Advice re digital camera purchase

I've been thinking of looking at ebay for a decent digital camera but know nada about them. Any advice folks as far as what will take a half-decent picture and not cost me the earth. Is there like camera resolutions (pixels) or anything to consider?


~~Joanna~~

All I know is dont get a HP M407 ! Mine takes descent scenery pics and stuff, but for pics of animals and close ups and such, its AWFUL!

O.K. First let me qualify my coment on this post. I am in no way a professional, and have very limited experience with digital camera's however my opinion follows....

I have used both the Kodak easy share and the H.P. Photosmart 733. I like my hp way better. It is a 3.2 mega pixel which means it will take fairly good pictures that you can zoom in on and the resalution is quite good. It also has good shutter speed (That is supposing that is what you call it on the digital) providing you use the correct setting. The settings are changed easily and if you read your manual it is pretty simple. It also has 3x optical zoom which uses a pentax zoom lens along with the digital zoom. This lets you take some good pics. Oh yes and it is fairly rugged as well. Mine has taken some spills. It also comes with pretty good software for your pictures (Cut/crop, zooming, blowing up, resizeing) The best thing is You can get into one at Wal Mart for under $200.00.

As far as the Kodak easy share, it takes o.k. pictures, but I have found trouble with card formating. If you forget to format your card everytime before use, It will not allow you to download to the computer and when you do format, it looses your pictures. I found this the hard way. The worst thing is that was the camera we used at the office to take crime scene pics. Luckally for me it was not a very big or important case (Well all are important but this one was low on the list.)

So my advice is the H.P. photosmart 733. But with my opinion and .50 cent, you can make a phone call..lol.

Good luck and be sure to shop around before you buy.

Cheers
Ray

Hmm.. is 4.1 Mega Pixels better or worse than 3.2?

well how much are ya willing to pay? the new digi cm i got is a canon power shot with 3.2 mega pizel resolution. and has 4x optical zoom lens. cost 183$ to get here(gotta love credit discounts) but it would have been 230$. so the camera itself was 200$.

Brian

The more mega pixel's the better. To let you understand it a bit better let me explain a bit.

Picture the mail boxes at your local post office. Each individual box is a mega pixel. If you take a wall and cover it with 10 boxes the boxes will be pretty big. (Bear with me) now you take the same wall and put 100 boxes on it. That will make the boxes much smaller. (Hang in there I will have a point.)

Now you want to paint a picture on your wall of boxes. The trouble is, you can only put one color on each box face. Using the wall with only 10 boxes, your picture will be grainy and obscured, and you will not be able to have a good picture. As far as the wall with 100 boxes, you can do way more with that wall and have a tighter picture and a more clear picture.

Your photo is set up like the mail boxes. Each box is a pixel and can only hold one color. (Of course we are talking about millions of boxes on a small wall) the more pixels you have, the more acurate and fine the lines and colors will be in your picture. This is because on the same amount of space, your colored boxes that make you picture are smaller and tighter.

This means a couple of different things.
1. the more mega pixel, the larger you can make the picture without it becoming distorted. You can easily make a poster size picture with a 3.2 mega pixel shot. but then again how many of us make posters out of our pics? Anyway, with the 4.1 M/P your poster shot would be that much clear. If you went with a say 2.0 m/P you wouldn't be able to print anythind over a 8x10 and that would not look great. Hopefully I have not lost you yet.

2. The more m/p you have, the better to zoom in and on your pics. You will be able to take a picture of someone, and then in your picture program, zoom in on say just thier face, Cut that portion out, and print only that portion rather than the whole picture. When you zoom in like that it is called the "Digital Zoom" With regular pictures, or ones from camera's with few m/p, the pic becomes griny, this is because by zooming in and making the picture bigger, you inlarged the pixels,(Went from 100 boxes on the wall to 10) if you only started with 2 million pixels, and only used 10% of the shot taken, you just made that shot a 200 thousand pixel shot. And them 200k pixels will have to get bigger to fill the same (For example) 5x7 picture.

