Digital cameras

Put the money in the lens and try to figure out who has the best auto focus. I continually see very out of focus pics. People rely on the auto focus. It seems quite a few cameras, regardless of price, don't work very well in this respect. My Sony Cybershot often gets it wrong whereas my wife's Sony DSC-F717 is awesome. I know of a high-end Canon that has very poor auto focus. Two days of tree work and ALL pics out of focus. Photographer is a magazine publisher!
 
The camera can't read your mind. If you want something in the foreground in focus, place the focus spot on that thing, press the shutter release enough to set the focus, then while keeping pressure on the release, compose your shot before pressing it the rest of the way. If the focus spot is on something else (distant in this case) when you compose then work the release from scratch, the foreground stuff you wanted to capture will not be in proper focus. Naturally, the opposite holds true. Don't tell the camera to focus on something near when you want the distant subject matter to be sharp. (this was simplified because aperture setting has been left out of the process -- how many digital cameras allow you to set, for example, the hyperfocal distance for the selected aperture if that's what you want?)
 
Hi Tom -


Anything 5MP or higher will be good. There is no need to go for super high MP (anything above 6MP) won't matter a whole lot unless you are going SLR. If you plan on taking allot of zoom pics getting a higher optical zoom is good - the digital zooms are all pretty much the same - they are good to a point and then the camera is pretty much "guessing" what the picture should look like if it were closer.

I bought a canon powershot SD 400 a few years ago and have no complaints. Great "auto" focus and also many manual settings. I think the memory cards are great - they're relatively cheap and indestructible - mine have been through the washer more than once and kept the pictures that were on them :) Canon, Nikon, Sony will all do you well. Only thing with Sony is that they use their own "duo-stick" memory which keeps you from sharing the cards as easily as you can a SD card.

$350 should get a pretty good little digital camera.

Hope this helps -

good luck,

mk
 
So I got my camera and am reading through the specs: warning do not use camera above 9800 altitude as it will damage hard drive. Great. Well I guess I will have to go with dvd format as one of the uses of this camera will be skiing climbing over 10000'. I hope they(bestbuy) don't charge a restocking fee since this important piece of info was left out of description.
 
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So I got my camera and am reading through the specs: warning do not use camera above 9800 altitude as it will damage hard drive. Great. Well I guess I will have to go with dvd format as one of the uses of this camera will be skiing climbing over 10000'. I hope they(bestbuy) don't charge a restocking fee since this important piece of info was left out of description.

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What model/brand camera is it? what type of media card does it use? No digital camera I know of has a built-in hard drive. Older compact flash media cards are miniature hardrives but nowadays they're all solid state and can probably be used on the surface of the moon.

Here's a link to a discussion that covers the high altitude hard drive issue which you should be able to get around easily by using a solid state compact flash card. Digicams have been used all over the place high altitude:
Digicams at high altitude

-moss
 
i have a real good digital camera its a sony cybershot 7.2 mega pixels,p200 it hase full auto and manual setings with a carl zeiss lens (very good lens) i also has video,lots of flash setings, over hear in the uk its £200ish have a look for one,matt
 
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Put the money in the lens and try to figure out who has the best auto focus. I continually see very out of focus pics. People rely on the auto focus. It seems quite a few cameras, regardless of price, don't work very well in this respect. My Sony Cybershot often gets it wrong whereas my wife's Sony DSC-F717 is awesome. I know of a high-end Canon that has very poor auto focus. Two days of tree work and ALL pics out of focus. Photographer is a magazine publisher!

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Do tell...I have owned many Canon SLR's, both film and digital, and two prosumer digi-cams. All work flawlessly...and all the pro lenses are superb. Attached photo was shot with a Canon 1D Mark 2, handheld at 1/30th second, with a 17-40 f/4L lens, at 40 mm...
 

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I have a 2 year old Canon Powershot S1 ls and would gladly buy the newer version with 12 x optical zoom.

More than one professional has commented to me that its a fine camera, without dishing out for an $800 plus camera.

I will never go with less than 10 x optical zoom after seeing what this can do.

One camera that caught my eye, is a Nikon Coolpix with 12 x optical zoom. The left side rotates to point the lense forward and horizontal. That's how they got the zoom lense into a compact camera. I know very little about it, but would check it out first.

Lense quality is one of the most ignored aspects, and one of the most frequently neglected.
 
The S3 is a great camera, MD. , Inexpensive, high-res video, 12-1 zoom...and I think it has IS as well? It is lacking in some areas from my Pro1, but I'm tempted to get one

* image stabilization.
 
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