Anyone want to offer advise on purchase of a compact digital camera?

[PJmomrunner]

My old camera is also a Canon, but the cards are not compatible. The old takes a flash card and the new is SD (secure digital). No clue what the difference is, but I assume they are not interchangeable--My S100 is pretty old, though. If yours is newer they may be the same.

I am hoping the camera operation is similar--my sisters-in-law have Canons that are different from mine and from each other, but when I have taken pix for them I find they operate similarly enough that I can intuitively operate them. This camera does some pretty fancy stuff though --but the reviews make it sound as if it does fine right out of the box for the kind of immediate use I have in mind. For software I run zoombrowser now. I don't know if my old pix will run on the new software--would be nice.

 

[Ross]

SD cards are tinnie tiny! You won't believe how small they are.

 

[Dennis S]

Duh

Duh

I was thinking of sending a small picture of my card to see if it's different or the same. Guess what is the hardest picture you could ever try to take?

A picture of your one & only memory card!

 

[PJmomrunner]

LOL!

There are pix of the SD card on Amazon.com, but nothing to compare them to (no quarter or anything) so I had no idea they were teeny tiny until Ross' comment ***shrug***.

http://www.amazon.com/SanDisk-SDSDB-1024-A10-Digital-Retail-Package/dp/B0001A06GW

 

[PJmomrunner]

Ah!

"Product Dimensions: 0.9 x 1.3 x 0.1 inches"

 

[Dennis S]

Good news & bad news:

Good news & bad news:

BAD NEWS: The card looks to be a little different shape, so maybe not transferrable.

GOOD NEWS: They are so much cheaper than even a couple of years ago, you would be tempted to buy one anyway.

POSSIBLE BAD NEWS: Ross, I hope you see this & can perhaps answer a real novice question: My apple G4 has a slot for something called a PCMCIA CF adapter. My existing scandisk memory card fits inside this adapter (like the deck in a box of cards, but much smaller. Any idea if these new memory cards you are talking about would fit in that adapter? One of the things I have always liked about my set-up is that my pictures go into my lap-top with no intervening hardware, or need for an ouside power source. Is this enough info to make an educated guess?

 

[PJmomrunner]

Dennis, the new camera comes with a USB interface cable, so you leave the SD card in the camera and plug the cable into the computer and the camera and voila! The only remaining issue becomes powering the camera during the download.... I may end up buying a high speed card reader (which it sounds like you have?)...the one I looked at can take all kinds of cards. http://www.amazon.com/Digital-Conce...-8568900?ie=UTF8&s=photo#moreAboutThisProduct Maybe yours does too?) They're not very expensive .

 

[Ross]

POSSIBLE BAD NEWS: Ross, I hope you see this & can perhaps answer a real novice question: My apple G4 has a slot for something called a PCMCIA CF adapter. My existing scandisk memory card fits inside this adapter (like the deck in a box of cards, but much smaller. Any idea if these new memory cards you are talking about would fit in that adapter? One of the things I have always liked about my set-up is that my pictures go into my lap-top with no intervening hardware, or need for an ouside power source. Is this enough info to make an educated guess?

Bad News:Nope. I have a reader built in for everything, but not SD. Don't need it since you can hook up the USB cable to the camera and take them right from there. Heck I even have video cables to connect the camera to the tv and use it as a picture monitor.

 

[WayneGM]

I recently purchased the Fujifilm E900 which is 9 mp and 4X optical zoom and I love it. I went with higher resolution as it provides a lot of flexibility if editing through software without deteriorating the picture quality. The price of this camera has really dropped in the past year so is comparible with many 5 mp options. American Photo recently named it Editor's Choice in the compact digital category. It's not as small as some of the cameras out there but then it's actually easier to hold steady for those long shots as you've got a better grip. It still fits in my jacket pocket, though. Also there's a optical view finder in addition to the LCD which is a benefit when you need to hold the camera real steady. If you make up slide shows to put up on the big screen TV, as I do, you'll appreciate the 9 mp. It's very fast and runs on inexpensive AAs. With a 1 Gig xD card, which has also dropped in price, you've got plenty of memory even at 9 mp. It uses the same processor, and has many of the advanced features, as it's big (more expensive) brother the S9000 which is a SLR body type with a fixed 10x zoom lens. I actually bought one of those first, to replace my "film" SLR, but actually find I use the smaller E900 more often than not as it's much more convenient for point-and-shooting.

 

[swim mom]

It sounds like a nice camera! I love my optical zoom and wouldn't give it up but I might give it to one of my children and get a fancier higher resolution camera but I won't give up my 10x optical zoom! I really like the image stabilization on yours. I didn't see that on any when we got ours but I love it on our camcorder! I know it makes a HUGE difference on it.

 

[StretchL]

quickly, as I just got out of day surgery... look at the Canon S3. That's what I got for my wife. Quite a remarkable camera. More soon.

 

[PJmomrunner]

Wow, Stretch, not sure what you mean by day surgery...is that like pre-op stuff? .... Anyway, I bought the S3!!! Hooray me! Thanks so much for the reinforcement!

 

[StretchL]

canon S3

canon S3

More on the day surgery in another thread-

The S3 has an incredible optical zoom, and an in-camera digital zoom on top of that. I was testing it out in our back yard and made some incredibly close-up shots of a baby robin, and shots of a garden spider tight enough to count the eyes.

Noni then took it on a cruise to Alaska and loved it.

It incorporates the same sort of Image Stabilization technology that Canon uses on their professional cameras, which will open up a whole world of low-light telephoto shooting for you.

It also has a great video camera feature, but get big cards (1g) if you plan on using it.

The only downside to the S3 is the noise that creeps in at about 800ISO. Try to keep it down to 400 or so for best results.

If you want to make really, really nice prints, purchase a piece of software called Noise Ninja. It's a remarkable noise reduction application that saved my butt on one very large assignment that was nearly killed by noise. It's a Photoshop plug in, and I don't know if it can be used as a stand alone. Check their web site.

Someone mentioned dpreview earlier. That's a great resource.

Enjoy the new camera! Interesting that you laned with the same one I did for Noni.