The easier way to remember, is the more m/p you have, the better quality of picture you will get. Also the more m/p you have the more $$$ you will spend. Like I said, the 3.2 will take o.k. pics that you can make a poster out of, but I wouldn't. Of course the 4.1 would make a good poster. But the botom line is, how many posters are you going to make. Therefore, unless you plan on doing alot of work in your photo shop or whatever photo software you have, (zooming, cropping,ect.) or unless you are taking professional photo's, it is not necessarily worth the extra $$ for the 4.1 over the 3.2 then again, if the cost is close, go with more m/p. I have taken some great landscape pics as well as portrats with my 3.2 and have made great prints from 8x10 and smaller.I have even done a good bit of cropping and cutting with good success.

Hope I didn't mix things up too terrably bad for you.
Cheers
Ray

wow! Nice work with the mailboxes good way to explain pixels! I'm impressed.

now don't forget about lense quality! haha. ;)

You should totally buy my broken one so I can afford a replacement ;)

Quote:

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Originally Posted by JamminJonah

wow! Nice work with the mailboxes good way to explain pixels! I'm impressed.

now don't forget about lense quality! haha. ;)

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I don't know much about the lenz quality thing other than the better quality of lenz, the better the pic will be...lol. I have no idea what lenz is better than the other. Someone else will have to take care of that one.

Wow Ray thanks! That explanation was wonderful! I'm the visual sort of person so explaining it that way made total sense to me.

So look for the highest mega pixel I can afford.....gotcha.

Anything else? Somone pls explain the 4x optical lens please, please.

Basically I'll be doing mostly close-up shots of the snakes, the kids, etc. Not much of big panorama type views (like I get to travel and see panorama type views a whooooole lot and most people aren't all that impressed with...."hey want to see my big shots of exciting downtown Boyne City, Michigan!!!!").

All input is appreciated as it will be awhile yet before I purchase a digital camera. It's unfortunately a bit low down on the priority list but I do want to spend our money wisely.


~~Joanna~~

lol
I am also lookin for a good digicam. I take my current pics with my Samsung camcorder, and they leave alot to be desired. You can see the results in most of the pics I post here. It just doesn't give that vibrant, ALIVE photo that Im lookin for.

I just did a fast look through Wal-Mart's online site then ebay. Wow Ebay does have some killer deals so that's probably the way I'll go.

Just have to sort out that whole 3x, 4x whatever lens thing and also what the heck is a camera "dock"? It seems to recharge the camera I think but it's not the same as a printer that actually prints out your pics....correct? Some come with this dock thing, other's don't....do I need one? Does one need a printer or can you print pictures out of a regular computer printer if it is a good one (we also need to replace our computer printer at some point).



~~Joanna~~

You can print from your own computer with your existing printer, that's what I do. I use glossy photo paper that my uncle gets for free from somewhere... I'm pretty sure you could buy it at any office supply place though. It usually works well!

i think 4x optical lense just means you can zoom in 4x as much or something like that lol. idk maybe someone else can tell ya but thats what i think it means.

Brian

I have found some great offers at www.butterflyphoto.com This is where I bought my camera. It is a Minolta DiMage Z2, 4.2MP, 10x optical zoom and 4 times digital zoom. I got it for my B-Day in March and I still haven't figured out all of the features. I wubs it :)

Go to www.resellerratings.com and it will give you ratings on the majority of online stores and whether or not it is a good thing to buy from them or not. My camera normally retails for a little over $400. I bought it for $310 with a $50 Mail-In-Rebate from Konica-Minolta.

I have also found that Circuit City has great prices on their memory cards. They have a 256MB SD memory card for $25! I wubs them too... Here I come Constrictors Reptile Expo!

Quote:

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Originally Posted by frankykeno

I just did a fast look through Wal-Mart's online site then ebay. Wow Ebay does have some killer deals so that's probably the way I'll go.

Just have to sort out that whole 3x, 4x whatever lens thing and also what the heck is a camera "dock"? It seems to recharge the camera I think but it's not the same as a printer that actually prints out your pics....correct? Some come with this dock thing, other's don't....do I need one? Does one need a printer or can you print pictures out of a regular computer printer if it is a good one (we also need to replace our computer printer at some point).



