New Digital Camera, which one?

[HarveyH42]

I've come to the conclusion that my Olympus D-340L is getting a little too unreliable and needs to be replaced soon. Pretty sure its the SmartMedia cards, already had one fail. It's an old camera, only takes 8 meg max, not sure what would happen if I tried a larger card. Last year an 8 meg card was $27.99+shipping. A better camera is under $100, so kind of seemed like a terriable deal.

There are a lot of cameras to choose from these days, and have a lot of homework to do to find the best value, or atleast avoid the really poor quality ones. For my usage, I'm comfortable with $200 range, and something around $100 will be fine.

Seems megapixels has become a big marketing term, so not sure the is very relivent anymore. My Olympus is 1.3 MP, and picture quality is usually good enough, even when printing 8x10. I'd imagine the main 'advantage' of 7 MP would be larger file size, more expensive memory cards, and slower transfer rates. Besides, there must be some limit where the quality of the lense limits the usefulness of the higher resolution.

There are a bunch of effect modes, but seem fairly useless on the camera, since you can do all that with better control on the PC with PhotoPaint. I would like a decent optical zoom, 3X seems a little weak. A video mode would be nice, sometimes I would like to get a short clip, but no camcorder.

Anyway, just looking for a few suggestion to look into further. Something that I don't have to scroll through 20 or so menu items I'd neveruse, every time I want turn off the flash. I got a good 10 years or so out of the Olympus, would like to find a similar value in a new one.

 

[Shax]

I had a few digital compacts, and never really got the best from them.. Last year, I was bought a Nikon D50 digital SLR.. Fantastic camera... Takes some cracking fotos, and with the 70 - 300MM Tamron lens I bought, it's great for long distance work, or close in macro stuff.

New DSLRs are being released all the time, and there are plenty of bargains to be found..

Photoshop CS2 and DXO Optics Pro are my choice of editing software...

 

[picasm]

The amount of megapixels has now been superseded by the the sensitivity as an important feature - it is very useful to be able to take sharp photos with a fast shutter speed even in low light levels.

If you just want a small camera that will fit in a pocket then there are probably many to choose from.

I have a small two megapixel Olympus camera that has been ideal for general use for several years.
When I replace it soon, I may go for something like a Fuji F20 which is compact, has a very sensitive 6 megapixel sensor and a metal body which should make it fairly robust and it only costs about £80 in the UK.

There are very detailed reviews of several cameras including that one at:
https://www.steves-digicams.com/best_cameras.html

The only down side that I have seen so far about that camera is that it uses XD memory cards rather than SD types but memory is quite cheap now anyway.

 

[HarveyH42]

Did a lot of looking around. A lot of cameras and features to sort through. The one that I'm thinking of getting, Panasonic Lumix - LZ7, seems pretty well conceived and built. So far the best local price is $179. Want to do some more searching on this one, see if anybody has bad things to say about it. Most of the reviews I read seem to be from people who just took it out of the box.

 

[Pommie]

I had a Olympus FE170 bought for me - google suggest price around $140.

I'm very pleased with it. The macro and night time modes being very useful. Macro for pics of electronic stuff. The night time mode is fun, it leaves the shutter open to get the background and uses the flash to fill in the foreground. Turn of flash and you get long exposure. The pics in the recent GLCD thread were taken with it.

**broken link removed**.

Mike.

 

[3v0]

Random things regarding optics.

A camera with quality lenses may take a better picture even if it has fewer pixels. A while back some were being sold with plastic lenses. Olympus has good lenses.

If you use the zoom feature find a unit with a 10x optical zoom.

 

[CheapSlider]

Dynamic range

Megapixels do seem to be the main selling point followed by Low light ability
(Can it take a noiseless 12M picture of a black cat in a coal cellar using only available light, without flash?)

Dynamic range is often neglected but gives you good exposure latitude for those scenes which contain both sunlight and shadows.



Zoom (optical only, not digital) 3x range with (35mm equivalent) focal length from 35 to 100 allows wide angle for indoor shots where you can get more people into a shot and will give you 2x magnification at max zoom. At bigger magnifications you need to be able to keep the camera still or have enough light to use a faster shutter speed.


I find this **broken link removed** site useful for still cameras (or camcorderinfo for camcorders)

- Both sites appear to be impartiall (how long will the last?)

If you want to get really into the optical side then read up on MTF (Modulation Transfer Function)

Edit - spelling

 

[Hero999]

Just because megapixels is the main selling point it doesn't mean it really is the most important feature, for a while clock speed on computers was the the main selling point but Intel are now starting to regret that. I would say that noise is just as important as megapixels as there's no point in sampling into the noise margin, is there?

