Wanted! Digital Camera

[tuky]

I am looking for an easy to use digi camera, you know, the sort your missus can use too!!! she also wants a printer with it.

Anyone have any experience with something <$1000 US?

she wants to take photos and print them, I like to store them on my pc and cd.

what is my best bet guys?

[maerim]

Don't know, let me tell you about Olympus.

I bought a C50 zoom from an outlet in Chiang Mai this cost 22,000 baht I have an Olymus E20 single lens reflex this does about everything except make a cup of tea also a C330 pocket camera, these by the way are all digital.

About a week after I bought the camera the rubber plug for the D.C. outlet kept popping out, a design or manufacturing fault.

I took it back to the shop and was told "mai pen rai" leave it here and come back in six weeks.

I told them thanks but no thanks as I have to go back to the U.K. soon so I sent a very polite e-mail to Olympus in Japan asking them as I had the reciept and guarantee etc. could I have it fixed in the U.K.

Try this, no problem but they do not have a world wide guarantee so if I want it fixed I will have to pay for the repair. I sent them another e-mail saying they designed it and made and I paid for it so why should I have to pay for their mistake?

After loads of e-mails to them asking for their C.E.O.s e-mail address absolutely nothing, the camera works O.K. but as this is about 2 months wages for most Thai's I would have thought a bit more customer relations would not go amiss.

Thank's Olympus thats the last camera I will ever buy with your name on it.

[randyksf]

Wow this could be come a real place of debate. Not this forum ever has different opinions!!

Few thinks to consider.

First forget the printer that is the simple part HP and most manufactures make something that will work. One of the last things to think about.

====Warranty, make sure the card states world wide. Not the box but the card that comes with it. ====

Thinks to think about.

Stay with 4 + megapixel. Some people will say you will never need that big of a photo. That may be true but having the data for just incase is really worth the extra.

Memory type.

Compact flash

Sony sick

SD mem

Etc..

I like compact flash for a few reasons.

1) Most of the professional cameras sue it.

2) Cheapest per meg

3) Strong case and not so small you can lose.

4) Most common memory in the market.

5) Tends to be faster

Lens Optics

Forget about digital zoom only get compare optical zoom.

3 X optical is about 110 mm zoom

2 X optical is about 70mm zoom ( not really enough

View finders.

With mine I can shoot about 80 -100 pics without the display view finder. Use it and get lots more from your batt.. Look for a camera that has a nice easy to use view finders.

Gismos and settings.

I am a computer geek and I want my camera to just take great pictures. If I want special effects I use Photoshop or the software that comes wit the camera.

Buttons and ease

I like a clean box without lots of things to mess up.

Battery’s.

Some use AA some use there own. AA tend to suck and the chargers are annoying.. Make sure the mAh is as high as possible. For AAA should be above 1800.

My Canon batt is 840 and get about 50 – 80 pics with view finder and LCD used.

I’ve shot the following, Nikon cool Pix (owned two and friends had the rest) Konica 3 meg, Canon S400, G3 and D10.

Here are my feelings on the different brands.

Nikon batts life was Ok. When you change the batt the date resets (they might have fixed that) Also has really bad Red eye. I owned 2 of them.

Simple to use

Konica, Pic’s were good Batt life was incredibly poor. Other than that a good camera it only had 2x optical. So that was our fault. Partner bought (we gave it to his sister)

Canon S400.

Best digital camera I have ever owned. Great Pictures, Night time pics are wonderful tooSimple controls with a 512 meg card I can take 200 second video with sound.

Lots of fun..

As far as simple I had my friend who is 60 and a techno phoebe and he loves his too.

I were to recommend a camera I would say the Canon G4/5 or the S400 the G4/5 is a better camera but a little bigger. The S400 is small and really does a great job.

[lopburi3]

You don't say where you are but give price in $. If we assume US$ you can buy a lot more than basic camera/printer for that kind of money. The basic printer could be $100 to make very good photos or several hundred if you want to print directly and have a monitor etc on it. I find myself using software on almost all shots so basic is fine for me. The computer is my 'darkroom'.

In basic agreement with rasndksf on cameras but will point out that compact flash memory is rather large for the newest cameras of credit card size (which for most people believe it the best option - can't take a photo if you don't pack your camera). I would keep it at least at 3meg pix as these sell as low as 7,000 baht now. I don't find myself using zoom at all (but do crop later so the more pix the better). I find AA battery fine if you don't use rechargeable type but agree they are not so great if you do. The good thing is you can find new batteries most anywhere.

I would highly advise doing a google search on digital camera and reading some of the information from sites such as Steve's and several others. There is a lot of information available.

One thing to watch for, which the newest models are better at, is the delay in focus and shutter activation. It takes getting used to.

[ThaiAdventure]

I've always used a cheap APS camera then scanned them in for the PC. My camera is now broken so I am also thinking about the digital option. I expect though, I will go for a cheap camera (<$30) and scan them again since I like to put them in albums and only occasionally need them on the PC.

[tuky]

Great answers guys, I have actually had 2 Fujifilm Finepix 601z in the last year and a 6800 before them, one I have misplaced and the other two have been stolen. I found them to be excellent cameras. 25 frames per second movies and so on.

