Digital camera help for Christmas!
 

Hi everyone,
I know this isn't exactly a travel question, but I am hoping you can help.
I bought my fiance a Canon PowerShot A60 for Christmas, and I am wondering now if there is a better digital camera for the money out there. I want to spend less than $250, and the one I got was $200 BUT it only has a 2.0 megapixel. Everything I read says you should have a 3 megapixel, but the guy at Best Buy said a 2 will be fine if you are only doing 4 x 6. Anyways, does anyone have any recommendations? I want a camera that has zoom, and different modes. Should I stick with this one, or try one with a 3.2 megapixel? Thanks! (By the way, we are headed to Hawaii for our honeymoon in August, so I am hoping for a camera that will take nice shots for trips like that.)

I've heard, too, that you should have at least 3.2 megapixel. My cousin has an Olympus 3.2 that has gorgeous resolution. I've heard Olympus is one of the best and to get a 10x optic zoom, but, then, I think we're talking more than $250.

I just got my first digital camera for Chanukah last night. it is the cannon A80 and I love it. It has 4.0 megapixels and my husband said he picked it up at best buy for around $300. Hope that helps. Good luck

I took a picture recently on a 2 megapixel Canon Digital Elph (although it cost more than $200), blew it up to 8x10 and it is crisp-sharp. I honestly can't tell the difference between it and my old Canon A-1. If anything, the digital pictures look better. I might never use film again.

I get 8x10s printed, on regular photo paper, from images taken with my 2M Nikon Coolpix 800. Excellent quality, and I think you'll be quite pleased with prints made from your Canon. Make sure you take pictures with the highest-quality, 1600x1200 format.

I recently bought a Kodak Easy Share camera with 5.0 megapixels for $299. I used it to take photos at a sporting event and I was absolutely amazed with the clarity of the photos!

These days, I wouldn't get anything less than 3 megapixels. The technology is progressing so quickly that it is already almost out-of-date.

I've got a 3.2 MP Canon S230 Digital Elph. I've taken it to Hawaii and it takes great pictures. You can currently get it for $259.80 at Amazon since they came out with the 4MP model.

I previously asked on this site for similar advice and was given some great tips. if you do a word search under digital camera you'll probably be able to find that thread. One poster directed me to a web site that was really helpful. www.dpreview.com

www.dpreview.com is a wonderful resource. Another website that I found even more helpful was www.dcresource.com

If you have a set budget of $250 maybe the 2MP camera with as many other advanced features as you can find is the best choice. The Canon A60 is, I believe, just the 2MP version of the A70 which is a wonderful camera. It has full manual control which is rare in low-end cameras.

On the other hand, if you never want to use any manual control and want everything to be just point and shoot automatic, it might be better to look for a higher MP camera that doesn't have all the bells and whistles of the Canon.

I am a photographer and a printer. dpreview is a great site as well as photo.net.

The BB guy was right that if you are only going to do 4x6, you won't need more than 2 MP. The printer can only print so many dots per inch. A 4x6 on a typical 300 dpi print will be 2.16 MP so you have very little capacity over 2MP that is useable. FYI, don't buy in to printer claims of 1440 DPI (Epson) or other things like that, it's not comparing apples to apples and I have a 300 DPI Canon photo printer that's much better than many EPsons that claim much higher "DPI"

With that said, IF you ever want to print stuff greater than 4x6, it will suffer tremendously. I find it surprising when people say they can't tell the difference, I guess it all depends on your eye. I look at 2 different brands of film and they look much different to me.

I also consider the optical zoom important on a digital camera, forget the "digital zoom". Digital zoom is infinite once you download the picture into photoshop so it's worthless on the camera itself unless you're printing direct to the printer and the printer can't zoom.

I shoot digital with an Olympus but the Canon's are very good.

beachgirl,
We have a Olympus 3.2 - the pictures are so great at least six of our friends went out and bought digital cameras in the past year. The Canons are great if you want one that is really small. However, I think that you have to spend about $100 more to get one with similar specs to the Olympus.
JoeG

My husband is on his third Olympus.. and it wasn't the pixels (which really means didlysquat to him), but the fact that it has a great zoom lens.. Interesting enough the one he has also does little movies.. He loves Olympus...we don't print off many pictures, but put them out on the internet on several different sites..

