Help me buy a digital camera

[Dinner]

I've decided I need a digital camera but I know next to nothing about digital cameras. What should I look for, what brands are best, and how much should I spend. I'd like to get a good quality camera but not necissarially the top of the line. Picture quality is important.

[Japher]

I'd be interested in the advice too. I've also been wanting one but have been to lazy to do any research on them...

[Jon Miller]

cannons are good

for the snapshooter, 2-3 megapixels is enough

optical zoom is important

the viewer in the back (the screen), is unimportant

Jon Miller

[Dinner]

Cannon makes good digital cameras? Where can I find a review of various digital camera?

[Zopperoni]

Here is a selection of cameras under $300.

[Kaak]

Oerdin: this is the one i would recommend-- Olympus Stylus 300

http://accessories.us.dell.com/sna/ProductDetail.aspx?category_id=5104&keyword=&mnf=&prst=&prEnd=&sku=A0133597&mnfsku=&SearchType=&Page=productlisting.aspx&spagenum=1&Pageb4Search=&InStock=&items_per_page=25&orderby=&mnfname=&brand=&SubmitSearch=&image_flag=True&refurbished=&c=us&l=en&cs=19&iCompatid=

We sell a lot of them, and i've played with it. Stay away from Sony. You want a camera that has either a SD slot or a Compact flash, and a li-ion battery.

Dell has 10% off digital cameras right now too, so if you need one i can help

[Chemical Ollie]

When you buy a camera, look for a CAMERA. Megapixels are not important, but the optics are. The only situation where you would need more than 2 megapixels is if you plan to enlarge the picture above A4 or US letter format. Those situations are extremely rare and mostly used by professionals.

The most important part of a camera is the lens. Crap input will give you crap output, and no electronics can fix that. The companies that make good analog cameras normally also make good digital cameras. Canon, Minolta, Olympus, Hasselblad and Nikon are good examples of that. Some of the traditional electronic producers who are not traditionally known as camera professionals outsource the optics to someone who knows that business. If you buy a Sony, make sure it has a Carl Zeiss lens, otherwise the camera is crap. Trust me, I've tried one with a Sony lens.

I have a Panasonic camera with a Leica lens with 12X optical zoom. While the zoom is great, I am somewhat disapointed with the shutter number. The lower the number, the less need for flashlight in semi-darkness and the more likely are you to take sharp pictures of movement without a flash. Whenever you use the flash indoors, there's a great risk of getting red eyes and pale colourless faces. While red eyes is a very easy problem to Photoshop, it still takes a lot of micromanagement (and 'poly time). Most digital cameras have a shutter number of 1:2.8 or higher, but Olympus Camedia C-5050 has 1:1.8 to 1:8.4. That's a very price-worthy camera, despite the limited optical zoom (3X). You could probably buy it for 5-600 dollars.

Another problem with digital cameras is the time lag from pressing the expose button until the picture is actually taken. For some cameras it could take seconds (Sony), while others are almost as fast as analog cameras (Olympus). It is very annoying when you try to take a picture of a kid, press the button and find out that the kid has left the view when the picture is taken. It happened to me hundreds of times with the Sony camera.

[Atahualpa]

Take care that it is driven by good recharble batteries (LiON). Otherwise don't be surprised to see battery low after about 10 shots.
Also consider that you may need a bigger flash module if the one that is included doesnt satisfy you.

[Urban Ranger]

What about the Nikon D4? It looks pretty good, eh?

[Drake Tungsten]

I managed to get a Canon PowerShot A70 for $266 before I left the States. I'm quite happy with it.

[Dinner]

Ok, that's good advice everyone and I will make sure to avoid Sony (I didn't like their cheap plastic bodies any way). Here's some more information:

I already own Nikon N65 SLR camera and a selection of Nikor lenses as well as Nikon and Yashica point and shoot cameras. The Nikon point and shoot is about 2 years old and the Yashica is about 4 years old and both of them have performed well but niether has a zoom lense so I'd like to replace them with a digital camera which does have a zoom.

My first inclination is for the digital camera to replace one/both of the point and shot cameras so I'm looking for a very small yet durable and feature packed camera. If I want to take high quality pictures then I'll use the Nikon N65 which I already own. It seems like I can get a decent all metal digital camera for under $400 but I don't know much about digital cameras.

[Urban Ranger]

If you already have the Nikon lenses, maybe you want to check out their offerings of SLR digital cameras. Yeah, they are on the expensive side, but you get the quality as well.

[Kaak]

Oerdin, look at the canon S series, the digital elphs are great! That's what i have, and i love it...

[Dis]

I wouldn't recommend mine .

The CF card gets corrupted if you leave it on too long and it overheats

Though maybe I should have a Cannon brand name CF card. Maybe using a cheaper brand for my 128 Meg card wasn't a good idea.

[Dinner]

Kaak & Diss: Ok, I'm going to look at Cannon brand cameras since both of you and one of my college buddies have recommended Cannon plus I know Cannon makes top notch SLR film cameras. I'm going to make the rounds at all of the major digital camera stores today so I can manhandle the merchendise and compare prices. Once I'm done with that I will write another post about what I saw.