Camera recs

[randy_byers]

I'm looking for recommendations of cheap, easy-to-use digital cameras. Part of me thinks I should just get an Android smartphone, but I'm dithering on that, so maybe a stand-alone camera is finally in order. I think I'm looking for the equivalent of the old point-and-shoot film cameras. I don't want to deal with lenses or f-stops or any of that.

Comments

[jackwilliambell.livejournal.com]

If all you want is to take snapshots of people, get the smart phone and have done with it. They say the best camera you can have is the one you have on you and a camera that is also a phone is most likely to be in your pocket.

If you want a pocket camera with good optics and lots of features, but which works well using default settings, get a Panasonic Lumix; available at Costco for a very good price.

The Lumix has Leica optics with an 8x optical zoom and the ability to also do HD quality video. I did a lot of research a year ago and this is the best pocket camera you can get anywhere for under $600 -- and it comes in at a third of that. You can walk into any Costco and buy them as cheap as anywhere. (I have a Costco card if you don't.)

[randy-byers.livejournal.com]

Looks good. Thanks, Jack.

So what's your take on the current generation of Android smartphones?

[akirlu.livejournal.com]

I'll second the recommendation on the Lumix. The newer generation ones are quite small, so it's easy to just keep the camera in your pocket. I love the optical zoom: a lot of times it makes the difference between the getting the picture I wanted in the first place, and the teeny tiny little image you get with a straight point and shoot. The main downside, from my perspective, is that it doesn't have a viewfinder at all -- you end up composing your picture by looking at the output screen. This can get tricky in bright light situations if the sun is glaring off your screen. But it takes nice pictures, imho. Most of the photos I have up on Flickr were taken with one Lumix or another. And the video capacity was really nice for getting video of Sarah on the beach.

But you can go years without ever using the video if you don't care about such fancifications, too.

[randy-byers.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the further info. Hadn't even considered the viewfinder issue. But your photos are certainly good testimony for the camera.

[akirlu.livejournal.com]

Thanks. In particular, if you click on one of the images to view the larger size, you can get an idea of the grain quality, which is pretty darn good. We get better with the Nikon digital SLR, but the Nikon is a Serious Camera, of the sort you don't want -- definitely more of a lenses and f-stops kind of deal.

[jackwilliambell.livejournal.com]

RE: Android phones

The only one I have personal experience with you can't (or, rather, shouldn't) buy. It is a phone manufactured by HTC for Google to supply developers like myself and it costs a lot of money. It is very good specs, but not better than the best of the new lot of Android phones on the market.

Here is a rule of thumb: get the first or second most expensive Android phone offered by the carrier you prefer. That way it won't seem quite so slow and antiquated next year when the crop hits the market. Waiting a year won't help because the same advice applies then!

[randy-byers.livejournal.com]

Excellent advice, but it's the kind of thing that makes me think I'm too much of a cheapskate for smartphones. I should just go take a gander in a shop at some point.

[janetl.livejournal.com]

My iPhone camera is as good a point-and-shoot as I'd need. Don't know anything about Droid cameras. A general point about digital cameras -- it's not just about the pixels. More pixels with a crappy lens and poor software doesn't get you much.

[randy-byers.livejournal.com]

You're saying more isn't always better? What kind of communist are you?

[janetl.livejournal.com]

I prefer "pinko".

[holyoutlaw.livejournal.com]

Jack's advice is pretty much mine. Believe it -- or not!

[randy-byers.livejournal.com]

Meaning you like the Lumix too?

[holyoutlaw.livejournal.com]

I've never worked with the Lumix, but yes.

[don-fitch.livejournal.com]

You'll probably get lots of advice -- much of it quite passionate -- but I'd suggest that practically all digital cameras (even those marketed for people who desire to have Pro Quality) now have an Auto/Point-&-Shoot mode, and that having (& sometimes using) a fairly-large-number optical zoom lens (as distinct from a digital zoom software function) is probably A Good Thing.

Mind you, my only experience (if it could be called that) has been with a Canon S3 15 that I've had for some years and haven't yet really learned how to use (much less how to download to a computer and manipulate properly) -- and that is almost certainly much more than you want. I was, in fact, Highly Impressed by the fellow Community Gardener who whipped out her telephone and got what seemed to me to be an excellent photograph of a red-bodied dragonfly resting atop a stake last week.

[randy-byers.livejournal.com]

Optical zoom is something I'm hearing about from a number of people. I'm also noticing that many of these cameras seem to have auto-correction for stability of the image in uncertain hands. And yeah, I'm pretty impressed with the image quality of a lot of phone cameras.

[bovil.livejournal.com]

I've got a lot of experience with, and like, the Canon Powershot Digital Elph "SD" series cameras. They're small, easy to use, and produce pretty clean files in most circumstances.

The Panasonic Lumix series is pretty good, they've got a big partnership going with Leica, and some of the Lumix series cameras use high-quality Leica lenses. I've been considering the Panasonic DMC-LX3 (or the just-released DMC-LX5) as a "pocketable" alternative to my big DSLR. It's not a cheap camera, though. Quality costs.

Phone cameras are never (well not the ones available now) going to be able to capture a good image in low-light situations. The little speck-sized image sensors need quite a bit of light to produce an image without a lot of noise. They're not a good choice if you want clean pictures of people at events unless your events are all outdoors in the daytime. I've got a Motorola Droid, which has, even by current standards, an excellent camera for a phone, and I'm less than satisfied with the results I can get from it.

More megapixels isn't necessarily better. It's only really necessary if you're making large prints. For most web stuff, 8 megapixels is overkill, but flexible.

More mexapixels usually means "noisier." Where a DSLR with a big sensor may be nice and clean at 15 megapixels and high sensitivity, a smaller sensor on a pocket camera will have noise problems and an itty-bitty phonecam sensor will be so noisy the pictures will be unusable. More than 10 megapixels on an expensive pocket camera is usually a bad thing. More than 8 on a cheap pocket camera is a disaster.

The optical zoom range is the only thing you should pay attention to regarding zoom. "Digital Zoom" is kind of like cropping a pic in photoshop and increasing the pixel size of the image. That said, a long zoom range (over 6x) is going to introduce distortion at the wide and long ends of the range, and is going to result in a bulkier camera.

[randy-byers.livejournal.com]

Thanks, Andy. All very useful stuff.

[voidampersand.livejournal.com]

It's very hard to get a simple camera. They are all computers, and extra functions in software don't add to the manufacturing cost. Therefore, any camera worth getting has software that is at least as complex as Microsoft Word, built in to the camera. Generally you can ignore the complexity. There will be a mode dial on the top of the camera or near it. Put it in 'P' or Program mode which is the simplest. Point, zoom in and out, and click. The one high-tech feature you will want is image stabilization. That is because compact digital cameras are so small and light, it's hard to hold them steady. As for brands, they are all pretty good. Decide what you want to pay. Go to an electronics or camera store. Try holding various models and choose one that you feel comfortable with.

[randy-byers.livejournal.com]

That all seems very sensible. The image stabilization is a nice feature, which I've seen in action when I used a friend's camera and got non-blurry pictures despite my wobbling hands.