Anyone have opinions on digital cameras?Follow

I haven't bought one in quite some time (to get an idea, I paid $400ish for a 5MP camera...that's how long ago it was, haha). Anyway, since dirty thieves stole mine, I now can justify buying another. I'd like to keep it at $150 or less. I'm debating whether it would be better to get a decent video camera separately this time since Hannah's getting into stuff like ballet and whatnot and I'll want to tape recitals and all that jazz.

I'm aware of sites like dpreview, I'm just curious if anyone has gotten anything they'd recommend for or against lately, especially with Christmas just having passed.

Thoughts?

Nexa

Canon is the way to go IMO. However, for the lower price range point and shoot, a Fuji Finepix is also quite capable. Also, don't be fooled by the megapixel marketing scheme. Anything over 8 megapixels is more than you need, and the more megapixels they cram on to a smaller sensor, the more photo quality is compromised.


Oh, and for me this is very important - your mileage may vary. Always look for a model powered by standard AA batteries. A lot of cameras these days have their own custom batteries which is a real pain in the *** when you're traveling and the battery dies. With a AA powered camera, all you have to do is stop at a convenience store or whatever to fix.

Edited, Feb 5th 2010 9:47am by BrownDuck

I think it's safe to say that with Nexa's obsessive compulsive disorderspersonality quirks, she won't be running out of charged batteries.

Edited, Feb 5th 2010 11:55am by Uglysasquatch

Do you think you'll be able to find the same street vendor that sold you the knock off the first time? I think you can get a better warranty with a regular old Canon.

I'd only recommend something with a hard drive if you know you'r the type who will actually download it to another drive. We went with tapes (yea, old tech, but still useful, could've done disks too) which is better for us, as then we can just grab a new tape and toss it in if we realize we haven't saved the last recording. also, going with tapes will mean a much cheaper price tag and at $5-10 a tape for 8 hours plus filming, it'll take a ton of filming to make up the cost difference.

From my experience in shopping for video cameras two years ago, you'd want to go disks over hardrive. That's 2 years ago though, which in tech years is 40 years or something like that.

For an inexpensive HD video camera, this gets rave reviews.

Hard drive will have better storage but is a lot more fragile than disc or tape and also more expensive. There's pros and cons to the 3 systems.

We have a Flip also and it's been great. I recommend it, Nexa.

The only con I've had with mine is I had to get a USB extension since I don't have any USB ports on the front of my computer. Other than that, it's worked like a charm. Even comes with some decent software for "jazzing" up your videos.

It reviewed well (compared to other similar cameras) on sites like C|Net and PC World so, for the price and what she wanted it for, I decided to go for it. She mainly wanted to be able to record things to share with the family in Virginia so I didn't bother to go with the HD version.

I haven't read the Amazon reviews lately but, from some other poor customer reviews I read, it seemed like people didn't understand that this isn't a $595 camcorder, it's a $150 fixed-lens video recorder for putting stuff on YouTube 'n stuff.

Edited, Feb 5th 2010 11:09am by Jophiel

Does it have to do lists as well? Or would that be considered a 'nice to have' feature?

I sold cameras and camcorders for a while and I absolutely agree with Canon being your best choice unless you do a lot of low light shots. Canon doesn't do well with low light at all. If you think that you'll be taking a large proportion of low light shots, I'd suggest a Sony or a Panasonic Lumix. Sony is usually more expensive for the same features and memory cards though. I definitely prefer lithium ion batteries, but if you go with AAs, try and get some Panasonic rechargables, as these seemed to last the longest of all the ones I tried. As for camcorders, I recommend Sony for you, as you said you would be taping stuff like recitals which are inside. Sony seems to be the best with low light in camcorders as well. I prefer flash drive camcorders, followed by hard drive. I hated mini-dvs and tapes.