I am considering buying a Digital Camera

This is a good site for comparisons and reviews: http://www.dpreview.com/

get one that lets you make film clips. then you can film those sex romps with Jess you always wanted to make.

http://images.amazon.com/images/P/B00005LB8P.01.MZZZZZZZ.jpg

I have a Sony V1 which is great, very fast and not terribly large, with v. good image quality IMO. This replaced a P8, which met a horrific end on my bathroom's tile floor.

This is the problem professionals have with all digital cameras, no?

And gareth.. take pictures of yourself. as many as you want. as nasty as you want. But only in brown.

BROWN NARCISSISM... DO IT. DO IT.

If you're looking for something reasonably compact, Olympus' Stylus models are also pretty good, and weatherproofed, which is handy if you're going to want to use them in the rain. Olympus also has some beautiful higher-end models (around $1000 Cdn, maybe $800 US) that give you fantastic control over manual aspects of the picture. But you gotta have the $$$.

Sony ain't any more crap than any of the others, really, when it comes to proprietary memory and batteries. Most of the cameras that are coming out these days use their own special battery, and they're all expensive...but generally a better deal to spend the $50 or whatever on a second slim Lithium Ion battery than worry about NiMH rechargeable AAs or whatnot...

As for the cards, they roughly break down into several camps:

SecureDigital: HP, Kodak, Canon, Panasonic, Nikon (I think), many others
CompactFlash: Minolta, Canon, Nikon
MemoryStick: Sony, Samsung
xD: Olympus, Fujifilm

Sandisk, who makes a lot of this memory for add-on and for inclusion inside the box, sees SecureDigital and MemoryStick as becoming the overwhelmingly dominant memory types of the next little while. The upshot is that even though MemoryStick is not used by too many camera makers, it's still going to be one of the most popular memory types around.

The whole thing is moot anyhow if you're getting a camera that has a USB connection to your PC, because you can just use that to transfer your images. Failing that, get an 8-in-1 card reader from Belkin or Lexar or something like that, and you can read any old type of memory that's out there.

Buy this and let me play with it - http://www.megapixel.net/reviews/nikon-d100/gfx/d100-frontleft.jpg

(Only ~$1500 new w/ lens! A steal!)

Do they vary that much there? Here there's not much variation between the different types, at least at the stores I go to.

The warm colours, though, not so much a Fuji thing. (Fuji lenses in other arenas have a reputation for being cold and a bit clinical, actually.) Colour palette with a digital camera is basically unlimited, with a little manipulation.

I am also considering buying a digicam. I want Canon because it is cute. With my GB storage pretty much maxed out by itunes, is there any hope for me in the digicam world? Would I need to get an external harddrive maybe? Which camera works best with Mac?

a) asking for matt finish, getting gloss
b) paying for the 3 hour service, getting there at least another 3 hours after that, photos done, but cd still not ready, can i come tomorrow after 11am (making it 24 hours, but charging me for 3)
c) strange speckled marking on all the photos they had scanned (the difference between their scanning of the negative, and my scanning of the print was extraordinary. looks like they need to clean their equipment. i sent them an email advising them of the importance of keeping their equipment clean, in case this should happen to other customers.

so, i'm looking a lot closer at digital now, or, at the very least, i will not be using SNAPPY SNAPS HAMMERSMITH AMATEUR DEBACLE RIPOFF EMPORIUM again

There's no way you should agree to pay the 3hr charge.

You might be able to clean the negs and ask to have them rescanned for free if they've already dicked you around once.

Sometimes it's worth going to slightly more expensive, top-notch labs.

http://mobilemag.com/content/images/2030_large.jpg

What I look for in a digital camera are: picture quality, memory format cost (CF is currently the cheapest and largest maximum capacity), and the ability to run off a standard battery. the last is very important getting caught short with no camera power is a pain in the arse.

I was looking at this last weekend, and am seriously considering buying it.

Sometimes it's worth going to slightly more expensive, top-notch labs.

otm!

And will I need to buy a memory card?

I got an Olympus C3030Z over 3 years ago, and it still works really well, even though it's had loads of beer split on it, and dropped around a bit.

I bought a cheapo digital camera last year (a Canon PowershotA300) so I could spill beers on it, instead of the Olympus, and it stopped working within 24 hours of me buying it. Replaced it with a new one, but the photos still aren't as good as what the Olympus can take.

Isn't this the point of iPhoto? To make a local copy of your digital photos?

NB if you wish to use IPhoto as your download an catalogue programme and photoshop as your editor you can set the preferences so that you can double click on a photo and have it opened in photoshop.

You can set iTunes preferences to not make a copy at all, and just ask as a database of the songs spread across your hard drive, but I don't do this, as I like the way iTunes organises them, and I'm assuming that it makes for snappier operation.

