new camera recommendations (1 Viewer)

[pete]

the catch on the battery cover door thing on my trusty Olympus C-750 is about to give up the ghost so i guess i'll be in the market for a new digital camera soon enough. any suggestions?

I'll be wanting at least 10x optical zoom and it'll help if it uses XD cards. Not bothered about going digital slr as i know nothing about proper photography and have neither the time nor inclination to start learning now.

saw what looked like a nice sony one up in jessops in newry today, 12x optical zoon, but uses Memory Stick Duo & Pro Duo....

 

[Space]

I'd still recommend a dslr, you can always use it in fully automatic mode. Other than that panasonic lumix ones look the business. My housemate has the older version, great results from it. Sd card though.

 

[Goff]

The Lumix is probably the best Bridge camera out there at the moment. It has RAW too, which is great (even though I only really use it for portraits - Imagine, taking a picture in Black and White, then deciding you actually want it in colour as well). That's 12x.

Really better off getting a DSLR though (But you won't get the 10x optical zoom without a bigger lens). However, with the increase in quality because of the bigger and better optics, you'll have much better quality when zooming in on an image, so you won't notice the difference when you're editing.

With a DSLR, you'll have much better wide angle (and until you use it, you don't know how much you actually need it), the quality is superb, the automatic modes are better than Bridge/Compact cameras, the automatic focus lock is near instantaneous, you can focus in lower light levels automatically (and switch to manual focus - a MUST! - if the auto focus can't lock in the low light). And your images will look better.

Proper photography takes about an hour to learn. The theory is simple. The rest is just practice. Which you'd be doing with whatever camera you have anyway. As Moose said, the auto/program modes are great. There's a hundred years of experience gone into making them better photographers than most so called "pro's". Then, if you want, you can start using the camera the way you want. Manual or Auto. 9 times out of 10, the results will be the same. You can get creative if you want. But at least you have the option.

And you can put different lenses on (though they're expensive unless you go the ebay route or people donate their old lenses....). You can get a close-up lens if you want to do macro rather than paying a large amount of money for a proper macro lens. Compacts have a much better macro capability than a normal SLR lens, but that's because the sensor is bigger. So that's a good thing.

Or, you could get a piece of salatape (tm) and fix the battery door of the olympus. Works a treat on my old Kodak.

 

[Space]

Or, you could get a piece of salatape (tm) and fix the battery door of the olympus. Works a treat on my old Kodak.

You want gaffer/duct tape like macgyver uses.