~~Joanna~~

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O.K. Joanna, the 3x or 4x thing is the zoom. 3x means it will zoom in three times closer than the normal view. Much like a pair of binoculars or a scope on a rifle, the bigger the x power the closer it will bring the object you are looking at to you. As far as the "Dock" there are several options with different camera's. Some do print right there providing you don't want any larger prints, others simply charge your camera's bateries (Providing you have rechargable bateries) and also take the pics from your camera and put them on your P.C. I do not use the dock myself. It is just as easy to plug in the cord that came with my camera into the usb port on my pc and use the download software that came with the setup to put pics on my pc files. I also use my ink jet printer to print photo's. You can get the photo paper almost anywhere. I get mine from Wal Mart. This way you can print nice 8x10 portrats if you want and are not limited to the 5x7 that is the max for most dock/printers. my camera also came with webshare software, and print shop software that allows me to change the pics color, size, the brightness and contrast. This is quite handy sometimes when I don't do a very good job taking the pic and use the wrong setting on my camera, And I do this a lot....lol. It is that whole paying attention to detail thing...lol.

Hope this helps, good luck!
Ray

Lenses- a lot of this is interpretation of the viewer generally however;

Canon in my opinion is at the top of the list with affordable cameras (and thus lenses) but still very high quality lenses.

I haven't watched the market for a while but last I looked in the non-pro range of digi cams Kodack was leading the megapixel race and canon was leading the lense competition. I personally own a sony but it's old and I'm looking to buy a newer canon. Anyways just be sure it has a macro feature for those up close photos!

any 3 meg or higher will do fine for internet or up to 8x10 prints. optical zoom is better than digital zoom, the lens actually moves. digital zoom just magnifies the image more. your lighting setup plays a major role in close up shots. a good light setup a basic tripod and an average camera will go far.


vaughn

Something else I didn't think about earlier. You may find a good deal somewhere like e-bay, but if you have a problem, Will you be able to run back down there and exchange it or get it fixed? Something to ponder with a purchas like that..Making a purchas like that, I prefer to do business with someone I can get my hands on,,,,lol,,,if you know what I mean....

Gosh thanks for all the advice folks! Scribbling notes madly so that when we actually start looking (budget....budget....budget) we will have all this great information at hand.

Gotta love this forum!!!!

~~Joanna~~

One more thing to mention about megapixels...

I noticed you said that you'll be doing a lot of close up shots. A 3 megapixels camera will provide a decent quality 8x10 print without cropping. A 4 megapixel camera will provide a decent quality 11x17 print with little to no cropping. Keep in mind that most of the time you will end up cropping an image to remove parts you don't want to show, or simply just to 'blow up' an image to focus more on the subject. Anytime you crop an image and maintain it's aspect ratio, you're going to lose quality. The resolution sets the threshold to the level of quality print you should expect to receive upon cropping an image.

Using the mailbox example as before, say you take a photo of all 100 painted mailboxes but you only want to show a certain portion of it. Lets equate this to a 3 megapixel camera. So you go into your photo editing program, select the section you want to show... say a 3x5 section... and then 'blow it up' to fit on an 8x10 mat size, your quality will be greatly reduced. Now lets say that wall had 200 mailboxes, same size wall... just smaller boxes. If you were to do the exact same thing with this photo as the one mentioned before... your picture would still be fairly clear after you crop/blow it up since you have more mailboxes/area, or in this case, megapixels/area. So really, if you don't plan on blowing anything up or taking closeups, a camera with a lower resolution (megapixels) will suit you just fine. It's when you start to edit the image (crop/blow up) that you'll need to step up the resolution. So more megapixels is only better depending on the application. Make sense?

Also, since you said you'll be taking close-ups... you may want to look into a camera with a Macro function. This gives incredible detail at close range.

As far as the zoom goes... most point n shoot digi cams nowadays are 4x optical and digital usually ranges from 3x and up. The more important of the two, as someone mentioned before, is the optical zoom since the lens actually moves to magnify the image. A digital zoom is in essence cropping the already optically zoomed image, and the further you zoom in with a digital zoom, the more grainy you can expect your pictures to be... especially without a tripod to steady the camera.

As far as the lense goes, you don't really have much of an option with the point n shoot cameras. Sony I believe uses a Carl Zeiss lense in all of their point n shoot cameras which is a good lense. There are other comparable lenses out there, but generally it seems that most companies stick with one brand of lense. Unless you're going to a digital SLR (Single Lens Reflex) you're at the mercy of the camera company to choose the lense for you.

Hmm... that's all I can think of as of now. :)