It does, and I say yes, but then it doesn't delete it. I have also tried saying no, to trick it, but that doesn't work either. Of course this doesn't happen when I burn my own CDs, that would be silly. Only when I download. I'm sure if I could be bothered to look at it for more than 5 mintues maybe I could come to a happy conclusion. (It could be a weird glitch between my old computer and the blazing modernity of iTunes, or it could just be that I am not quick. Please, no speculations as to which is more likely.)

Tell me about Ixus, Gareth.

1. I love LA
2. I want Spencer's camera

http://www.redbulldozers.com/mirror.jpg

it was pretty good, picture quality is OK and you can take grainy mpegs with it if you like, though i just like it cos it tiny and fits just about inside your jeans pocket. Although it's like 2 years old now so there are probably better and smaller ones out there.

http://www.dpreview.com/
and
http://www.dcresource.com/

x-post.

what is optical zoom Vs. digital zoom?

x-post

yeah, the ixus II is like only £20 more. hm. k thx spencer.

STFU Lawyer boy!!

;)

For walking about I just bought a Olympus c-60 with 128mb card for £300. Went for this as it's 6mp and full manual control - I like to fuck up my own pictures thankyouverymuch.

This is now the thread where Gareth tells me what he thinks...

What's great: picture quality is extraordinary, I think (4.0M). The very first shot I took with it was in Macro mode from at Large/Fine of a small bedside candle from a distance of about 8cm and I was a bit gobsmacked when I downloaded it to the PC and viewed it at 1:1. Ran off a bunch of ISO400 shots in a very dark upstairs room in a pub that night and they had plenty of character too. Tried some tripod pix last night around dusk on various long shutter settings at ISO50 and, again, they were stellar.

The LCD screen and the switchable onscreen info is excellent too. Cosmetics are grand. The auto-focus is smart and, er, smart.

What's not that great: lack of optical zoom, but that's another price category, I guess.

Battery life - manual says 190 shots per cycle (flash every 4th shot, power on/off every 8th, auto mode) but I'm not getting that. I guess repeated downloads to the PC every 15 shots and much dicking about with the menus doesn't help. It's a LiIon so no memory effect and full recharge takes 90min. I may buy a spare.

About 2/3rds of the way through the manual and still no indication as to how to reverse the flash default (i.e. always off). The other night I kept defaulting back to Large/Fine (when I wanted M2/Fine) too - probably user error - which meant a raft of 1.5MB JPGs on the card.

It's so tiny camera shake is always a risk with my not-so-dainty digits but I'll get used to it.

http://www.pentaxusa.com/products/cameras/camera_overview.cfm?productid=18283

Yeah, the Pentax Optio and the Canon Ixus were the two I was mooning over in a shop on Russell Square last week, unaware that PB had already bought me the latter. She didn't blow the secret when I was telling her about them either. The Optio (I discovered later) was quite a bit more expensive.

ALSO IT IS HERE, IN MY HANDS! HURRAH!

I have a 430 = 4 + 3 + 0 = 7

Ergo mine is bestest.

Another thing that I'm finding kinda amazing about digital photography is the amount of information you can tease out of a very underexposed photo after the fact. I took some shots the other night of our garden in total darkness - 15sec exposure - and after playing with the lighting, contrast and gamma in PhotoExpress they took on a real BadgerWatch with Tony Soper ghostly infrared quality. What was previously fields of darkness was revealed to be the back fence in some detail, branches, leaves, an abandoned railway sign, foxes playing dominoes, etc.

Perhaps if Antonioni had made Blowup in the digital age he'd have called it Lighten Up. Maryon Park looks good in the dark.

I have video footage of PJM and the Pinefox discussing something in strangely hushed tones. It was like The Conversation meets Blowup meets Blowout meets Blowback. Or Carry On Parkie.

I will leave it to the Pinefox to reveal the nature of our conversation, as he was quite shocked.

I really want a Nikon D70. I'm debating selling my Leica to pay for a D70 and a couple of Nikon primes.

http://www.centre.net.au/prod/img/caneos300dint.jpg

Mmmmm *drool*

http://images-eu.amazon.com/images/P/B00006NSRW.02.LZZZZZZZ.jpg

Thoughts?

Right now the best option for me is probably the A510, though I will consider other options (please to remember all that I am *not* made of money; the price for this one is actually about where I want it). This assessment at DP Review further sells me on the A510; it looks v. suitable for my needs. I gather with the USB interface I can use this on both Mac and PC readily enough, while the review says it handles about 300 shots on two AA batteries, which is handy.

About my only question is if in everyone's experience it's worth it getting a full 1 gig memory card instead of a 512 Mb -- I honestly can't see myself using up *that* many shots in between computer dump modes, but ya never know. Also, do battery recharger kits automatically voltage-switch these days when overseas? I have the necessary adapter equipment but am just thinking of stocking up on some extra AAs for the moment.

