Digital Camera

[*Emma*]

Aah, this is better!  

[Stuart]

Think Nigel makes a good call - I've been looking round recently and am about to plump for the Canon A540.  It's a new model with excellent reviews.  Cheapest on Pricerunner £149.95 and it was £162 a couple of weeks ago.

Excellent Yankee review site here

[Boomy]

I know you have set a budget but if you save the pennies and go for a Fuji Finepix F30, you will never need another digital camera for at least 5 years, its that good.

That does seem like a cracking bit of kit doesn't it!.

How would that compare to the camera i have out of interest image wise?.

I'm not against getting something at a later date that is far more portable if i would be just as happy with the images it produces

[Mike H]

I bought a Fuji F10 a couple of months ago from amazon.co.uk for about £140.

It's a good piece of kit.

6.3m pixel, good macro, good ISO including a 15 second night shot facility which creates some great pictures.

The best thing about it is the battery life,  one charge lasted for nearly 400 photos.

Have a read: http://www.megapixel.net/reviews/fuji-f10/f10-gen.php

Mike

[scott beeland]

Minolta Dimage Z3 for me and it's taken some crackin' shots. Haven't toyed with picture editing software yet but I need to push myself into exploring what it can do

[rich101]

I got one of these a few weeks ago-

Amazon - E900 for £180

Has had some good reviews, I haven't found anything to complain about either!

edit to say, the point and click settings work well, but you've also got the ability to go fully manual

[nlash]

I know you have set a budget but if you save the pennies and go for a Fuji Finepix F30, you will never need another digital camera for at least 5 years, its that good.

That does seem like a cracking bit of kit doesn't it!.

How would that compare to the camera i have out of interest image wise?.

I'm not against getting something at a later date that is far more portable if i would be just as happy with the images it produces

Boomy

Just to clear up what I was saying earlier, whereby I was in a bit of a rush as I was late for getting to a job... the digital SLR market is going through a huge boom at the moment and there are an awful lot of people that are buying them (because they are currently so cheap) that just like having a big camera round their neck with no intention of switching the thing off 'P' in its whole life time.

I like promoting photography as a hobby and will always try and help anyone looking to explore what the camera can do and for those people, I say go and get a D70 or a 350D and have a play.

For general photography though, with no desire to be creative then a good compact is enough and will get more use than an SLR which is big and heavy and would never leave the house due to the fact they won't go in your pocket.

If the thread starter was looking to explore photography then yeah... go get a budget SLR and produce some masterpieces

Regarding the five year thing, five years from now the technology will have moved on so far that even a good camera like the F30 will be very much outdated and seem slow, battery hungry, and big compared to what will be on the market at that time

I've read about the camera in various mags and it sounds impressive and produces great pictures, especially in low light. To win an award from TIPA it has to be good as they are about the most thorough in their testing and are not swayed like many, by how many ads they place in a certain magazine

[scott beeland]

[i like promoting photography as a hobby and will always try and help anyone looking to explore what the camera can do

You offering lessons then?

I need to explore getting better results from panning/ fast moving shots

[nlash]

[i like promoting photography as a hobby and will always try and help anyone looking to explore what the camera can do

You offering lessons then?

I need to explore getting better results from panning/ fast moving shots

Scott

If your looking to take panning shots, and i'm assuming you mean pictures of cars on a track etc, what settings do you put into the camera?

[Darrell O'Neill]

Some great advice above guys, Thanks.... really.

Looking at something like the F30 now, as I can see an SLR now getting used to its full potential and and being left home due to its size....    

Now to find a cheap place to buy one ....  

[scott beeland]

[i like promoting photography as a hobby and will always try and help anyone looking to explore what the camera can do

You offering lessons then?

I need to explore getting better results from panning/ fast moving shots

Scott

If your looking to take panning shots, and i'm assuming you mean pictures of cars on a track etc, what settings do you put into the camera?

I have tried manual and "sport" mode. Not bad results but panning from side on could be a lot better

[nlash]

Review at dpreview

[nlash]

Scott

For shooting cars on track, try this

Set camera to shutter priority (you can do this on a Z3) and set the speed to 125th second. On a bright sunny day, leave the iso at 100-200, on a cloudy day, put iso to 400.

Focus on a point where the cars are passing and where you want to release the shutter, and then switch the AF off completely. Don't touch the focus ring now (if you have one) leave it at that focus setting as you switched off the AF

When the car passes, keep it within the frame and release the shutter *just* before the point you focussed on then follow through with the car after the shutter has released to allow for any shutter delay.

Then admire the superb panning shot you have just taken

[Kevin Wood]

QUOTE

Sorry to hijack this thread with my own query, but I'm after a compact digital camera with a decent flash (if there is such a thing).  My present camera is very deficient in this area, anything up to three feet away from the lens is OK, but anything beyond that is lost in the murk.

It's probably down to the limited light output available from what is a relatively small flash gun. To illuminate a subject double the distance away (2m) to the same brightness would require 4 times as much energy from the flash gun and there's a limit to what can be built into a physically small camera.  Add to that the fact that a compact camera won't have a particularly wide lens aperture and the problem is compounded.

Have you tried using slave flash guns which trigger when the flash on the camera fires?

These would increase the light output and allow you to create more interesting lighting since the light source doesn't have to be co-located with the lens. It would also defeat the object of having a compact camera to some degree, of course, and the camera may or may not cope with getting the exposure correct when confronted with the extra light.

I'm not sure how flash performance varies between compact cameras but I doubt any even begin to approach what can be achieved with an SLR and a separate flash gun, and that's limited to a range of a few metres.

It never ceases to amaze me how many flash guns you see firing at concerts and other events where the subject is hundreds of metres away. All a total waste of electricity and, in some cases, film!

Taking pictures in low light without flash can be very rewarding, but only if you've got a camera you can control, a tripod and a static subject. Again, not really compact camera territory.

Kevin

[nlash]

The beauty of the camera I mentioned earlier in the thread, the Fuji F30 is that it has high ISO levels with good noise control, which effectively means the built in flash will be good for greater camera to subject distances.