Jan 22 2006
Shopping for a new digital camera
My faithful PowerShot S30 suffered one too many falls last week. It was far from being the worst that it had seen, but this time, the button is broken. It still kind-of works (bye bye pre-focus as the shutter release lost its half-pressed capability), but who knows how long it will take for the button to stop working completely.
So it’s this time again where I get overwhelmed by the too many options there are in terms of cameras. More than picking a particular model, I have found 3 formats that are attractive:
- Ultra-slim: the Casio Exilim Z750 is very slim and fast; unfortunately, it seems that you need a dock to charge or download pictures, though.Jonathan is always raving about it and pointed out that with an SD card reader and thanks to the great battery, it’s not so much of a problem. It doesn’t have an orientation sensor, but rotating picture by hand is not terrible. The Panasonic Lumix DMC-LX1 is also a possibility, with its cool 16:9 CCD, but the pictures it takes seem fairly noisy.
- Compact: the Canon PowerShot S80 seems to be really cool; slightly bigger, slightly slower, but seems to have lots of cool features and manual settings, and a wide-angle lens; I have my doubts about the thumb-operated zooming button though.
- Big zoom: the Panasonic DMC-FZ5 has good features including a 12x zoom; it just is bigger. The Kodak EasyShare P880 has a 5.8x zoom and seems good too, as well as the Kodak EasyShare P850 with its 12x zoom.
I need to look at this a little closer.
Comments on any of those more than welcome.
January 23rd, 2006 at 12:14
Panasonic DMC-FZ7 announced…
Just as I trying to find out when the DMC-FZ5 was going to be updated as it is now one year-old, Panasonic announces the
DMC-FZ7.
It looks really cool. I can’t wait to read reviews. I may have to wait a little before changing cameras, as it will …
September 13th, 2006 at 16:18
If u haven’t bought one already, I can recommend the Canon S3 IS as best all round creative camera today, the ability to do movie instantly from one button, and to take a hirez image while shooting that same movie is unbelievable. Someone’s been listening to the users.
For a compact, you won’t beat the Canon SD550. Fantastic picture quality and build quality in a supercompact that fits in your pocket in the case with a 4Gb SD card… that’s 30 minutes of video or thousands of 7MP images. Freakin unbelievable……!!!
December 17th, 2006 at 8:20
I recently got a Powershot S3 and quite happy with it.
I researched the digital world extensively, desiring to upgrade from my trusty Kodak DX 3215, as it was quite limited and I needed something more robust. I looked into obtaining a strict DSLR, but the prices are in the high hundreds and low thousands…out of my price range. And I wanted the capability of shooting video. The S3 had everytning I desired…and more. The movie feature is quite nice, even at it’s lowest settings.
Baseline prices were averaging around $399.00, with small variations. On-line deals were slightly better, but not much, and…I prefer to pick up my electronics in person to examine the product. I saw an ad from OfficeMax offering the S3 for $369.00 - with an instant $30.00 in-store rebate. They threw in a free 512mb SD card and the option to purchase a $100.00 Canon photo printer for $30.00. I took the offer, but declined the extended warrenty of $79.00 for two years. I could have waited till the prices came down some more, most likely after Christmas, but I liked the deal offered. I am happy with the purchase.
It has plenty of zoom (12x), takes very good images, and the sharpness of the images are quite good. I have plenty of experience with my old 35mm Nikon film camera, and the S3 exceeds it in many areas. I do not miss at all lugging around various lenses and accessories, and this camera has plenty of features to satisfy the photographer.
I have experimented with the manual controls and find them exceptional, with real time results. And as an additional benefit, everybody who has seen it, has complimented me on the purchase…even die hard strict DSLR users. I will look into aftermarket Lens hoods and tele-converters to enhance the performance.
ASTROPHOGRAPHY -
I needed a camera for astrophotography, and I hope this one will serve well, but one nagging observation…
It’s remarkable that I have been able to record stars, constellations and nebulae with just the camera lens, but I find it bothersome that I cannot focus stars down to pin points, it just stops short. I don’t know if this is inherent to all digital cameras, but maybe it’s just mine.
There are examples of my practice begining astrophotography efforts with the Powershot S3 here:
http://astronomer.proboards23.com/index.cgi?action=display&board=ps3&thread=1166148281&page=1
and here
http://astronomer.proboards23.com/index.cgi?action=display&board=ps3&thread=1166148281&page=1
Other than the difficulties of obtaining pin point stars, I highly recommend this camera.
Respectfully,
Chicago Astronomer Joe
Administrator
http://www.chicagoastronomer.com