I was thinking about buying a digital camera, which ones are the best brands to check out?
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I was thinking about buying a digital camera, which ones are the best brands to check out?
You might check out this site:
http://www.dpreview.com/
:)
IMO Nikon's Coolpix > Sony's cybershot > HP Photosmart, Samsung > .......... Canon ( I have one ).
Nikon's got many features. The best thing is its multi-focusing, excellent optical zoom, battery life and its size
Remember Nikon's low-end DC will never be better than others high-end. My opinion is based on the budget. ;)
My uncle has two digital camera's. One 4 megapixel Sony Mavica that stores images on CD. Another very small Sony Cybershot camera with 5 megapixel which uses memorysticks for storage. But while the Cybershot has a higher resolution, he prefers the bulkier Mavica because it uses a cheap storage system and it has a Carl Zeiss lens. The Cybershot that he has uses just some Sony lens. He claims that while the Cybershot makes very good pictures, his Mavica generates better quality pictures just because of this lens. Cleaner pics with less pixel noice. Both are good camera's, though.
But his advise? (And mine.) Make sure that whatever camera you buy, it must have a Carl Zeiss lens for a better picture quality. :) (Oh, and think about the cost of the storage media that the camera will need becouse those can make it pretty expensive.)
Depends on what you want from your camera (digital point and shoot, digital SLR, etc.) I have a FujiFilm S5000. Great camera that allows me to put on filters and has some flexibility as far as setting exposures, etc. It's a great beginner/intermediate camera. I will be getting a proper digital SLR at some point (Nikon D100 or a Fuji SLR) but the cost is obviously more. The advantage is that you could use standard lenses and get even better pictures.
How deep is your budget?
As far as the digital slr cameras go I would love to get the cannon digital rebel 8.1megapixel. i currently use a cannon rebel eos k2 35mm and I love it. I just get the photo CDs whenever i develop a roll and use photoshop to resize acordingly. One thing to look at in a digital camera is the zoom capability. If it has a low optical zoom and a high digital zoom you probably dont want it. Digital zoom is what causes pictures to pixelate and get grainy when you take them. Also think about how big you might want to blow something up. The lower number of megapixels the smaller the max blow up size will be. When I bought my SLR 35mm I asked the manager of the store I purchased it at what It would take to get the digital equivalent in quality and he said atleast 6megapixel.
Something from the Canon A-series line is a good place to start. Or you could go with a Nikon. Or Konica-Minolta as their image-stabalization is a nice feature to have that I don't see in any other low/mid-end camera line.
Generally, stick to companies that historically have made cameras. (Maybe Kodak too...but mainly recommend Canon & Nikon & KonicaMinolta)
You want to stick between 3-5 megapixels to try and avoid pixel noise. Most of the CCD/CMOS sensors are smaller than your pinkey finger nail, and packing 8-9 million pixels onto it is just asking for noise problems. If you keep around 4 megapixels it performs better in preventing noise because the pixels are larger and can collect more light.
Read up @ DPReview and look at sample images from the camera you are interested in. Once you have a good tool, it is up to you to use it well to get good pictures.
MsMittens - Do you have a bunch of Nikon glass hiding in your closet?
As others have said what are you going to shoot and what is your budget.
If you are are a serious photographer then go for an SLR.
You want a point and shoot camera to replace a 35mm?
Lots of brands out there all mentioned above. All will produce good images.
How big do you intend printing out?
Standard photos, maybe a bit bigger?
If so don't bother going for huge numbers of pixels a 3MP will give good results up to A4 size and will be pretty cheap now.
Make sure it's got a good glass lense and you should be fine.
For ease of use I'd recommend Kodak.
Otherwise go to the shops and try them out. Some new cameras are very small and cute. Good for ladies but if you've got big hairy man fingers a camera with a bigger body might be better.
No but my uncle does (he's been in photography industry and fixing the film machines for about 25-30 years now). Oddly enough he works for Fuji (which is why I'd lean towards a Fuji SLR).Quote:
MsMittens - Do you have a bunch of Nikon glass hiding in your closet?
hi
I have bought the sony cybershot dsc w5 two weeks ago and its great. Its 5.1 mp carl zeiss , 3x optical zoom and best os all uses the sony stamina battery for good battery life. My choice go for sony. the thing is that it costs more but the thing is the picture quality is great.
well i'm going to save up to get a great one so the budget will probebly be pretty high. I want a camera that will give me good pic quality and i can shoot in any light and not hav to worry about editing them later. I was kinda thinking about using one to take the pix at my wedding.That way i wouldn't hav to use a profecional photagrapher. just use little disposable cams for the ppl to take pix of us and i would hav a dig camera to take pix of them and any other thing i think would be important and i'd want to capture.
