Camera

[ls1222]

Everyone has the most beautiful pictures to share on the DIS boards. What would be a good camera to get. I would like to purchase one before we go to Disney this fall. Right now, I have just a regular 35mm. Is digital the way to go? Thanks.

 

[bicker]

Digital is definitely the way to go, IMHO. I highly recommend Canon -- A-series are great. A95 is comparable to what I got my wife last year, and even perhaps a bit better.

 

[DizChick05]

we took a digital on a Feb. magical gathering with 12 people and it really worked well. we took alot of pictures and we didnt have the hassle of getting film if you get a hi-quality camera, you can download the pictures on your computer and make mutiple discs to share, and you can print the pictures on photo paper, do red eye reduction, and put them in a scrapbook. so digital is defenitly the way to go. It really isnt that compicated to do all this if you read the instructions.

I hope this info helps

*DizChick05*

 

[RobtG]

I still use film and will continue to carry my gear for some time to come. If you want to post photos, share photos with family and friends, don't want to pay processing for the pictures that don't come out good then you should go digital. Especially if you are using a point and shoot film camera.

bicker is right in that the Canon cameras are great. And they have plenty to choose from. My brother got his wife an s1 and a portable printer that she now carries to every family function and we have instant pictures. And the pictures turn out terrific. I also talked my father and uncle into digital rebels (slr's) and they love them.

Just remember to carry extra batteries and get the largest memory card you could afford (so I'm told, I just carry the batteries and extra film)

 

[bicker]

I have a Canon S-series, and I think I like my wife's A-series a little better. I've been trying to figure out what really separates the two series, and I'm not sure I really have a firm handle on it. It seems that the S-series uses non-standard size batteries while the A-series uses AAs. The optics seems to be a little better, for the same money, with S-series, but I'd rather have the flexibility with the standard batteries.

 

[RobtG]

The biggest difference ( or one of the differences) with the S1 and the A95 is the long lense and the image stabilization. I have IS on my canon lense and it works very well. My knowledge on digital cameras is not that great other than what I read in mags or hear from other users. I believe the S1 is the next step above point and shoot digital.

Anyway not to confuse Is1222 too much I think we both agree on digital and Canon.

BTW I believe the A95 was on the NY Times most popular camera list.

 

[ukcatfan]

I believe that the "A" series means that they use AAs. There are other Canons that use AAs though. I have the S1-IS and it uses AAs. I believe that Canon does not really consider the S1 and S2 as part of the "S" series. They have more in common with the "G" series in my opinion. Canon naming does not really make much sense.

 

[Disneyrsh]

You might want to do a search with the words digital camera. Lots of info already discussed.

fwiw, I have a minolta dimage g600 digital and I love it. I never bring my film camera anymore.

 

[montblanc]

I highly recommend digital. Make sure you test the model before purchasing so that the shutter speeds, focusing time and other characteristics are satisfactory. A good camera is fast, lasts a long time on a set of batteries and can take good shots in low light. I get about 1,200 shots per charge, have no wait time between shots and the camera does very well in low light (a weakness of many digicams).

 

[oogieboogie]

I don't think I could ever go back to film. The ease of use of digital cameras, the fact I don't have to buy film, process it is just awesome. I love that I can just print out a few pictures that I know are great instead of processing the entire film only to find 1 or 2 good pictures - what a waste of resources.

I love that I get instant gratification. I upload the pics from my camera to the laptop every night and in an instant, I can see how the pictures turned out. I don't have to worry about memory cards going thru airport security and getting damaged like film.

Yeah... I really love my digital. This last trip, on a 9 day trip to WDW, I took an average of 300-400 pictures per day. I took 154+ pictures of the castle at night alone. I took another 150+ pictures of the fireworks from Contemporary. I could never do that with film. Over 3,000 pictures for a 9 day trip - no way could I carry that many film.

Stick with the trusted names in photography and you should be fine. Canon, Nikon, Fuji, Kodak, Olympus, Konica Minolta, all good camera makers.

I personally love Canons. I've had a Canon 35mm SLR for the longest time and now I have a Canon S1 IS that I'm absolutely in love with. The S1 and the S2 have point and shoot capabilities but with tons of manual controls too. What I really like is the large optical zoom that the 2 have. It's really awesome.

