Digital Camera Under $400?

[sarge]

Can anyone suggest a good digital camera that would be suitable for outdoor photos at under $400?

We have had both of our digital cameras stolen at Christmas so are now back to square one.

I am not very non-techno savvy and whilst I have owned digital cameras in the past my photos always turn out doo light/dark/blurry, or basically just dont look like I thought they would. These were cameras that were supposed to be 'fully automatic' but obviously not automatic enough for me...

I am basically looking for a camera that doenst need to much adjusting to take nice pictures. Am I asking the impossible?

[johnw]

Can anyone suggest a good digital camera that would be suitable for outdoor photos at under $400?

We have had both of our digital cameras stolen at Christmas so are now back to square one.

I am not very non-techno savvy and whilst I have owned digital cameras in the past my photos always turn out doo light/dark/blurry, or basically just dont look like I thought they would. These were cameras that were supposed to be 'fully automatic' but obviously not automatic enough for me...

I am basically looking for a camera that doesn't need to much adjusting to take nice pictures. Am I asking the impossible?

Sorry to hear about your misfortune. I don't think you're asking the impossible. My wife is the most non-tech savvy person on the planet and had similar requirements to yours. A few months ago I bought her a cheap Samsung S630 for $98-00 (from D... Smith but I've seen them all over the place)
http://www.samsung.com/au/consumer/detail/detail.do?group=cameracamcorder&type=digitalstillcamera&subtype=sseries&model_cd=EC-S630ZBBB/AU
I've since seen them on sale somewhere for about $70-00.

For such a cheap camera I've found the image quality to be more than acceptable. A couple of weekends ago I took it into the bush and was quite happy with the results, although I didn't take a lot of shots as I was competing in a rogaine and in a bit of a hurry.

We did have a problem with the camera giving false indications of remaining battery power and occasionaly shutting down. So returned it under warranty. Samsung reset/readjusted something or other and it now seems OK. They also attached a note recommending minimum 2650mah NiMH batteries (which I think may be higher than their own specs suggest).

Anyway it's easy to use in the various automatic modes, but also has almost full manual control if you want it. One thing with this or any other digital camera is to go through and do the initial setup correctly for best results. Make sure it's set at the highest resolution, and so on. After that you should just be able to snap away. Of course results are also related to composing the shot, light, time of day etc. There are plenty of better photographers than I on these forums who can comment on that, and will have other camera recommendations.

[the_camera_poser]

http://www.dpreview.com

Also, do a search for Steve's Digicams.

First off though- what are you using it for? What are the types of photographs you want to take? Does it need any type of weather sealing? Do you use a tripod? Do you like to go for the artsy look, or just snap shots? Do you want a big zoom range, or not? Are you picky about image quality? Do you take low-light pictures?

Shopping for cameras is worse than shopping for cars. It's a maze. Give me osme more info and I'll see what I can root out for you.

Cheers, Bob

[Damien]

I use an Olympus 770SW as a 'point and click' type camera. It works great and is shock and waterproof.
It has a simple interface and has taken some very good pictures considering my lack of photographic skill.

The 770SW is now superseded by the 795SW which you can pick up for $330.00 or you can step up to the better 1030SW for $399.00.

More info can be found here:
http://www.olympus.com.au/component/opt ... Itemid,69/
Prices can be found here:
http://www.shopbot.com.au/p-83744.html

Damien

[the_camera_poser]

I'm fond of the panasonic cameras that have natural 16:9 format- they are kind of like panoramics, and suit landscape photography really well.

[Robbo]

Here is two links that will allow you check out what is available in the main brands. I have used both over the year, purchasing the Olympus cameras my wife, daughter and I have through them. The first one is marginally cheaper I think.

http://www.camerastore.com.au
http://www.digitalcamerawarehouse.com.au/

Good luck shopping...

Tony Robinson

[sarge]

First off though- what are you using it for? What are the types of photographs you want to take? Does it need any type of weather sealing? Do you use a tripod? Do you like to go for the artsy look, or just snap shots? Do you want a big zoom range, or not? Are you picky about image quality? Do you take low-light pictures?

Ok basically need a camera for hiking photos both up close and long range scenic/panoramic shots. Having said that would be using it to take regular 'family' shots too but really want one that can handle different lighting without needing a lot of adjustment. Weather sealing not important I can keep it dry without too much trouble. I have never used a tripod but we have access to one of those 'gorrilla pods' - they can wrap around a tree branch. I have not used it but sister in law has one and if we like it will probably get one too.

