For my wife’s birthday I’m planning to buy a digital camera to replace our beloved, stolen Sony DSC-V1 (no, funny guys, it’s not a dual-use gift. I have my own camera, but it’s an old Nikon film model and she likes digital). I had planned to pick up the Sony DSC-V3, but I know that a lot of people prefer Canon and honestly don’t know much about the new models of smallish digicams with decent manual control options. Any relevant advice or experience would be welcome.
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rilkefan
We enjoy (see too-small-to-judge picture here) the Canon A95, which the NYT tech guy recommended – uhh, Pogue I think. He seems like a careful unbiased enthusiast. My old heavy analog Nikon slr and its heavy extra lenses sit in the closet now.
Geek, Esq.
We got a Canon s50 a year ago, and it’s a great, great camera. They’re probably up to a newer model–s60–which would be the same camera, only a little better.
Krista
Well, if your wife checks out this blog, you just blew her surprise. :)
I’m thinking of getting one…in the long run, you save a lot of money. When we were in Europe for two weeks, I used up 17 rolls of film. Cost a damned fortune to have them developed. It would be nice if photo labs gave you the option of just getting CDs, for maybe a third of the cost of what prints + cds would be. It’d be such a savings of paper, too. I usually wind up throwing out 15 pictures out of every roll of 24.
srv
If you’re going to be doing alot of traveling or spending time backcountry, the camera should use AA’s. Proprietary batteries suck.
Took a Sony DSC-W5 backcountry in Yosemite with 3 pairs of AA’s over two weeks and only needed 2 pair (over 400 pics).
The V1 appears to be more for the advanced user, but older. The latest generation of Canon/Sony’s provide pretty decent video.
eric smith
As you have nikon already stay with nikon, the d-70s is a great camera. w/ the 17 to 80 lens as a package for ~$1300 it is a good deal. 6.1 megapixels will give you 11X14 prints just fine. Avoid the flame wars between canon and nikon, it is the amount of information that the camera produces that is important not if the sensor is full 35mm frame or the DX format. Also Nikon has just anounced the d200, it is a low end pro camera for $1600. 10 megapixels will be availble for x-mass.
I shot nikon because I have always shot nikon since the early 80’s and once you get locked in a lens set it is really expensive to make the change over, still Canon can and does make great stufff as well. Hope this helps
E
rilkefan
OT: Priceless Balloon Juice exchange.
Tim F.
No worries; she cares little for online things. It’s a useful ego check when I want to brag that I’m blogging now.
Sage advice. It looks like the DSC-H1 will be the one.
Mr Furious
Go to Radio Shack (or likely wherever you buy the camera) and buy a set of rechargable AAs and a charger. They don’t last forever, but the set I bought with my camera lasted a couple years before they started losing the ability to hold a charge. I’ve been using regular AAs in the camera over the last few months, and it absolutely EATS them. It adds up, and seems incredibly wasteful and environmentally unfriendly.
Took my Nikon 35mm on vacation last week, and added another 4 rolls to the ten or so I have piled up waiting to develop. One of these days I’m going to buy a digital Nikon body to use with the lenses I own and retire the film body and the old (now subpar) Olympus digital…
Jon H
Wife? Huh, that’s news to me.
Are you sure you haven’t started seeing Tunch in a new light?
Just kidding.
(Not casting doubt on your marriageability, just noting that as far as I recall you’ve mentioned pets far more than the spouse…)
Enigma
I buy $20 digital cams so I wouldn’t know what quality is…LOL!
Craig
i bought the canon sd450 and i am very happy with it. the skin tones are great, the battery life i decent at least it lasted the life of my 256 card. The reinforced screen is a great improvement over the sd400 and sd300.
O.F. Jay
Tim, I have a Sony W1 which I bought early this year. It’s not even sold in stores anymore. I concur with SRV’s advice: the W5 or the W7 even would be great, because they use AAs. Judging gtom my own experience with the W1’s manual control and a 30sec exposure capacity, I recommend W series Sonys with great confidence.
scs
Did you just get married? You just posted that she was your fiancee.
Matthew J. Stinson
Canon does make a really good compact in their ELPH series. Over the weekend I picked up a Canon SD550 Digital ELPH and have found it to be an intuitive piece of equipment — good because the manual is all in Chinese — that takes snazzy photos and just looks plain cool.
If you are interested in an ultra-compact camera, the Sony T5 and Nikon S3 might appeal to your needs. Both are extremely thin and palm-of-your-hand tiny. The S3 is especially sweet and it doesn’t force you to use Sony media. I personally like to have a sense I’m actually holding onto something, however, and the ultra-compacts don’t have enough heft.
Jay’s recommendation is good too in case you’re worried about the high cost of rechargeable batteries and want a larger small-frame camera than the ELPHs or ultracompacts.
Tim F.
John owns Tunch (or as some would have it, vice-versa). I’m the other guy who writes posts for Balloon Juice.
We were engaged at the time that we did our church touring. We got married this past December, but when describing things that happened beforehand I thought it would be more gramatically correct to describe our status at the time.
