Need information on Digital Camera

[bfeller]

I have seen some beautiful pictures posted on the DIS by you all. I am looking to buy a digital camera for the first time and just wondered:

1. what brand of camera you have?
2. what features should I be looking for?
3. what price range does your cameral fall into?
4. what brands should I steer clear of?

Thanks for all your help.

 

[Breezy_Carol]

I can't help you but would like to hear what others have to say.

 

[Fire14]

I have a Kodak and a HP I love the Optional Zoom feature on my Kodak and Miss it a LOT on my HP. My HP was about 250.00 BUt I got Black Friday Deal on it. My Kodak is off market but I did just buy my Dad a KOdak 4230 Which I like, it cost 197.00 At walmart. I bought His at Staples and got free shipping and memory card. I think as for features It's a personal prefernce. Hope this gives you some Help.

 

[helenabear]

As I've told you before, Betty, I have a Canon To be specific I have a Canon G3. A normal user should look for a 2 or 3 MP, a camera with opitcal zoom and I prefer optical view finder. Movie to me isn't important as the quality is usally terrible (very choppy, but can be fun). I think for about $250-300 you can get a great camera out there. My range for my camera is more than double that so I doubt you'd be looking at mine But if you want to spend that money on a 1st digital camera, then trust me, I love my camera.

I don't know brands I would steer clear of but I always look at Nikon, Canon, Olympus, Fuji, Sony, Minolta & Kodak. Oh and be sure to check the type of memory a camera takes and see which you are most able to afford to buy. A compact flash card is much cheaper than secure digital Have fun looking

 

[Sonya]

Sony cyber shot is a good one. They go for about $299 and the media cost about $52 for 128MB.
www.mwave.com


This site might help you narrow down different brands:
http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/compare.asp

DH wants me to add that you need to make sure you get an optical zoom, digital zooms aren't very good.

 

[Princess_Aurora]

We have a Sony and LOVE IT. It's lasted a long time too...about five years. We bought it back when digital cameras were expensive. Ours was $850! You can now get the newer version of our camera for like $250. We're actually wanting to get one of those video digital cameras. It's a hi8 camcorder and has a memory stick so you can also take digital pictures. That would be good for our Disney trips since we alway take both our camcorder and our digital camera. Another option would be the sony that records the images directly to a cd. That one holds a lot more images. A good feature to look for is one that does both pictures and movie clips. Anyway, Sony would be the best brand in my opinion, for a digital camera.

 

[bfeller]

Bump

 

[sci-fi-dreamer!]

We just received our Olympus c-730 ultra zoom, 10x optical zoom, 3.2 megapixel. My father in law and his friend both have the same camera and have had no problems! We paid $411 on-line at BuyDig.com We also bought a battery charger, extra batteries, and extra memory! Now we just have to figure out how to use it before our trip on Sunday!!

 

[Dan Murphy]

1. what brand of camera you have?
2. what features should I be looking for?
3. what price range does your cameral fall into?
4. what brands should I steer clear of?

1. Nikon 995
2. ease of handling, for you; picture quality you are satisfied with; not overly complicated, if you are a first time user
3. Current similar model, Nikon 4500 (995 is no longer available) is about $400, after $200 current rebate (sounds like another newer model coming soon)
4. Not brands per se, but ones that use floppy disc (not sure those are even available any more), compact flashcard media seems to be most popular (and least costly) currently.

When you buy, get one or two 256 cards. Check out www.ecost.com and www.buy.com

Great source here also.

http://wdwig.com/digital.htm

 

[HunnyPots]

I have an HP 320 with 3.1 mp. I just took my daughter's prom pictures with it and they are beautiful! Much better than I ever got with my 35mm point and shoot. I do wish it had optical zoom, but for $150 I think it was a great deal.

 

[minnieandmickey]

Well we had a HP 612 for 1 year 1 month and the focus mechanism went out . Thankfully, we got it at Best Buy and got an extended warranty on it , so we picked out a new camera (Cannon). We noticed that they didn't carry HP and the said they must of had some problems with them, and the customer service guy said that that was "One" of the reasons. He also said you can't go wrong with the Cannons. I guess we'll just have to wait and see about that.

 

[cybrarian]

Make sure the camera manufacturer makes a driver (software) for your operating system. I bought a cheap digital camera on EBay in February. I April I got a new computer that operates on Windows XP Home. I could not get the pictures to download from the camera no matter what I did. I finally realized that I needed a driver for XP. Well, Vivitar does not offer a driver for XP so now the camera is worthless to me.

I have already bid a new an better camera on EBay and will see how it goes when it comes in. I got a 1.3 megapixel camera for $70.00.

 

[sncbird]

We too are looking into buying a digital camera and are really confused!! I would love to be able to print out pictures at home as well as order them on-line. We would like one with a zoom on it. The thought of selling items on Ebay is also pretty appealing. We're looking to spend around $300 for this camera but have no idea what we should be looking at. Does anyone have any thoughts on how many megapixels we should be getting and features the camera should have? Also, any ideas on a photo printer? All suggestions or advice would be greatly appreciated!!!

 

[HunnyPots]

From what I have been told, as I am no expert, you need a minimum of 3 megapixels to get good 5x7 prints. If you want larger prints, a higher mp camera is what you need.
The largest I have printed is 5x7, and they were great, as were all of my smaller prints.

 

[ToyStory Fan]

1. Sony DSC-S85
2. higher megapixels, Carl Zeiss lens, Regular zoom+Digital Zoom, battery life, ease of download to PC, ease of use.
3. $400-$500
4. Most name bands are going to be fine