digital camera - buy now..or wait till jan 1

[d'Isigny]

Jan 10, We are spending a week at WDW and another on DCL...want some suggestions on buying a digial camera before Christmas or waiting till the January sales. I want something that records images on a CD - not floppy or memory stick/card.

I'd be grateful for your suggestions and options.

Take good care of you and yours........K

 

[mnmom22]

I think Sony is the only brand that has cameras that record to a CD. I was told that they don't hold very many images per cd. I would suggest that you find one now so you have time to use it and get used to the settings etc. I bought a camcorder right b4 vacation last year and I didn't use it as well as I could have. I missed a lot that I wanted to record. Good luck with your purchase and your trip!!!

 

[dcfromva]

d'Isigny,
I would vote for buying now as well-especially since you have a particular type of camera in mind. In my area, if the item is really popular, it tends to get cleaned out before Christmas and they don't replenish stock until after they do their annual invertories (or later).
Also, you need to spend some time getting used to your new camera. Our digital camera sat in it's box until we went to a wedding. It was supposed to be a back up camera (we were planning to get familiar with the features of the new camera, but primarily we were going to use our 35mm camera).... We forgot to bring our extra 35mm film (duh!) and soon the digital camera became our primary camera. It was trial by fire! Everything turned out okay, but we could have gotten more out of the camera if we had known how to use it.
I can't offer any suggestions on which camera to buy. I have a Nikon Coolpix which writes to a flash memory card. I hope my next camera will be a combination movie/still camera that writes to a DVD (and is really small and the still shots are at least 6megapixels....) But, I'm not sure anyone makes one like that, yet.

-DC

 

[HB2K]

I just recently purchased a new camera for myself and my wife. I've been doing the digital thing for 4 or 5 years now (started with a Mavica 85).

Don't buy the hype. Sony pushes the mavica floppy & CD line as being more "user friendly" media. That is the farthest thing from the truth. Unless the resolution is low, you can't fit more than 10-12 pics per floppy. So if you want to take a lot of pictures, you end up toting around a box of floppy disks.

The CD format is propriatary...you can't use any old CD-Rs in the unit. You have to use Sony's CD-R's. Not too cost effective.

I bought a Canon S200 for my wife (retail of around $299). I also purchased a 128MB compact Flash card from Costco for $50. Using the best possible resolution (2 MegaPixels*) she can store almost 135-140 shots.

I also just purchased a Fuji S602 for myself. I'm a bit more of an advanced users, so this model really seems like it will suit me. A 6X optical Zoom, 3 Mega Pixels, and an additional 128MB compact flash really suit me. But it's a little more pricey (around $500 on the web).

Let me know if you have any questions. I love talking tech stuff.....it's one of my favorite things to do at Disney....taking photos.

 

[AlabamaGal]

You might try going through the msn site to buy a camera online. They have a promotion which ends (I think) about a week or so before Christmas. Read the details carefully but basically, if you check out using an MSN wallet (with your regular credit card) and through participatin retailers (wolf camera and circuit city are ones) then you can get 20% of your purchase back (up to $100) as MSN dollars. MSN dollars are useable for other online purchases (read terms) in Feb 2003.

HTH!

 

[AlabamaGal]

You might try going through the msn site to buy a camera online. They have a promotion which ends (I think) about a week or so before Christmas. Read the details carefully but basically, if you check out using an MSN wallet (with your regular credit card) and through participatin retailers (wolf camera and circuit city are ones) then you can get 20% of your purchase back (up to $100) as MSN dollars. MSN dollars are useable for other online purchases (read terms) in Feb 2003.

HTH!