All thoughts welcome, thanks!

Ned you'll probably be fine with a 512 card although considering the amount of travelling you're about to do it might be worth getting a spare card just in case.

Also, do battery recharger kits automatically voltage-switch these days when overseas?

Should be okay. I used a US-UK adapter with my charger when I was in NY and no problems.

http://photos18.flickr.com/23930105_f2b93009f2.jpg?v=0

Now, to consider further options.

Bit dark but I like it. Will futz around more with settings and the like soon enough.

I used to have an IXUS 40, and am thinking of moving back to that, but just in case -- does anyone know of a similar-sized camera that's just as fast on the shutter release (IXUS is virtually instant) and equally small that I should consider?

I especially liked it when jel said he was going to make films and pop videos.

And when Momus said, "You 'see' a picture before you raise the camera to frame it," I thought of the reigning film guru at Brown University -- she reigns still -- who admonished us to always do just the opposite, that is, to "find" the shot by looking through the viewfinder.

I'm still trying to work out how Alex in NYC took a picture of his own camera!

I have always eschewed the way of the camera but I want to start doing this THING which will involve me taking PICTURES. The pictures will be of buildings, and some of them will be of details which are far away.

There's no need for them to be super-professional in quality, though I'd rather they be OK instead of rubbish.

Do I need to get one of those flashy and expensive single lens reflex jobs? Or is there a simpler solution? This is only a whim of a hobby so I don't want to lash out hundreds and hundreds of pounds. Recommendations of particular models particularly appreciated.

No. Go for something with 5x zoom at least.

That is true of course but 5x optical zoom (or more) would be advantageous for the specific kind of photography he wants to do. With 3x zoom there will inevitably be more cropping down (and thus loss of resolution if he wants to print pictures out at relatively large sizes) because the lens couldn't zoom in close enough.

http://www.dpreview.com/

-> Very good website.

Go mad and get a Leica D-SLR, Tim. Then I can borrow it.

Another dumbo question: presumably this whole zoom business has the kind of point and click thing going on, but I press a button and zoom on things if I wanna, and the camera will focus accordingly. Is that right?

Arf! Camera geek humour.

Ricoh looks very good for the money. Worth having a fiddle with a few models in a shop that will allow you to do so (maybe a Jessops? TCR shops just want your cash); see whether you prefer menu-driven cameras or ones with dials (the most faffy thing about my Ixus is the button-pressing to jump through ISO/F-stop settings) and whether you feel like you're getting enough tactile feedback from the focus/shutter button to be able to use it properly.

Specs is one thing, but how it feels in your hands is important, I think. That's my motto. Or a slight variant thereof.

Good point. But ah ha, I have a Nikon CP5700 and a Pentax Optio 750z, both of which have foldable/twistable screens that can be set with the screens folded inwards which neatly avoids the nose grease problem (and also the risk of scratches). Twistable screens are a great feature in a number of ways.

1. In bright sunshine, LCD screens are often useless
2. CAMERA SHAKE. It's much easier to hold something still if you can press it to your head.
3. I am now aged and find it an effort to focus on something at that distance.

Also is it wrong to want not to own something called "coolpix"?

Also I note that each time someone recommends something, it's more expensive than the last thing recommended. Interesting, that.

Chris, see Alba's post. Yours is so large it would be very difficult to fit it into my trousers.

Tim, how about sellotaping a piece of paper saying "JoeySnaps" over it?

http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/B000BYW6IE/ref=br_lf_ce_2/026-9995320-7476427

got this, recently, after I...broke my R2

i just got that which i am well pleased with after not having used it at all, but now im panicking that its rubbish, for some reason the pic of the sony cybershot spooked me. i dont know whether its rubbish or not, but i spent ages deliberating over it

You can rely on Derbyshire. Are you going to collect the baby-related thing?

the lads used a similar camera i think (older model? maybe ixus 500 = 55 i dunno, the numbers confuse me)

so what's up with these things? i have enough cash for a high-end point/shoot or a low-end DSLR. i don't know too much about photography but i want to learn, i want something that will be fun to carry around and take pictures with--powerful but not cumbersome, etc. etc.

thoughts and ideas pls!

digital camera advice, please

A DSLR gives you more of a future upgrade path, and often either give you more control over what you're doing or make that control easier to use.

On the other hand, they're always going to be a bit more cumbersome to carry around. Best advice: find a shop that lets you hold the camera and find out how easy it is to operate its controls.

Get a Canon Eos D1000. I fucking adore ours.

^ seconded

Yeah, the sensors on even entry-level DSLRs are 9-10 times the size of even high-end compacts, so, in terms of critical image quality, speed of response, low-light use, etc, there's no comparison.