Just remember that you only get one chance to capture your wedding. If you mess up with the random cameras, it doesn't matter how much money you saved on pictures. You don't get a second chance, so at least look at the "selecting a wedding photographer" guides that seem to come in the newspaper suppliments every summer and figure out what you want/need. Then compare photographers, talk to their clients and judge their satisfaction, etc.
For the average person, I wouldn't recommend a camera costing more than $350. Most of the people looking for cameras don't know how to use them, and the money goes to waste on good hardware. Also cameras that cost up to $600 aren't worth the extra cost for the features they offer. Good hardware, but it's plagued with the issues of being a compact digital camera. If you want to spend serious money and do serious photography in challenging conditions, prepare to spend a *lot* of money on SLR equipment.
To get an idea of the costs in SLR-land...one of our local papers recently bought a lens where the lens-hood alone costs $350. The lens is worth $4,000. And they still need to team it up with a $400 flash and $200 battery to get good pictures on our football fields. It is leaps and bounds better than any digital compact camera out there, but you pay out the butt for that performance. I'm kind of envious though since the body + lens + flash I used tonight didn't add up to the cost of their lens. If you compare our results, they're different, but both are of very good quality (the newspaper gets better shots...this is only my first season covering football). Most people can't justify the extra $4,000 for a small difference...but us SLR people do that a lot for low-light stuff...
Also some people need to stay away from digital cameras. So a $5 disposeable is probably better when they have weekly accidents than a $200+ digital camera... Though we still see photographers with $10,000+ of gear in each hand clobbered by football players on TV :p
good idea. thanx.
You're going to have to photograph your own wedding? :(Quote:
Originally posted here by forgetvengance
well i'm going to save up to get a great one so the budget will probebly be pretty high. I want a camera that will give me good pic quality and i can shoot in any light and not hav to worry about editing them later. I was kinda thinking about using one to take the pix at my wedding.That way i wouldn't hav to use a profecional photagrapher. just use little disposable cams for the ppl to take pix of us and i would hav a dig camera to take pix of them and any other thing i think would be important and i'd want to capture.
You know a good idea? Buy a bunch of disposable camera's and divide them amongst the guests to let them take pictures. Tell them they have to return the cameras afterwards and then you'll end up with quite a lot of pictures. :)
Another thing to consider... If you want high-quality digital pictures then you'll need a camera with a lot of memory space. Preferably something that you can swap easily and a low price. I've mentioned the Sony Mavica already, didn't I? There's another version of it that uses small DVD disks that can hold 1 GB each, I think. Those small DVD's are pretty cheap so you can buy a big stack of them. One drawback though. Writing to DVD is slower than writing to a memory card.
Also remember to buy additional batteries for that camera. Especially when it's a day-long event you would like to be able to still take pictures near the end of the party when almost everyone is drunk and the most embarrassing moments can be captured for all eternity.
Keep in mind that at 5 megapixels, a single picture will be about 2 megabytes in diskspace. If you have 64 MB of memory in your camera, this means you'll only have 32 pictures at the end of the day. If you take an 8 megapixel camera or better then the pictures will become even bigger. About 3 or 4 megabytes per picture would not be an exception in that case.
The size of pictures also depend on the quality that you select for them, though. By choosing a lower quality or smaller resolution you will be able to make more pictures. But when you want the best, don't save on memory...
Also, many digital cameras also allow you to make short video movies. At a resolution of 640x480 for the video, a 1 GB memorystick will be able to hold 30 to 45 minutes of video. With 64 MB of space you'd be lucky to capture more than two minutes in a good quality.
And buying a very expensive camera just to capture a once-in-a-lifetime event could end up being a bit expensive. Try if you can just rent a high-quality digital just for this occasion. Otherwise you might end up with extremely expensive hardware with a thick layer of dust over it in 5 years...
Finally, you can use that camera during your wedding night but be careful with those pictures. :D If someone discovers them on your computer they might end up all over this world.