Small digital cameras?

LEDBE
carrot

carrot

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Joined
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Location
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As my Casio Exilim suddenly died on me one day, I have been looking around for a new digital camera. It was really the last straw when I was visiting San Francisco and felt incredibly embarrassed to be using disposable cameras. I've always liked the Canon Powershot series so I've been focusing on that... but I'm open to suggestions. Any photography experts here who can help me out?

Criteria:
Under $300
Uses SD/SDHC
Good battery life
Excellent photo quality with good macro and manual modes
Some optical zoom
Tiny!
More hardware buttons and less software buttons is a plus, as is water resistance

Right now it looks like the Canon Powershot SD1000 meets all those criteria... but I'm wondering about other options? I'm staying away from Casio this time around.
 
Mr Carrot,

I'm a life long Canon fan, but I'm really impressed by the Nikon CoolPix S10. It has a unique lens design that provides a huge lens in a tiny body, with none of that - multi ring deployment, winding in and out when powered off and on - stuff. This achieves an image stabilized 10x optical power (equivalent to 38-380mm), in a camera weighting under half a pound (7.8 oz @ 4.4 x 2.9 x 1.6 in). It also has SLR style custom white balance calibrating. The only things it lacks are manual controls - exposure and focus.

I believe one charge is good for 300 shots, about half of what a 2 gig SD will hold when set to max. And it does support SDHD.


Here's the price

what it looks like:

a review:

the user manual

a demonstration of the lens' power:

and a taste of its macro capability


Its bokeh is rougher than a 30D with an 85mm L, but its not $3000 either:

30D-85.jpg


I just love how this looks! :devil:
 
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You can't go far wrong with the powershots. I haven't liked any Nikon compact digicam that I've tried, since they don't autofocus nearly as well as Canons, especially in low light. Their DSLR's are a different story and seem to outperform Canon's DSLR's. I think Nikon's DSLR's are actually designed by Nikon while their compacts are rebadged from some no-name companies. Canon's compacts are probably designed by Canon since they have more consistency across models.
 
I just got a Panasonic Lumix T3, Leica lens (pseudo I suppose) 10 x optical and a large LCD. I love it, had the Canon, and the Nikon compacts, but for sheer image quality and a 10 x Optical, this is my EDC camera and I cannot fault it. Its £250 here in UK so would guess at perhaps $300 in US maybe.

I rate it 8.5/10
But obviously not as good as my Canon 30d with 24-105 IS L lens, but its huge and not pocketable, The T3 is very pocketable and produces great images.

my 2c

Regards
Lee
 
Well, not to discourage any of the people so kind to reply to my question, but I just saw the Sony N2... a little bit on the large side but a very sweet camera. I'm considering even overlooking my SD/SDHC requirement for it...

Lumalee, I have heard many great things about Panasonic's Lumix series, as far as the smaller models go. But I can't seem to find anything about a Lumix T3?

ElectronGuru, the CoolPix S10 looks sweet, but maybe a little big? I'll have to find one to try out in person. I always liked the design of the Coolpix swiveling lenses.

Looks like I've got some more research to do.
 
This latest swivel is much smaller than older versions you may be familiar with. Fat lens aside, you'd have to give up a lot to get smaller than 4.4 x 2.9 x 1.6 in. But only you know what you want. Here are some images that may help:


next to Nikon S7c and Olympus Stylus 740
s74-compare.jpg


In hand (not mine :grin2:)
3624-7.jpg
 
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I should say I had some of the small Canons before, and they're nice (my officemate has a more recent one) but I'm now on a crusade against proprietary batteries. So my current compact camera is a Canon A530, which runs on two AA cells. It's not as tiny as some of the lithium ones but it fits ok in a large pocket. And I'm having a few random problems with my unit but I don't know how common that is. If I buy a new camera anytime soon I'll probably get another one from the same series.
 
I've become a huge canon fan over the years and have yet to be disappointed by any of them that I've owned. I do own a panasonic dv cam now and so I'm starting to like some of those. I can't do Sony products anymore, I've just had too many problems with the cameras that my mom and sister have fought with over the last year or so. Every one has a different interface and often several bugs that can cause total erasure of the card! (at least the one my mom has can do this fairly easily if you do things out of order during trying to import the pictures)

Think long and hard before you move away from your Canons!
 
We have a Canon Powershot SD900 (the one with the titanium body) and we've been very happy with it. We had a middle of the line Sony for several years before that and the Canon was a huge step up. Very compact and lightweight, yet it takes incredible pics.
 
SD700Is.
Owned for over ayear now and love the results. This is my third SD Canon camera, very happy with image quality for the size. I wasn't looking for a ton of zoom out of a small lens, didn't want all the image problems. Not a fan of sony's cameras. Only problem is those batteries
 
Canon has some new models coming out, both an elph and the G9 with the 12 mega pixel sensor, digicIII processor, optical image stabilization and the whole 9 yards! Oooo, I so want a new camera ;) I'm seriously going to save up for the G9 I think after I can read a few reviews of it past october when it comes out... The advantage to the G9 is that is has a bigger lens which reduces the color banding you see with the smaller lenses, but I DO so like the so tiny little cameras that you can carry without lugging so much around. It's going to be a tough choice!
 
I JUST picked up a Canon Powershot "A" series. My main camera-buying criteria was that it must use AA cells, and most Powershot A series use 'em. I used to have an older digital Elph that used a li-ion battery, and at $70, there was no way I was going to carry a spare, so my daily photog duties were basically limited to one battery.

My new Powershot (I believe it's the A560... it shoots an advertised 7.1 megapixels) runs and runs and runs on a pair of Titanium 2700 mah AAs, and of course I have a ton of spares that also go into my Ham radio and radio scanner. The Powershot also has a noticeably smaller lag time between pressing the shutter release and the picture being taken than my old Elph, and that's pretty huge once you get a taste of it hahaha.

I paid $180 for my A560 at Wal Mart.... the picture quality isn't as nice as the more expensive Canons.... my 4.3 megapixel Elph's photos came out sharper and less grainy... might have something to do with the lens...?
 
For my first digital camera I made AA battery capability a requirement and used NiMH rechargeables in it most of the time. I took a chance this time with my Canon SD900, and I'm glad I did. I've never had the low battery indicator come on, and I've only recharged the battery three times in nine months, and I've taken hundreds of pics, and the battery never loses its charge if the camera sits for a few weeks without being charged. I easily run out of memory for pics (around 200 pics currently) before I run out of battery power. It is worth the expensive proprietary battery for me to keep the camera tiny and to always be sure of plenty of power.
 
at $70, there was no way I was going to carry a spare
Click to expand...

Eee gads man! Where are you purchasing these from? I paid $19.95 for my spare from one or the other reputable battery companies that support CPF and have been perfectly happy with it. I would not hesitate to get another canon with the little LiIon battery in it as they are not expensive and are quick to charge. I can carry the whole elph camera, a spare battery and a second memory card in the same space that it would take to carry only 4AA batteries all by themselves ;)

What good is any camera if it's too big so you didn't bring it along ;)
 
I don't give advice on particular models much because there are so many capable ones available but I can't overstate how useful optical image stabilization is and I will never buy a digicam again without it. I get many, many more keeper photos with optical image stabilization particularly low light or indoor shots.
 
Yo carrot :wave: ...... i`m looking for a new compact too,
I had narrowed my choice to a Casio Exilim V7 as it does some cracking video in H.264 codec AND you can still use the 7x optical zoom ....:thumbsup:
when you`ve narrowed your choice down, check youtube for a review,
here`s a Sony N2 review for example or Exilim V7
.
............ Good Luck
 
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