Digital Camera Recommendations

Oh man! Ad-blocking software has been detected! :'(

This website is run by the community, for the community... and it needs advertisements in order to keep running. Blocking our ads means your killing our stats!
Please disable your ad-block, or become a premium member to hide all advertisements and this notice.

We've booked ourselves a holiday down to London (first actual proper holiday in at least 6 years), and need to get ourselves a new digital camera. Does anyone have any recommendations?

I need a compact camera thats not too bulky, has a reasonable battery life, and doesnt take too long to actually take a picture (we're taking pictures of animals). Video would be nice, but by no means the main requirement.

We're thinking about spending around the £200 area tops.

Thanks
Fergal

 

Oh man! Ad-blocking software has been detected! :'(

This website is run by the community, for the community... and it needs advertisements in order to keep running. Blocking our ads means your killing our stats!
Please disable your ad-block, or become a premium member to hide all advertisements and this notice.

This site has good reviews on them fergal. Let me know what you choose.

http://www.dpreview.com/

I myself have the Kodak easyshare c643. I think it takes pretty good pictures but mine is a couple of years old. I am sure they have come out with better cameras since this one.

 

In your price range I highly recommend the Canon G9. It's a fantastic landscape camera and produces excellent quality files (I regularly make 30 inch prints from mine). It has a 35-210 equivalent range when compared to a traditional 35mm camera. The only real drawback is the low higher ISO performance that is characteristic of a camera with such an undersized sensor.

 

I use a Fuji S5500, its a little old now but has some of the features of a DSLR such as 10x zoom, nice lens size, apature settings etc, while still maintaining the ease of use that a compact has. You should be able to pick up some of the later models in that series in your price range. On the down side I can get through a set of batteries and then some when I go to Chester zoo or similar (but then saying that I did take 400+ photos)


Have fun on your holiday!

 

Im afraid im not all that up on cameras. Can you explain what you mean by low higher ISO performance?

 

very good camera for everyday use have recommended this camera a few times and have had no complaints yet.Panasonic Lumix DMC-TZ5.

would also recommend Cannon but you do tend to pay for the name in that price range

 

With traditional film cameras you would select film with a certain ISO level, the higher meaning the film was more sensitive to light, so in darker conditions you would still be able to get a good picture. Digital cameras can replicate this by changing the sensitivity of the sensor inside the camera, so you can set the ISO level in the camera settings and take pictures in darker conditions. According to the post above doing so with this camera will degrade the picture somewhat (higher ISO means more noisey/grainier pics).

 

ISO- wouldnt worry about that unless your taking sport photography or night shots (Sunset) but realy dark conditions.

 

Indoor shots can also be a problem with the G9. Trust me on this one.

Anyhow, here's a helpful article on the topic of sensors and noise:

http://luminous-landscape.com/essays/sensor-design.shtml

 

Just thought I'd update you all. The missus vetoed the G9, as she didnt like it.

In the end, We just picked this up. Decent enough camera, good zoom, and with the 16GB memory card, we'll be taking pics for days.