Canada website, but I'm not very technical

Posted: Thu Mar 29, 2007 12:31 am

A charger and battery pack, not AA's?
You also need to consider how to connect to the mains.

Do you or your brother have preference for memory card type? Sonys only take memory sticks and Olympus the xD cards. Some people already have lots of SD card devices.

Posted: Thu Mar 29, 2007 12:31 am

The best �cash-strapped� camera is the Kodak Easyshare V803. It�s an eight mega pixel camera that runs under $200. This is according to Stuff magazine.

Posted: Thu Mar 29, 2007 12:38 am

Connie L. Gus wrote:

Do you or your brother have preference for memory card type? Sonys only take memory sticks and Olympus the xD cards. Some people already have lots of SD card devices.

My brother and I have travelled to Europe before with our family, and we have the appropriate adaptors for that. For me, the bus that I will be travelling on throughout the continent has British outlets. Thanks for the advice though!

Posted: Thu Mar 29, 2007 12:50 am

OK, so $250-$350 USD (roughly). Something you can take on your travels but won't leave you a grand out of pocket of something happens to it, right?
My current digicam is a Canon Powershot A series, and I've been very pleased with it. It does use 2 AAs, rather than a battery pack, but I prefer that. The battery life is exceptional compared to the Nikon point-and-shoot digicams I've used, especially for non flash pics. It uses SD memory, and I picked up a 1G SD card for under $50US, which is nice because the camera shoots movie clips.
[edit]- Here's a pic from my camera. Its cropped, but no digital enhancement.

Posted: Thu Mar 29, 2007 12:58 am

Silly question, I know that in the US they have a different current 110 volts instead of the British 220 volts. Is it the same in Canada as in the US?

If it is the same you might want to consider getting something that runs off disposable batteries as opposed to a recharger. You don't want to bugger that up.

Posted: Thu Mar 29, 2007 1:23 am

It is the same in both countries, Dionysius.

I would prefer something with a charger simply because of the fact that I don't have to keep buying new batteries, if needed. It's reliable for me, and I would like to keep this camera after the trip as well for myself.

Posted: Thu Mar 29, 2007 4:34 am

I feel I got the best of both worlds with the Canon A630, after wibbling over it so long. It can be found on sale for well under $300 frequently. Very nice image quality, runs off of AAs, and is quite happy with rechargeable AAs. As I already had a universal charger that could charge both NiCads and NiMhs, I only had to invest in four more rechargeable batteries to have enough for a spare set that fit quite easily in the purse.

I don't have a large purse at all, yet I manage to carry the camera, two mini-tripods (the gorillapod and the mini ultrapod), the USB cable, a card reader, and four extra batteries with ease. I even have room left over for the other random purse stuff, including two wallets, sunglasses, tissues, hand lotion, business cards, and various other whatnots.

Posted: Thu Mar 29, 2007 5:21 am

I like Cannon also. I bought an Powershot A80 a few years ago just based on a review I saw on TV and they have a rotatable viewscreen which is great. "Only" 4 megpixel and it takes nice pictures. After I bought mine and everyone in the family tried it, they all went out and bought one also. I'm sure they have a better one now. I was worried about the battery life because everyone I knew who had a digital camera, went through batteries about every 3 hours. I can get about 400 pictures or maybe about a month of use before changing the batteries. It could be that all cameras are like that now.

Master of Master Baiters Joined: 08 Apr 2006 Posts: 571

Canon cameras are excellent in my experience. I'm using a Powershot A75... only 3.2 megapixel but the picture quality is better than many 6MP cameras I've seen. Also supports full manual aperture/focus/shutter, which makes me feel all geeky Very Happy

Posted: Thu Mar 29, 2007 6:39 am

DrWho wrote:

I was worried about the battery life because everyone I knew who had a digital camera, went through batteries about every 3 hours. I can get about 400 pictures or maybe about a month of use before changing the batteries. It could be that all cameras are like that now.