Zoom range I think 6x would be good. I dont want to take professional shots but just ones that capture the correct colour etc. As mentioend before one that can cope with different lighting would be good.

Thanks for everyones suggestions - I have a lot of research to do.

[tasadam]

Our first P&S (point & shoot) digital camera was an Olympus UZ-750 or something like that.
It was good - it does great macro and has 10X optical zoom (optical zoom is real zoom, digital zoom is like cropping on your computer so you can ignore if it says digital zoom).
Also it took AA batteries which I liked because they are readily available, and rechargeables are also available.

Problem was, it broke down 3 times in the first year. So Olympus replaced it - but with a new model, the 770. Same except bigger screen, and instead of AA it has some proprietary battery.
LI-10B or something (from my head).
That camera is still fine.

Would I own another? If I was looking for a P&S, yes. But having switched to DSLR, I wouldn't go back. I do more with my photography than what the P&S cameras allow me, and that's what I like. Horses for courses.
The P&S are fine and without looking for the current Olympus model in your price range, I am sure you will do well with them.

The size of the bit of glass at the front of the camera is not a bad guide - so many digitals have tiny pinhole (ok a bit bigger than that) lenses.
The Olympus, by comparison, had a good sized bit of glass in the front of it. Stands to reason it "should" perform better optically - obviously a very broad view on things and not taking other things into consideration.

The 750 when we bought it was over $700 but they have come down a lot in price. Problem is they keep bringing out better & better things.
If you want to put a short list together and post your ideas here, I'd be happy to take a look when time permits and compare what I think of each.
So many out there - you really need a short list.
Or at least a list of features that are "must have's", "prefer to have", and "don't care for" such as digital zoom, movie mode, or whatever.

Just my thoughts.

[Penguin]

Have a look at the the Sony DSC-H10 - ten times optical zoom, great Macro and not too heavy. Point and shoot. But $460 to 470.

Just a thought.

[walkinTas]

Have a look at the the Sony DSC-H10 - ten times optical zoom, great Macro and not too heavy. Point and shoot. But $460 to 470.

Just a thought.

... $399.00 on ebay. So just under!

[the_camera_poser]

Sorry it's taken me a bit to respond- I've been offline due to moving to Tasmania!

If you're still in the market, I'd make one STRONG suggestion. Make sure that your digicam has a truely wide wide-angle range. A lot of digicams only go to the equivalent of 38mm on a 35mm camera, which is not wide-angle at all. For this big vistas and for shots with a lot of foreground and distance, you're going to want a digicam that gives you 28mm or 24mm equivalence.

Also, remember, digital zoom is really a lot of hype, atleast in my understanding. All it does is crop the centre of an image at the maximum optical zoom range of the camera, which doesn't give you the same effect as optical zoom. In otherwords, an 8mp camera with a 2x digital zoom is producing 4mp images at it's longest focal length.


furthermore, there's two more things i'd keep in mind. #1, more MP s not necessarily better- my understanding is that image quality for digicams pretty much maxs out at 7mp. After thas, noise (equivalent of grain in the film days) can hamper the shot. Some of the really top cameras like Canon's G9 don't have as big a problem with this as others, but it still deosn't have as good an image as the G7, which had only 7 or 8 MP from memory. I'd steer way away from 10 or 12 MP digicams, unless you check out their reviews closely, particularly paying attention to their performance in noise.

The second is that Image Stabilization absolutely rocks! If you must compromise on anything in buying a camera, don't compromise on this. Your shots will be WAY better with it. Also, try and get optical image stabilization, which occurs in the lens itself, as opposed to digital, which is IMHO far less effective.

I'll avoid recommending Olympus, which I've had problems with, and Fuji- which is a very popular range but that I've had real troubles with.

NOW, I am a Canon-groupie, unlike some of my sadly mislead Nikon or Pentax users on this board (I respect them, but in a snotty, condescending way LOL). So, the first camera, which comes in under your budget is the Canon IXUS 860 IS- it has a wide focal length of 28mm, 8 mp, and optical IS. Good stuff.

I don't know anything about the image quality from it, but the new Pentax W60 waterproof camera sounds cool, but you'll be paying for waterproofing, which you reckon you don't need.

Canon Powershot SX100 IS- only like $290 online. I don't know what the wide-angle of it is. lots of good features and it has 10x optical zoom.

