May 29
Looking for a new camera
I’m looking to buy a new camera. Suggestions and comments welcome, preferably with links.
I want something light to take tramping, wide-angled enough to capture landscapes and fast enough to snap fantails. Good battery life wouldn’t be bad either, though I could always buy a second battery. I’m thinking of spending say $300-$500.
Some possibilities are:
| Camera | Reviews | Prices | Weight | Mpix | Zoom | Focal | Batt | Timings 02S S2S |
Panasonic DMC-TZ5 |
DPR SD |
$479 | 245g | 9.1 | 10x | 28 – 280 mm | Li-Ion 300 shots |
2.4s 1.5s |
Ricoh R8  |
DPR | $459 | 166g | 10.0 | 7.1x | 28 – 200 mm | Li-Ion 270 shots |
1.8s 1.6s |
Cannon A720 IS |
DPR SD |
$289 | 250g | 8.0 | 6x | 35 – 210 mm | 2xAA 400 shots |
1.8s 1.7s |
Cannon SX100 IS |
DPR | $367 | 316g | 8.3 | 10x | 36 – 360mm | 2xAA | 2.5s 1.6s |
Cannon S5 IS |
DPR SD |
$460 $489 | 550g | 8.0 | 12x | 36 – 432 mm | 4xAA 450 shots |
1.7s 1.7s |
Fuji S8000fd |
DPR SD |
$378 | 325g | 10.0 | 12x | 33 – 396 mm | 4xAA | 3.2s 2.4s |
May 30th, 2008 at Friday, 1:29 pm
I’ve been pretty happy with my Ricoh r5, and it has served as an ideal tramper’s camera.
The good:
* Compact
* Has a wide angle to capture scenery
* Is fantail fast (with and without flash)
* Good zoom, for bird spotting
* Has a very impressive macro-mode, so you can snap all those wierd insects and funghi. (Must try and dig up my arachophobia pics).
* The distributor is just down the road from our house, and they’re very friendly if you happen to have any problems with it.
* Oh and it also records pretty sharp video.
The bad:
* It tends to produce more grainy pictures in dim/interior lighting (they’re still good though, but Brian’s older canon performs better in that environment).
* It doesn’t have as many manual settings as Brian’s Canon, so if you’re into night-time or time-lapse photography it is a little more limited.
Of course that may have been fixed in the r8.
May 30th, 2008 at Friday, 2:32 pm
I own and like my Canon IXUS 40 camera.
I’m considering an upgrade to something like a
Canon IXUS 970IS. See this review:
http://www.reghardware.co.uk/2008/04/22/review_canon_digital_ixus_970_is/
See also:
http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/specs/Canon/canon_sd890is.asp
for specifications and owners’ reviews.
The main things (in order) I am looking for that my IXUS 40 lacks:
- image stabilization (I drink too much coffee and lack picture taking skill)
- zoom while taking video (short videos are important in my family)
- 5x optical zoom
- greater than 4.0 megapixels
- SDHC card for storage
As far as I know this is the first of the IXUS line with the 5x optical zoom.
You might want to move on and consider something with better wide angle capability,
which the review above is down on.
After reading the reviews myself, it might be better to look
at a different model in the IXUS range.