My wife had trouble using it and so this is why I asked the question. She wants to be able to take a photo and then print it straight away, I want to store them so I can play.

I am in Azerbaijan now, but will be travelling through Dubai airport on Saturday night, as you may know I have a new baby in LoS so I really want to buy the camera and maybe photo printer at Dubai duty free. Unfortunately duty free can turn out more expensive than retail so I am not too sure what to do yet.

Sunday I will be going to Parntip plaza to pick up a few things for my pc.

As I have never been there before I have to ask can I buy a camera there? Can anyone suggest the best shop? Is Parntip plaza similar to MBK?

I will have my wife with me then so I can buy something she will like too.

Lopburi I was talking US$.

Randyksf, thanks for your great answer.

[lopburi3]

Price of cameras here seems to be only a little higher than the USA price now (and that is usually the best in the world). If camera is going to be used here in Thailand see no reason not to buy here.

Pantip is computers, software and hardware. MBK has everything. Don't like either myself as both seem to be fire traps. Prefer shopping for computer equipment at Fortune Town, although almost nothing open until afternoon. But am sure you can find a good selection of cameras at any of them.

I use an Epson Photo 830 printer which is cheap but produces very high quality borderless prints and comes with good/easy software. There are more expensive printers that she could just insert memory to print if she dislikes computers.

Have fun shopping.

[Pink Mist]

I bought a cheap printer a short time ago and was really surprised at the good quality prints. It is a Canon S200SPx and cost AUD$ 76, I use good quality paper from Kodak and it is great.

A friend of mine in Singapore is a professional Photographer and he reckons film type cameras still have the best resolution. He develops his own and scans them. He does own and use digitals as well, I will ask him and get back to thread.

[Pink Mist]

My mate reckons the Canon G5 is his preference.

[halfpast_2]

i have been using the Casio Exilm EXS2, very small digitial camera very handy as you can take it anywhere in your pocket.

the only problem i have found is that the megapixels are a little low when printing at a shop.

i think 3.2plus would be a big advantage.

but as a camera the casio is very easy to use.

the other thing that my father had problems with was battery when he bought some cheaper make, a big plus is to get lithium!!

[phazey]

I bought a Canon Ixus 400 on my way back from the states last week. Can heartily recommend it, comes with solid software and it's quality is amazing. All for the size of a cigarette packet. Also comes witth something called "Direct Print" where you just plug it into a printer and away it goes (not tried this yet tho).

./P

[pal78]

If it helps this is my experience:

My friends all got cute little cannon cameras, you know the ones, silver and small and cute. And for a while I thought that's what my wife and I would go for. But when I consulted with her I found that she wanted a "real" camera. We bought a Olympus C5050Z. It's great. We paid 650 euro for it about 4 months ago. It has been replaced by the C5060Z, which is just a little different.

Anyway the C5050Z is a 5 mega pixel camera and the quality of the shots is very good. I find it easy to operate and I've never had much experience with cameras up to that. It uses AA batteries which is handy because they are cheep, and easy to get hold of. They last long enough to fill the 32mb supplied card and the 256MB compact flash card which can be used at the same time in this camera.

It's a great camera. I would advise anyone who might want to do something beyond taking standard snaps to invest a little more in a more bulky model such as this. It's great.

Have a look at some pictures I took with it: Northern Lights

The same would not be possible on lesser cameras, and I think it's nice to have the ability to catch something like this on film(memory).

Of course it's not as portable as the sleeker options but it's worth it in the long run.

Cannon G5 is supposed to be good also in this price range. Of course if you really want to spend you $1000 you should go for something like the Nikon 5700. It's really cool, but harder to use. 8x optical zoom though.

Digital Zoom is a gimic. Don't even listen to the salesman telling you how great it is. You'll get the same effect if you open the image in Photoshop and zoom in that way. We turned the feature off on the camera. The C5050Z only has 3X zoom and zoom is like a lot of things in life, you always want more.

Anyway good luck.

[p1p]

OLYMPUS

Purchased a top-end camera in June, it went wrong in August. Took it to the place I purchased it and was told, come back in September.

I'm still waiting.

On 24th December was told the Bangkok repair centre was waiting from parts from Japan. They then told me that I had to pay 14,000 Baht for the repairs.

It is still under warranty.

Caveat Emptor.

I will never purchase another anything manufactured or supposedly supported by Olympus.

[muay_thai]

You won't go wrong with a canon or a nikon but my advice is take the canon.

Something like a Canon IXUS 3 or 400 will be well within your budget and if you

really wanted to you could get a canon direct printer so no need for a pc. However

i know in the UK the card prices are expensive so it might not be cost

effective.

I would stear clear of Olympus as my first camera was olympus an not upto much,

the likes of casio and other non primary camera makers also won't be upto much

when it comes to picture quality, at the end of the day cameras can have as many

fancy buttons but if the lens and the processor ain't good your never going to

be able to get a good picture.

Best bet is to get a magazine learn all the terminology then find out exactly

what you need from a camera, make a shortlist in your budget and then

over to the missus for the one that looks "cute".

Seriously though b4 you buy check out these two websites, very informative:

www.steves-digicams.com

www.dpreview.com

They leave nothing to chance !