Any recommendations on Digital Cameras

[Minnie's Mate]

I am a purest and prefer a film camera with hard prints, but I am considering a digital camera. Currently I have prints made from film and get a photo CD of all of the pictures from the roll.

At work we use Sony's that use 3.5 inch floppies to store the image. Picture auality is good, but camera cost is high.

My sister has an Olympus and really likes it. I don't know which model she has, but it uses the flash cards for storage. The flash cards can get expensive but hold a ton of pix.

Anyone have any recommendations on which model would be a good investment.

 

[Beverly Lynn]

I have a Sony Mavica myself! I love it! the pictures are great and you can get a decent amount on a floppy too.

 

[nhmomx2]

I too was a diehard 35mm picture taker. I just love my photo albums! My DH got me a Hewlett Packard 215 (?) for Christmas. It came with a 8meg compact flash card (on super fine resolution - and I wouldn't take it on any other if you are going to print them out - that only holds about 11 pictures). We purchased a 64meg card that holds about 80 pictures on superfine. For my birthday he got me a HP PhotoSmart 1100 printer. The pictures come out much better than I had thought they would. The camera is small, compact, easy to use. I do, however, think that for those special times I will use my 35mm. Good luck!

 

[jwfla422]

We bought my mother an HP215 for her birthday. Very simple to use and probably one of the most affordable digitals out there. (the only drawback is that it really eats the batteries and it doesn't use rechargable batteries), but to eliminate this you can purchase an a/c adapter that you can use during file transfer or when viewing many pictures on the LCD screen on the back of the camera. Definitely go for a large memory card which will hold a lot of pictures at a higher resolution.

My husband recently purchased a Canon S100 Elph for me, I love it, it's very small so it fits in my pocket or fanny pack and it has a lot of nice features plus it has a rechargable battery. I can't wait to take it with us this trip coming up. That one also came with an 8 MB memory card but I purchased a 48 MB which holds 81 pictures at high resolution.

There are a lot of factors to consider when purchasing a digital camera.

Your best bet is to first figure what price range you want to be in and then start looking at some of the stores. I can tell you that COMP USA has been having these very informative workshops on selected Sundays the last few months.

I went to one a few months back and it was very helpful (it's free). If you really want to educate yourself call them and see when they will be scheduling their next workshop. It's not really a "hands on" workshop, it's really a very good lesson on everything you wanted to know about digital cameras.

 

[Minnie's Mate]

I checked with my sister and she said her digital camera is the Cannon ES 100 Elph. (my mistake) So that sounds like a good one to me. She, too, bought the extra memory cards. I think she bought two 64 or 128 mg cards. She said combining those with the 8 mg that came with the camera gives her over 500 pix in the medium resolution format.

The thing that appeals to me about the Cannon Elph is the small size and moderate price. I wanted some extra opinions since this is the first digital my sis has used. She was a dedicated 35 mm slr user until about 4 years ago. She went to an Advantix until she got the digital at Christmas.

I still use my SLR for family pix, but use a Minolta Freedom Explorer for vacations. After lugging a camera bag, huge flash attachment and extra lenses around Disney World on two trips, I decided it was time to "downsize"! I love my Minolta and the pictures it takes. I also like having the ability to zoom in and take flash pictures without having to change lenses or attach a flash unit.

I do have one more question about digital cameras and printing the pictures. How well do they hold up; do they fade or stick to the inside of the photo sleeves in a photo album? I would like to continue to have hard copies for a photo album. My 4 year old likes to get the photo albums down and go through them and relive the "Magic".

 

[nhmomx2]

I lied I don't have an HP 215 camera...I have an HP 315 camera . I use the rechargeable batteries. The alkaline batteries do get used up very quicky. I purchased panasonic rechargeable batteries - they are specifically designed for digital cameras & today's techno gadgets. They do last longer and the charger is portable so I can have some charged & ready to go all the time.

 

[jwfla422]

That's ok nhmomx2 you're allowed to fib...actually the HP315 is a better camera, I almost bought that one but then when my husband found out we could trade our Canon Elph APS in for the Canon S100 we splurged (mainly for the size of the camera). The 315 has the chargeable batteries which you said and that is really important.

Minnie's Mate, as far as the pictures and how they hold up, honestly, the oldest digital picture I have that was printed on an inkjet printer isn't even a year old and of course it's still in good condition but they are projected to fade over the years (that's what I've heard).

However I would recommend (I am about to do this myself), those photos that you really like...have them developed like you would regular film pictures. You can send them to various online services (including Kodak, CVS, Wolf Camera, etc) or take them to a local camera shop. They charge about 45 cents a photo here (for 4x6 size). I bet in the next year or so that most places that develop film will do photo prints from digital cameras. You can leave them your memory card (which doesn't thrill me) or put them on a CD or Zip disk. Just make sure you save them in a med to high resolution.

The nice thing is that you can pick the photos you really like (instead of wasting it on a whole roll of film and having half of them turn out well).

I also have a Minolta (just an auto focus), but it drove me crazy because I'd always miss the picture however that thing was like a bull dozer, I've dropped it many times and it still works. The Canon S100 has a Manual focus option as well as auto focus.

 

[DisneyMom92]

There are also many websites that provide prints from uploaded digital images, whether from a digital camera or scanned. Among them are www.shutterfly.com and www.ofoto.com. I have used both of these and the prints were amazingly good, even a couple that I had at a lower resolution.

I scanned some pictures that I no longer had negatives to, to get a second print or to improve digitally and get better prints. They worked wonderfully.

 

[jwfla422]

Minnie's Mate, DisneyMom92 mentioned a site called ofoto, they have a very informative web page about digital cameras that you should definitely check out: http://www.ofoto.com/Camera.jsp?UV=293887921902_51700463103&US=0

 

[Bennet]

Zurg's Digital Camera at Disney page:
http://wdwig.com/digital.htm

 

[simba2]

I have the HP 315, too, and love it. The price is great -- $299 and it is simple to use and takes wonderful pics. We also have the HP Photosmart 1100 printer and the pics I've printed on it look very close to those developed from 35 mm.

 

[robinb]

I have an Olympus 2000 and I love it. I have 2 Smart Media cards (a 8mb and a 32mb) and they can hold between 50 and 300 pictures depending on the resolution you choose. We used to take pictures at a lower resolution but after trying to print them, we've gone to a higher resolution. We can take fewer pictures on a card, but we download the pictures to our PC every night so that's not a big deal

I've had my pictures printed at Wolf Camera:
http://www.wolfcamera.com/1-800-643-WOLF/printatwolf/

They make great prints on Kodak Royal paper. Those prints will last as long as regular prints will.