I agree with Loki - although I am not a professional photographer, I can tell the difference between types of film, and also see a huge difference between prints of digital images produced by various photo developers (have tried several on-line, and have discovered that consistency suffers a lot more with digital images than with print film).
Last June I bought a Canon A70 and am very happy with it. The photo quality is really great, especially wonderful on screen (computer monitor).
My old Minolta X70 (35mm) camera still takes pictures that after printing have greater sharpness, resolution, color etc. (using 100 ASA film) than my digital Canon.
But the convenience of seeing photos and being able to download and send photos almost as soon as you shoot them ensures that I use my Canon almost constantly!!

I have an Olympus (have had Olympus cameras for 30+ years) D510Z which is 2megapixels. I had a shot blown up to 8x10 (shutterfly.com) and it looks great on the wall. That was at the default resolution (HQ approx 400K file per pic), I've never tried the higher resolution settings as the default is fine for my purposes. A great site for reviews etc is
http://www.steves-digicams.com/default.htm

Just to add something sorta on topic, I brought some color negatives in to Costco this past week to have 4x6 reprints done. I had one set done by a pro lab and someone asked for copies. Costco did them for $0.19 each and I was very impressed. I hate probably 90% of labs but Costco's were almost as good as the pro lab I used at a fraction of the cost. The color of the fleshtone was off slightly, had a little less punch to it. They use what I guess is a little bit cheaper Fuji paper and I think the "pro" ones I was comparing to were on Kodak Royal.

Costco also does digital so you can submit them through the web or bring your media card into the store. I think there is an option to use the Kodak Picture Perfect finishing so my results may have been better with that but I wanted to try the cheap stuff and see how it was.

Thanks for your advice, everyone! I like the features this camera has, but I am wondering if I should exchange it for the A70 or something else with 3.2 megapixel. I am going to check out a few more cameras, but keep the suggestions coming!

then getting a Sony f717 is a waste of money????

I have a 2.1 Minolta - it fits in my pocket, has a decent optical lens, and my vacation pictures were great. If 4 x 6 is all you care about, you don't need to go any higher. I was very interested in size of camera and weight. This one is lighter, smaller than a wallet. I love it.

Someone a lot more savvy than me pointed me to the Canon Power Shot A Series. If you look around you can get the A70 for only around $65 more than the A60. Seems worth it to me.

He told me to stay away from Olympus and Sony because they aren't compatible with most computers and printers so you have to buy extra stuff. Whereas with most other brands you don't.

Those of you with those brands may be able to set me straight on that--just advice I received.

THanks everyone! I ended up spending a lot more than I thought, and got the Canon Powershot A80 (4 MP). Any experiences with this camera?

beachgirl,
The extra money won't matter because you will be much more pleased with the A80.
Connie,
The business about the Olympus not being compatible with computers and printers is baloney. I have used them with a variety of computers and printers and actually think they work much better than Canon products.
JoeG

Loki, I think Costco is a great place to get your digital prints made, but I learned a couple of years ago after having Costco scratch negatives on two different occasions that it's not worth saving a few bucks at Costco on film developing if you care about the quality of your pictures at all. (You can tell a negative is scratched from the long line running through the prints on that strip.)

The worst of all was that the Costco lab tech tried to blame me! ("Must have been a little rock in the back of your camera.") The rule in photography is that if the lab messes up your prints/negatives, not only are redo's free (no questions asked) but you should also get a free roll of film. And don't believe them if they try to tell you some BS like "must have been a small rock in your camera"(!). Funny how I never had any small rocks in my camera after switching to a semi-pro lab for my 35mm work. This is one way to distinguish between an amateur lab (Costco) and a semi-pro or pro lab.

But for digital prints, there's little for Costco to screw up - all they do is print and you have the "digital negative" anyway, so if they screw it up, you can just not pay for it and go elsewhere if you wish.

Andrew

We have a 5 megapixel Olympus purchased from Circuit City (I don't remember the cost, but I think it was around $300.) The biggest benefit of the higher megapixel from my perspective is that I can crop out the part of the picture I don't like, blow up what is left to a full sized picture, and still have great quality. When I purchased the camera, I wanted a strong zoom capability, but I now realize it is wasted since you can do your own "zooming" on the computer. The down side of the higher megapixel cameras is that they take more memory.