I don't think so, some digicams still eat batteries like crazy. Just last year I borrowed a fairly new Nikon digicam whilst my Powershot was on safari (loaned to a friend), and I couldn't believe how fast that thing went through batteries. Shocked

Mrs Bean makes a very good point. Rechargeable AAs are a good way to have the best of both worlds. I'll add that the AA option is quite a bit more flexible if you are inclined to go places where your tent doesn't come equipped with a place to plug in a charger Wink

Posted: Thu Mar 29, 2007 6:51 am

Standard Procedure wrote:

I would prefer something with a charger simply because of the fact that I don't have to keep buying new batteries

you can get really good AA rechargable batteries, this way you can keep one set charged and the other set in the camera.

Posted: Thu Mar 29, 2007 7:14 am

Standard Procedure wrote:

It is the same in both countries, Dionysius.

I don't know if you'll be able to recharge an in-camera battery designed for 110 V in Europe where its all 240 V. There's also the frequency (USA 60 Hz vs rest of the world 50 Hz0 but I don't think a recharger minds that. So go rechargable AA batteries.

Also, are you taking a laptop to down load your images onto? If not, take a couple of spare memory sticks.

I have a Sony Cybershot DSC-T1, 8 megapixels. Has a nice large 2 1/2 inch sq screen. It is a little small for my chubby fingers, and I think it sold at about $NZ500 ($US350) though it'd be cheaper now if still available (recharger though).

NB: From memory, Japan has 110 V 50 Hz, unique in the world I think.

Posted: Thu Mar 29, 2007 10:46 am

On my world tour I took an Olympus C5050 which ran on rechargeable AA's. I also bought a universal adaptor plug off ebay, and a spare set of batteries. Note cameras usually seem to use Ni-Mh batteries, which are higher rated than ordinary cheapo ones.

I tried to charge one set of batteries every night, but the beauty of AA's is that in an emergency you can buy a set of Duracell AA's from a shop, and get quite a bit of use out of them before you have to bin them.

Posted: Thu Mar 29, 2007 1:22 pm

You're right, Dr. Who, I totally forgot the lovely, clear, large enough to actually make out the subject without being bulky rotates 270 degrees viewscreen that folds in to protect it. Or as one of my coworkers who has the 620 calls it, the "MySpace/Facebook" feature. (For taking your own picture.) And unlike a lot of digital cameras these days, it still has a viewfinder.

I think I took something like 500 pictures AND video clips (probably thirty or forty video clips) before I even got low battery warnings. The video is rather good quality, too. You can shoot up to an hour of video, though I haven't tried going beyond a few minutes at a time. I splurged and got the 4 Gig memory card, and I haven't even managed to fill up the camera halfway at this point, even at best image quality.

Then, I used it for about another month beyond that before they croaked. Canons seem to be quite good about not eating batteries. My ooooooooold brick of an Epson... was not.

EDIT: By the way, I would also highly suggest investing in the mini ultrapod. Though the gorillapod is kind of cool looking, I actually think the ultrapod is the better option for a "take with you" tripod that can also strap to random things like tree branches or poles.

Posted: Thu Mar 29, 2007 2:15 pm

I've been getting advice to use a Canon SD1000 ELPH digital camera from my friends in university. It has everything I need, and it's only about $350 CAD. What is the general consensus about that? Does anyone have experience with it?

<a href="http://www.bestbuy.ca/catalog/proddetail.asp?sku_id=0926INGFS10085793&catid=22474&PCName=camera%5Fcanon&logon=&langid=EN">Butt long linky</a>

Posted: Thu Mar 29, 2007 3:26 pm

I use a Fujifilm 9100/9600. You might need to stretch your price limit that little bit more but it's a very good camera.
It's an Automatic/SLR hybrid so you get the best of both worlds and with 9 megapixels the shots I get are brilliant.

Took this 2 minutes ago on the automatic setting with macro.

Posted: Thu Mar 29, 2007 8:05 pm

I recently took a 2 week trip to china. I took a fuji finepix a500 with a big card.
uses 2aa batts. battery life is good. took 200 pics and probably 20 mins of video. used 4 aa's the whole trip.
perfectly decent pic quality
small enough to fit in a pocket.
not trendy enough to attract attention.
about 130 usd

I try to avoid rechargeables when travelling
easier to carry an 8 pack of aa's, plus you can buy them anywhere

I probably won't buy a high end digital cam again until I'm ready to go slr
have an olympus c3000 that just isn't as handy to carry around as the little fuji.

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