Canon A590 IS, only like $189, and you can get a wide-angle lens for it.

The Panasonic Lumix DMC LZ10 would be my personal choice under $400. It has all the features that the Canons have, but I'm pretty sure it also has a 16:9 format, which makes for a panoramic-like photo, that looks great on widescreen monitors and TV's. You can crop other pictures for this effect, but you lose image quality when you do it.

But if I was you, I'd go that extra bit more (one usually does when camera shopping), and buy the new DMZ TZ11. This baby is sexy! I know this has 16:9 ratio, and a host of other goodies. This is one sweet camera. 8mp, 28mm leica lens, 10x optical zoom, optical and digital image stablization, and a high-speed burst mode. Austin Powers says "Yeah Baby yeah!" (Ok, so I want one of these)

BUT, after all is said and done, if you are going to print out at 8x10 or less, you're not looking for manual controls, the Panasonic DMC FS3, or even a Canon 740, would do you just fine. It's really easy to get sucked in to the "need more" game with cameras.

My wife is a former photo-journalist, and her best pictures have been with a $100 Canon 35mm point-and-shoot. She gets lots of good photos with the professional gear, but the point-and-shoot was in the right place at the rigt time with the right responsiveness. A lot of pros well tell you the same thing.

Hope that all helped. i'm sure Nikon makes a good camera too. (Just kidding- they make good cameras)

[the_camera_poser]

Actually, all jokes aside, I'd have a look at the Nikon L15- it's only like $169 at DCW, and you'll probably get it cheaper elsewhere. It doesn't have a real wide-angle lens (35mm), but it does has IS, and I noticed that the lens has an f-stop of 2.8 for the wide-angle, which in English means that it takes photos in lower light than a lot of other cameras, and would be less reliant on it's flash. This is a good tihng, especially at that price.

cheers.

[tasadam]

Actually, all jokes aside, I'd have a look at the Nikon ....

NEWS FLASH! Canon user recommends Nikon camera!

Payback is sweet!

[the_camera_poser]

I knew I should have kept my mouth shut. See Sarge- Nikon users are so amazed to hear praise of their gear, they always get excited about it. Kind of the art of turning an albatross around your neck into a badge of honour.

But in all honesty, in my humble opinion, and limited experience, you'll do ok with most Nikons, Canons and Panasonics. I've had a defective Olympus, which may just be me (I get a lot of defective stuff), and a fuji that had the coating on the outer lens come off after a while (I did get a huge amount of use out of it). I was told by Fuji Australia that the material used in my camera was the same as in all Fuji P&S's, and that it has a limited lifespan, so FWIW I'd steer clear of them. Ricoh I know little about, but have read that their image quality isn't quite up to their price tag. I've had a samsung P&S 35mm- it had great bells-and-whistles but the build quality was shocking. This may have changed though.

I forgot about Kodak Easy Shares- they get panned in reviews, but I've used them, and they do a decent job. While plastic, they certainly stand up to abuse- they are the P&S's my old school used, so they had to be tough. Basic but reliable.

[tasadam]

Regardless of brand, it's the button pusher that makes the difference.
The gear can help - to an extent.
There are some things you can do more easily with "better" gear (more features; more zoom range; etc...) that can also be done on less expensive gear, possibly not as easily but some manual features on the littler (non DSLR) gear can be used quite successfully if you have the tenacity to use them (the manual features).

Another important aspect is cost. If you can find a camera for a couple of hundred that does most of what you want out of your $400 camera, you will lose less $ if you drop it in the drink or over a cliff or smash it when you drop your pack and forgot it was in the back pocket...

[Joe]

working surrounded by compact cameras in your price range all day puts me in a nice position to actually recommend having tried the vast majority of models available out. My pick of the market at moment is the Nikon coolpix s550. RRP is $349 at moment...just come down $50 from 399. 10mpx 5x optical...and nikon quality. Great camera. Nikon finally have a decent compact lineup.

Otherwise what about the olympus sw850? $399 for a camera you can take up to 3 meters underwater, drop from 1.5meters height...and still takes a very good image.

[Speculator]

Hmm...