Vlad
I’ve bought several cameras in my day, and once you weed out the obvious losers, it really pays to consider how the camera feels in your hand. If she had a camera, try and get one for her that has a similar interface and a similar size, with buttons in similar positions. There’s nothing more annoying than constantly hitting the power button instead of the shutter, purely out of force of habit.
Also, don’t get a Fuji. Back when I sold the things, they were by far the most fragile of the major manufacturers (in contrast to Olympus, whose cameras you could drop down multiple flights of stairs without picking up anything worse than a few scratches).
Mark-NC
I bought a Panasonic Lumix DMC-FZ5 Black Digital Camera from
http://www.butterflyphoto.com/ – GREAT PRICES!!
Great camera.
It’s light, small, 5 Meg, image stabilized, etc. and takes great pictures.
I paid $330 for the camera, and added the Panasonic Lumix Essentials Kit to get a carrying case, 512 meg storage, and extra battery – highly recommended.
Only complaints – doesn’t use AA batteries (but the ones it does use last a long time!!), and I would prefer a larger display on the back panel.
nycmoderate
I’ve used Canon cameras for years and years. I have EOS 630 SLR, which was purchased in something like 1989-90 and still functions perfectly and is still compatible with all the accessories (lenses, flashes, etc) that more recent Canon digital and non-digital slr’s are using.
When I have the money, I’ll move up to a digital SLR, but for a point and shoot digital, I went with the 7.1 megapixel Canon SD500. It’s lightweight, with a long lasting battery (at least so far) and a large, bright screen. For less money, you can get the 5MP SD400, which several of my friends have and love. Depending on what you’re looking for, the Powershot series is also a good choice.
The only other company I’d go with is Nikon. My mother has a Minolta that’s given her nothing but hassles. Whatever you choose, keep in mind that good electronics are far easier to make than good optics, so go with a camera company (e.g. Canon, Nikon) rather than an electronics company (e.g. Sony, Casio).
But that’s just my 2¢.
Mark-NC
As an adder to my above post:
My camera for 20 years was a Canon A1. Great camera. Still works perfectly, takes great pictures – and is now collecting dust!
My Panasonic is 2/3 the size, 1/3 the weight, and best of all has a 12x zoom built in.
Another partial negative – no hot shoe – but has a decent built-in flash!
BTW – I’m not trying to say that this is the only camera on the planet I’d buy. I spent a long time deciding, and this one won on features/price. I would have bought the Kodak easy share but it didn’t have image stabilization. The “name brand” types tend to be more money by 20-30% for the same stuff.
FYI – with 512 meg of memory, I can take about 200 full 5 meg. resolution pictures. I leave the camera in the highest res setting permanently. It records to the chip in about 2 seconds at the full 5 meg density (this is a reason I bought this camera – most cameras are slower). They look great on my 20″ monitor and make excellent 11″ x 14″ prints.
Jon H
“John owns Tunch (or as some would have it, vice-versa). I’m the other guy who writes posts for Balloon Juice.”
Doh! Missed the byline, went for the gag.
Don
I love my Canon S500 as I loved my S100 before it. While it does use the propriatary batteries that srv doesn’t care for I know an important trick: ebay.
There’s knockoffs for most any propritary battery that’s been around a while and the S500 uses the same battery as all the SX00s before it. I have five of these puppies but I rarely use 2 before I recharge again – I get about 100+ pictures on a charge and when I was in Puerto Rico for a week and using it daily I didn’t change it once.
As opposed to my girlfriend’s Nikon which she bought for exactly srv’s reasons and she changes those AAs roughly daily when we’re on vacation. For her camera we travel with 5 pairs of rechargable AAs which cost about 2x what my aftermarket propriatary batteries did, weight about 4x as much and take up 2x as much space.
So don’t be too quick to dismiss propriataries as bad.
carpeicthus
What does she use it for? Do you think she wants an upgrade path, flexibility, portability, stylishness, etc.? There are hundreds of models out, most of them pretty good, so it depends on her taste and needs. I’m actually a professional photographer and obsessed with new camera models, so feel free to give me an e-mail if you want specfic recommendations about specific needs; otherwise everyone’s just going to recommend what they bought. ;-)
carpeicthus
Hm, thought that would leave my e-mail. Ah well, link to my photoblog, where I can be contacted.
Eric
Before my camera was stolen at the Marriot Marquis in Times Square last week, I had a good system worked out for my batteries. I had a simple wall charger with an extra set of high capacity AA batteries which, when I was on the road, I would switch out every night I was using the camera. It pretty much eliminated any problem with batteries going dead at inoportune moments.
Ahah
I’m the happy owner of a Canon SLR setup : EOS 350D + EF 28-135mm IS USM (+ a 14 mm lense I rarely use). The setup is not cheap (about $1,700 I think) but lot of fun. The lense is gyro-stabilized and that feature IS REAAAALLY EEEFFFING AAAAAWWWWEEEESOME.
Sorry for the all-caps but, even if you don’t want to plop the money for an SLR, you should really invest in a stabilized boxen (or a very heavy tripod) before looking for high pixel count or sensitivity or background noise. Sharpness and picture quality are just plain insane with a gyro. You will make your significant other very happy.
Rick Lee
I just blogged about getting a new pocket digital camera. For what it’s worth, I’ve been a professional photographer since the 70s and I’ve been fully digital since 2000.