Basic Camera Buying Advice

[David]

Guys, i'm not up on Cameras but need to get one, price range is prob around £200 so not amazing, but i wanted to know, aside from MegaPixels, whats really going to determine the image quality of a good digital camera these days?

There are of course plenty of £100 10mp camera on ebay from japan that are bound to be s**t so i'd like some help on buying one, good brands to look for etc. Much appreciated!

 

[mas]

got a great Panasonic Fz7 fo sale

 

[daviebroon]

^ great camera.

Any of the Panasonic Lumix cameras are going to see you well. If buying new, go for a Lumix with OIS.

Don't let the Megapixels determine your purchase... 6Meg is absolutely fine for what you need. Look for a good resolution on the sensor, lots of features, a big optical zoom, and OIS is a must.

 

[David]

nah need a little slim profile one sry dude.

ok i'll look at lumix, whats a good resolutuon on the sensor then?

 

[daviebroon]

well mine is a 1/2.5in CCD which is quite small as far as figure comparison is concerned, but it actually works well... so anything from that onwards really. Don't go anything smaller, or you are going to have a lot of noise in your pictures

 

[daviebroon]

if it was me... i;d go for this

http://www.panasonic.co.uk/compact/dmc-fx33eb-s/index.htm

 

[David]

any advice of what that ISO stuff is? pfff afaic i thought it was a cdrom image! lol

 

[Dcds4]

i've just bought a sony t100 and its pretty cool, just wanted something small but it seems pretty good so far, 5x zoom too

 

[David]

thats bucks though

 

[unofficialPete]

What do you want to take pictures of? Need zoom? need it small?

Just bought my rents an Ixus 75 for x-mass, looks very cool massive screen and compact camera but yet to play, has face recognition and lots of cool little features like colour selection.

£160 with 2GB memory and a small case..

 

[ukaskew]

Samsung NV10 is pretty sweet, amazing menu system.

10mp+ on a compact isn't going to be much use, will probably do more harm than good (noisy pictures), aim for 6-8mp, you will never need more than that. Avoid Digital Zoom like the plague (optical zoom = good, digital zoom = bad)

As a general rule you won't really go too far wrong with a Canon, Panasonic, Fuji or Nikon compact camera, they don't tend to release too many crap models between them.

 

[mas]

fz7 cough cough

 

[David]

that's really helpful thanks lads

 

[Charlieboy]

My Samsung 8.1 mp is really good with very clear pics like pro quality. Think it was 250 with printing dock from argos, prob cheaper now