These were taken from the 10th floor outdoor stairway of the Contemporary. This picture I took without the zoom on:

This picture I took with the 10x zoom maxed out - the level of detail is amazing:

 

[julie d' tooth fairy]

Hi Is1222

My DH is a professional photographer and he recommends you go digital.

It’s expensive to start with but once you have all of the equipment you never really need hard copy prints again if you have a PC, you can save you images on to a CD/DVD and play them back through your TV.

It can be expensive to produce digital prints especially from an ink jet printer, but most photo labs produce digital prints on conventional photographic paper for a few cents a print and as you only have the prints produced that you want…no more unwanted out of focus, shots of your thumb or photos of the inside of your bag…lol

We are very lucky as he can borrow the hi-spec cameras (Nikon D2x) from work, if he plans to do any quality pictures (as he calls it) and we have an amazing panoramic (60in by 12in) of the Grand Canyon from our West Coast trip last year.

He say’s like everything in life… you get what you pay for. Even in the point and shoot market all of the big companies (Canon, Nikon) are very similar in quality.

A few tips would be:

Pick a camera that uses removable memory cards, ideally Compact Flash (CF) cards as some point & shoot have a fixed memory, like a hard drive. This means when the memory is full you need to get to a PC to download the images or delete them to free up space to take more, where as a removable card can be changed for another.

Pick a camera that has the highest mega-pixel value (i.e. 5.0 mega pixels) just as 35mm film is made up of tiny silver light sensitive crystals, the higher the mega pixel value the better quality the final image. Don’t go below 4.0 mega pixels (unless cost is a real issue.

Also some digital point & shoot cameras have what’s called shutter lag, this means when you press the button to take a photo there is a small delay before the camera actually takes the picture and this can result in either a blurring of the photo or missing the action, again this seems to be price related.

As my DH never really wanted to carry a big camera bag on vacation (he does this 5 days a week at work) we sold our 35mm Nikon F90x (on Ebay) and purchased a Canon Power Shot Pro1 in February this year and he now takes this camera everytime we a weekend break or vacation. It is a 8.0 mega pixel camera, with the smallest of shutter lags and the images are fantastic, it was a little expensive at £600 ($1000) but it maybe cheaper in the US.

But he would recommend this one or any of the Nikon coolpix range.

Sorry it’s a long reply…My DH is dictating what I should say as I’m not that clued up on digital photography really…lol

Jue

 

[JujiD]

Call me Dopey but I'm bringing both, digital and 35mm. I've had a digital for about 1 1/2 years, and I like seeing pics instantly and deleting the ones I don't like. It's also good if your kids want to take a picture and it ends up being of someone's foot or the sky, you can just delete it. But, I just can't give up my 35mm. Ilike getting the pics developed and being surprised later on. And for some reason I think they are more permanent. Probably not true but I guess I'm old fashioned.

I always carry a backpack to the parks and the cameras are not big so the second camera doesn't take up much room.

My kids sometimes get annoyed having to pose a little longer, but too bad, I'm the mother! Someday they'll thank me. (I hope)

 

[PixieDust32]

Well, I like both, digital and film!

I got a Nikon N75 i can change lensses and get beautiful up close shots, and i can also get a cd with the prints and do all the digital stuff, red eye, enlargement, and the we don't have to pay for the bad pics. I like it a lot, in the low light is great, or slow motion.

Now, i do love my digital too!! I got a nikon also, is a 5600 very small, it fits in my jeans pocket, 5 megapixels and 12 times zoom, 4 digital! is fast and like they said, you can deleted the pics you don't like, i got 2 memory cards, 1 IG and 1 512, you can put over tons of pix!

I used lots of film and lots of digital, we use wal mart, the price for a 24 exp doubles with a CD $8.00, pix you don't like, just tell them and they will give you credit for them.
For digital wal mart has the machine to print them for .19 cents each, you can crop them, remove red eye and add text and all that cool stuff,and the quality of the prints is excelent!

We do take tons of pix at Disney World with both cameras!

 

[ls1222]

Thank you so much. I'll be taking note of all these suggestions when I go camera shopping.

 

[disneygirl1977k]

After reading and posting threads for 5 months I went out last night and bought the Canon S1 SI and I LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE IT...I highly highly recommend it, I also went into every store I could and played with tons and after reading some threads on the Canon S1 I went to wolf camera last week and played around with this one and OMG....I was blown away by this camera, it is absolutely amazing........Kristy