Sunday, November 4, 2007

I need a new camera.

I'm hoping that some of you wise, lovely folks can recommend something for me.

  • I am strictly an amatuer, so I can't use anything fancy. I just need to be able to aim and fire.
  • I mostly use my camera for casual sharing of pics here on teh interwebs, and also for pics of my products for my store and ebay. So sharp close-ups are a must.
  • I would like the camera to be not huge.
  • I am also concerned about ease of access. I currently have an older Sony camera, which uses the Memory Stick. So when I'm done shooting, I just pop the stick out of the camera and pop it into the Memory Stick Reader, which is hooked up to my PC. I also have a Sony photo printer which lets you pop the Memory Stick right into it to print pics. I am very spoiled by this set-up and although I'm relatively sure that NO new cameras still utilize this Memory Stick, I would still like a very quick and easy way to access my pics.
  • I would prefer to spend as little money as possible, but I also want a camera that will take great pics and last a long time.
Does anyone know of a good camera along these lines?

EDIT:

Ok, I'm looking through some Canons. I've found that they do use a memory card and I can get a reader to hook up to my PC, so that's a plus in my book. But now my head is already spinning from all the choices. I've chosen a few based on size and prettiness and price. But I'm not sure about the specs. How many megapixels do I need? What about Optical zoom and Digital zoom?
Please pick one for me!

These are "slim"
One
Two
Three
These are "advanced"
Four
Five
Six

5 comments:

jenn said...

I quite like mine - which is a panasonic somethingorother and a bit fancier.

But really really, for point and click Jim's camera is awesome. I believe it is a canon - wait, I'll go to flickr and cut and paste the info

Panasonic DMC-FZ5
Canon PowerShot A85 (which you won't find now as that is the older version, but that gives a spot to start?)

allison said...

I have to second Jenn's recommendation of Canon. Our camera is a PowerShot 510 and is easy as pie to use. I simply connect it directly to the computer to download my photos. It is probably obsolete by this time too, but I daresay Canon is well worth checking out.

Anonymous said...

I have the PowerShot SD6. Low-light photos are CRAP (you get blur like I do or you use the flash and that sucks) but with your set-up it should be perfect. I think the 7.1 megapixel you linked to is the closest to what we have, and the 1000 is slightly fancier. I don't personally think you need 10 megapixels in a point-and-shoot, but I like Rob's rule of buying the best you can afford - so why not get the SD1000?

That Girl said...

Whenever I'm looking for a new camera, I head to http://www.dpreview.com/. In addition to looking at the reviews of the cameras already on your short list, also check out the side-by-side comparisons:

http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/sidebyside.asp

and the feature search:

http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/compare.asp

Anonymous said...

I forgot top answer about the zoom - you want optical. Digital "zoom" just crops the picture, which you can do after the fact. Optical zoom retains picture quality.

Also, I second Jamie's recommendation! I'd forgotten all about that site.