I have a five megapixel camera I bought from Lidl about two years ago and it's fine for most purposes but you can see the noise on most pictures when you zoom in so I would prefer one half the noise margin rather than double the megapixel rating.

 

[CheapSlider]

you can see the noise on most pictures when you zoom in

Is that a digital zoom ?

(I remember those cams, none of the Lidls shops around here had any)


On subject of Lidl: yesterday (Sat) the Clapham Junction branch had a ½ price sale for 1 hr between 14:00 and !5:00.
The **broken link removed** (£15) and **broken link removed** (£17.50) were flying out the shop - some people were buying 3 Ovens at a time (one trolley per customer only)

 

[Nigel Goodwin]

Is that a digital zoom ?

Got to be, so it's really a zoom not worth having!.

 

[HarveyH42]

I'm not looking for a photographer grade camera, just a decent general purpose camera for like when I need to post a picture of a PCB that I just burned up, and can't figure out what I did wrong.

The Panasonic Lumix LZ7 is 7 MP, 6x optical zoom, image stablization, flash range 13 feet. Video with sound until memory is full (VGA), Quicktime (mov) format. Well, there were a lot of features that made it sound like it would take great pictures.

 

[Hero999]

I mean that you can see noise on the picture when you zoom in on it using a paint program on the PC.

 

[CheapSlider]

I'm not looking for a photographer grade camera, just a decent general purpose camera for like when I need to post a picture of a PCB that I just burned up

The attached image was saved 'as is' with no editing or manipulation. (jpg 85% compression). It was made with a webcam*




*Logitech4000

 

[HarveyH42]

Nice pic, but took a while on dial-up, must be a huge file.

Pretty much sold on the Panasonic. I downloaded the manual, found a few inconsistancies with the reviews, but nothing major. One thing that has me wondering though... There doesn't appear to be any kind of lens cap or cover. Not a real big deal, general keep my cameras in the case, unless I'm actually using it (people are less likely to ask to 'play' with it). Movies are limited to 2 gig, instead of until the card is full, 45 minutes with sound (VGA @ 30 fps) is plenty enough.

 

[Hero999]

That looks like digital zoom to me.

It looks fine when shrunk to half the size though.

 

[CheapSlider]

Nice pic, but took a while on dial-up, must be a huge file

it was 392k.
(The file with this post is the same picture saved, using ACDSee, with max compression and is 57k)

The Panasonic Lumic DMC LZ7 looks like a good camera. I like the fact that it uses ordinary AA cells which are more readily available than Lion cells. Also it uses SD and SDHC memory cards which can be found at very good prices. The 6x optical zoom is sensibly accompanied by image stabilisation. This **broken link removed** made no mention of lack of a lens cover. (Nothing that a camera case wouldn't solve).

That looks like digital zoom to me

I agree it does look rather carp when viewed full size.
-It's supposed to be 1M, but I wonder if it's a 'true' 1 meg*.

Noise - what do you think about the noise ?
.


*Interpolation was a thing to be wary of when looking at image size.

 

[Hero999]

As I can still see pixels larger than my screen's pixels at 50% zoom but I can't at 25% zoom I'm guessing it's probably really 320x240 which is typical for a webcam.

 

[CheapSlider]

As I can still see pixels larger than my screen's pixels at 50% zoom but I can't at 25% zoom I'm guessing it's probably really 320x240 which is typical for a webcam.

That does make sense. It also explains why more can't be seen when the picture is enlarged to 100%.

This reinforces my comment about interpolation - it increases the file size but doesn't do much to increase defintion.


As an aside, digital compression systems seem to struggle with areas of smoke or fog or areas that are out of focus.

Edit:
Changed from "digital systems" (after Nigel Goodwin's post)

 

[Nigel Goodwin]

That does make sense. It also explains why more can't be seen when the picture is enlarged to 100%.

This reinforces my comment about interpolation - it increases the file size but doesn't do much to increase defintion.


As an aside, digital systems seem to struggle with areas of smoke or fog or areas that are out of focus.

I don't think 'digital system' do, it's just the compression used - just like on here, people post diagrams as low quality JPG's, when if they used GIF the file is 100% quality and MUCH smaller than a JPG. Anther example of where JPG compression fails badly!.

 

[CheapSlider]

I don't think 'digital system' do, it's just the compression used

Thank you for pointing out my ommission of the word 'compression' from my above post. The sentence does not make any sense without this missing word.
(I've corrected my post accordingly)