I'm finding all this rather interesting. I'm looking for a new camera since I broke mine on a walk ages ago. I had a Fuji S5500. It served me well, despite it's flaws. I was looking at the Canon SX100, which seems to be a reasonable jack-of-all-trades for the price. Only problems with it are; firstly it's range isn't really wide enough. One of the Panasonic Lumixes would be better here I think (more expensive though), and it's continuous shooting modes are a bit too slow. The other thing to watch out for when buying online is make sure it's got an Australian warranty. Many sold online are Asian imports, and Canon doesn't honour the warranty on them I'm told (I think TWF told me that). I'd bet the online price someone saw for $290 was an import [EDIT: Actually, I just saw that price at DCW, so I'm beginning to doubt it's an import]. DSE have had the SX100 for as low as $355 I think. I still feel it's a good buy at this price, even better at $290. the other advantage to the SX100 is it's got manual shooting modes, which is rare in a camera like that.

L8r.

[Joe]

....The other thing to watch out for when buying online is make sure it's got an Australian warranty. Many sold online are Asian imports, and Canon doesn't honour the warranty on them I'm told (I think TWF told me that).

more info on that here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grey_import

Its not always a good way to go...but that said, I have about $2000 of camera gear that I bought from Hong Kong and the US which ended up paying about 1/2 what I would pay in Australia....even working at camera store and getting better than usual prices. You lose local warranty, you lose support of bricks and mortar store you can go into and ask for advice, you further along the process of the small family owned business' slowly disappearing, but you can save a LOT of dough. Its not nice..but its hard to resist.

[flyfisher]

You're right TWF its hard to resist but if we always buy off the net many of our specialist shops will dissapear, causing a lack of service, and unemployment.
Having said that I must confess to having bought GPS tools etc. on ebay.
Food for thought.

Flyfisher

[Taurë-rana]

I'm looking for a camera so I thought this thread would be a good place to start but, the models are all different now. It seems to be hard to get a 7-8mp camera as the_camera_poser suggested was a good idea, they're mostly 10 or 12. Does that matter?

I'm thinking that cameras that don't have their own battery pack would be better so that spare batteries for other things can also be used for the camera, but I may be wrong.

Is there any problem with the lens set up on this camera? It looks like the old, cheap instamatic setups.

I would like to have the option of manual setup but DSLR start at rather above my price range.

All suggestions appreciated

[photohiker]

Megapixels don't matter much at the entry level. Generally the more pixels crammed into a tiny sensor the more noise artefacts you get, but you also have to dial in advances in technology over time - they get better and better as time goes on.

That panasonic is probably ok, what is it's cost?

It has a wide angle lens which is fine for most landscape shots. It doesn't look like it has a telescoping lens although the specs say it is a 4.6 zoom. This is good. (dirt and gunge in the lens mechanism is a common point of failure)

It's part of a waterproof camera Group Test at DPReview. Worth reading.

[Drifting]

the two most important things to look for in a point-and-shoot to be used for outdoor photography is the widest angle lens possible (28mm equivalent at least, 24mm if you can find it) and image stabilization. That panasonic has both of these.

[Drifting]

you can get manual controls on some point-and-shoots, but they tend to be more difficult to use than those on a dslr. Have at look at some of the dslr-like cameras on dpreview.com Some are not THAT dear...

[Taurë-rana]

The Lumix is $434 compared to the Pentax Optio WS80 which is $329 but it only has 35mm instead of 28mm wide angle.

[Drifting]

Follow this link, and have a play with the focal lengh comparison tool. Make sure you click on "35mm" in the window, and not "digital".

[Drifting]

opps- this link:

http://www.tamron.com/lenses/learning_c ... arison.php

There's a massive difference between the two- more than you'd think. I'd ask Mickeymoo or Tasadam about this one if you still doubt!

[Taurë-rana]

Thanks Drifting, I had a look. I have gone ahead and bought the Panasonic. Stallards, much to my surprise, gave me a good deal and also confirmed that the Panasonic was the best of the waterproof cameras other than the Canon which is too bulky for me. I decided it was worth paying extra for the weatherproofing - I've seen a few cameras go into rivers. The only disadvantage is that the effective lowest f-stop is higher due to the lens set up but I'll have to live with it.

[Drifting]

good call. That's a nice camera. It's not just the old drop in the creek routine you need water resistance for- it rains a bit around here.....

Enjoy!

[Taurë-rana]

It's not just the old drop in the creek routine you need water resistance for- it rains a bit around here.....

Just a bit!

[Drifting]

that's the real catch to photography- a lot of times the best shots are taken when the camera's at risk of being soaked or sand blasted or dropped in the drink or whatever. It's a dangerous world for a camera!