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November 24, 2004

Holiday bonus ()

by fluffy at 10:56 PM
Woo, we got our holiday bonuses today. It was a nice little chunk of change... conveniently, I'm in the market for a digital camera right about now anyway.

Does anyone have any recommendations? I'd like something with a small form factor, at least 3.1MP (but preferably 4 or more), which takes SD since I already have some large SD and MMC cards laying around for my Zaurus and N-Gage. Mac compatibility is a must, USB2 would be nice, good image quality is vital. I don't care about digital zoom, but would like to have a decent level of optical zoom.

The Canon Powershot A400 is along the lines of what I'm looking for (especially since it has that nifty panorama-assist feature), but I'd like something with a bit more resolution. The slightly-bigger brother to it (the A75) takes CF instead of SD, though. Also, Kodak has some pretty impressive-spec models but my understanding was that Kodak's digital cameras weren't very good in general.

I think what I really need to find is a digital photography review site which actually lowers itself to reviewing consumer models, and provides images and detailed feature comparisons and so on. TrustedReviews (where I read about the A400, via a link on Gizmodo) seems pretty good, but their consumer-level digital camera reviews are a bit sparse. It also doesn't help that they only have one big catch-all "digital imaging" category which lumps a hell of a lot of disparate things together (cameras, scanners, printers, projectors, etc.) and makes it hard to really browse for just cameras.

Also, yeah, I know I really should be drooling over the various 8MP DSLRs and so on, but I don't need anything pro-grade... I just want to take convenient pictures with something I can keep in my bag all the time, and want to be able to make cheezy panoramas for a silly project related to some of the image-based rendering research I've been doing lately for work.

So, Powershot A400? Or is there something more suitable I should know about?

Oh, and the other thing I'm going to get with my bonus (aside from presents for various people) is a bigger Wacom tablet. This 4x5 is just too damn small on my 23" monitor. I was thinking a 6x8 Intuos2, since it's big enough that I'll have a similar pixel density on this monitor as what I had on my previous 17" monitor, which was a comfortable size. (9x12 is still more than I want to spend, and would also take up too much of my precious desk space.) Also, then I could take my 4x5 to work and not have to put up with a crappy optical mouse for all of my work-related drawing and photoshopping.

Comments

#3931 11/24/2004 09:15 pm
Ooh, the HP Photosmart R707 looks promising. It's small, 5.1MP, uses SD/MMC, 3x optical zoom, and Mac-friendly, and currently on sale for $270-$300ish.
#3932 11/24/2004 09:25 pm dpreview.com
Have you stopped by Digital Photography Review?

Personally, I'm quite fond of Olympus' cameras.

With regards to Mac compatibility, as long as it has removable storage you can get a card reader that will be compatible with a Mac.
#3933 11/24/2004 09:29 pm
DPReview seems like the kind of site I was looking for but couldn't find because all the Google searches on digital camera reviews find fucking cnet and epinions crap.

Olympus' cameras all use CF and xD as far as I've seen. I already have 384MB of SD and MMC which gets pretty much no use.

I'd also rather just hook the camera up to my computer instead of getting Yet Another Stupid Dongle to deal with. Though then there's the problem of most cameras' batteries draining really quickly if you have it hooked up to the computer, so I'd probably want to get a stupid SD reader anyway. Meh. Though it also looks like a lot of cameras have internal storage and so that would be a bit trickier to deal with.
#3934 11/24/2004 10:41 pm
I've always loved my old Canon Powershot A40, and I'd buy an updated version in a heartbeat. Smile

I've played with a few of the updated models(a60 and a70) and I can say that they only get better with each incarnation. It's a great camera if you want something as simple as point-and-click, but also want to play with options you would normally find in a more expensive camera. Manual exposure compensation, white balance presets, manual focus, etc..
#3937 11/25/2004 07:03 am
Yeah, though those are the pseudo-SLR form factors, not compact. I really want a compact, since I just want something I can throw into my bag. And they still use CF, not SD/MMC.

The Minolta DiMAGE F100 looks great, and it's currently available for only $180 (refurbished), marked down from its original $700 (OMG)...

Though the HP R707 still seems like the best choice overall. Its pictures look great, too — I'd say that's pretty much film-quality, at this point.
#3939 Skywise (unregistered) 11/25/2004 07:41 am Powershot s410
I have a Canon Powershot S410 which rules. It takes CF, but Circuit City is having an after Thanksgiving sale of 512mb CF cards for $29.
#3940 Greener (unregistered) 11/25/2004 04:53 pm
What irks me about my sisters Canon A80 and probably most other canons as well is you can't just hook it up to a computer and expect it to show up as a regular USB storage device. Canon cameras require their own twain drivers to download images and their own program to download movie clips. You can't just drag and drop photos from one drive to another. It can be a hastle if you want to hook the camera up to a bunch of different computers if you're travelling or somesuch. I can't remember if iPhoto can talk to a canon without the drivers but Windows sure can't and it's a real pain.

As for features or image quality I don't have a clue. They all look the same to me.
#3941 Skywise (unregistered) 11/25/2004 06:31 pm True
If you just go through the camera you have to use their software. Alternatively you can pop out the CF card and insert it into any memory card drive and transfer the pictures drag and drop fashion that way. They're just stored as standard JPG's on the card.

The only downside I've had with the camera is red-eye. Even with the red-eye flash turned on, I still tend to get it quite a bit.
#3942 11/25/2004 07:58 pm
Hm. I could use a CF card for my Zaurus anyway, since a CF card is the only way to upgrade an OpenZaurus distribution. Maybe if I had that going then I'd actually use the Zaurus more and the 256MB SD card would be good... and then I'd have to buy a media reader which means I'd be able to write to the MMC card directly from my system so I'd no longer have to use the Zaurus as a cheap-ass bridge between my Mac and my N-Gage for loading NES ROMs on. Very Happy
#3943 11/25/2004 11:12 pm
Canon A95 seems to be right up my alley. Hm.
#3945 terpia (unregistered) 11/26/2004 10:12 am
The HP camera you mentioned in the first post is the one my brother received as a surprise bundling bonus with his laptop. It's a surprisingly nice camera, handily beating the pants and panties off of my Sony 4.1 MP DSC-85 in all areas. In fact I am thinking very strongly about purchasing it as a replacement for my Sony camera. Also, it's very very pocket freindly (glides well in and out of pockets of various material without grabbing or snagging).
#3950 11/26/2004 07:07 pm
Yeah... but on the other hand it uses a proprietary Li-Ion battery. I'd much rather use AAs, since replacing those as NiMH is easy and it's easy to find cheap batteries around here for when NiMHs run out.