I always come back to the Canon EOS 1000D as a recommendation, not because it's significantly better than similar products from Nikon, Olympus, Sony or Pentax (I don't think it is) or because it's cheaper (it certainly isn't) or because the kit lens is anything special (they're all similar), but because you can spend another 70 quid on an autofocus 50/1.8 lens and enter the realm of Dead Good Picture-Taking An' That.

Ultimately it's all about the glass and the Canon 50/1.8 is about the best value-for-money lens on the planet. Nikon do a similarly-priced equivalent but neither the D40 or D60 autofocuses with it; basic, fast primes for the other brands are 3-4 times the price. Even the third-party equivalents are expensive.

But if you wouldn't find any use for a wide-aperture, fixed-focal length lens, they disregard the above.

Panasonic are blazing a trial with a "middle way", however. Check out this.

if you hate lugging around a camera, get a G10. otherwise get a canon1000d. i fucking love mine! also took a (really cheap) course. we learned how to use the flash (go lower or higher) or set the white colour.
still need to purchase the 50 mm one and the zoom lens. :-)

Quick - how do I lower the flash on my 1000D? I'm gonna blind my cat otherwise.

i think that's one of the main things i'm trying to understand is how big the gulf is between the G10 and the 1000D. there seems to be a general consensus that the gap in image quality is significant, and i'm starting to feel like the portability/zoom lens/etc. of the G10 wouldn't make up for that.

otoh, if i buy a 1000d i feel like i'll eventually end up getting a very compact point and shoot for just dropping in my pocket when i go out. and that's even more money spent.

By lower the flash do you mean turn it off? Stick it in manual mode or the 'automatic no flash' mode (M and the picture of the flash with a line through it on the dial, respectively).

call all destroyer; it's really no big deal to just take the 1000d out in a small case that only fits the camera with attached lens. I've not missed having a compact, although, yes, if I had spare spondoolicks I'd get a G10 just as back-up. I've taken the 1000d with me to the pub and got some wicked shots that a G10 couldn't manage.

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3453/3184568666_8f829645cf_b.jpg

Sick Mouthy's dad: "Surely your photos will be rubbish without flash?"
Sick Mouthy: "hahahaha @ the train photographer"

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3436/3241008290_1231b7fa60_b.jpg

w/ camera in manual mode:

if you hold down the flash pop-up button and use yr dials you should be able to over-compensate/under-compensate the flash power to the tune of +/- 2 stops

Yep, go to menu -> flash compensation (I think in English) and then go up or down.

It's also AWESOME to set the "white". We had to photograph a white paper and it seemed brownish. Then we set that as white, took a pic again and it was WHITE. well, not really, more metalic greyish. heehee. I guess you'd also have to "over light" (???) as well to make it really seem white. Only necessary when you're taking pics of snow landscapes and shit.

I guess the G10 is rub if you wanna put another lens on. heehee.

I love the colours and light levels in those pics, Nick (I've had a good snoop around your flickr sets). I was hoping that you could actually turn down the flash level (which is ridiculous, now that I've thought about it).

I realise though that's it's a delicate balance of apeture size, ISO level and exposure times. Something that I haven't got the hang of yet - my pics without flash are really noisy - you've clearly got it spot-on in those pics.

From what I remember: try to avoid upping the ISO too high.

Also, isn't it always recommended to stand about 3 meters away from the subject? Too close and they are too pale and further off they are a bit dark?

I should shut up as I know fuckall about photography. :-D

No, you are right, it's the high ISO which makes them noisy.

I guess I should just read the manual one day.

hahaha Yeah, I read some dick's post on some forum going on and on about people now being way too lazy, never bothering to read the manual and just shooting away cause it's "free" anyway. He's right of course but he was a bit of a dick anyway. They guys all seem anal fucks (on the photography board I used to frequent). "Oooh your horizon is a one degree off. Crap pic!" FFS, get a fucking life.

I've not read the manual; got Em to read it for me and then tell me how to adjust aperture, shutter speed and ISO. That and auto-focus point are about the only things I use (and de-noise at any ISO over 100). I always keep the ISO as low as possible and the shutter speed as quick as I can; hence the lover of the 50mm f/1.8. The pub picks are all sans flash, at about 1/50 of a second.

I could tell from your pics you didn't. hahaha J/K. Well, you know about photography already so less important. :-)

"De-noise"? Must read that part!

Would that be shooting in raw and then photoshopping? (This will be on the agenda later in our course. HURRAH)

Nah, there's a noise reduction feature built in to the D1000. I don't shoot in RAW and don't use Photoshop. I don't do much post-processing at all actually.

I'm nto tempted to shoot in raw either, cause doesn't it slow down?

I was going to ask if you really de-noise ISO 200-400, Nick, but if you're letting the camera do it, it's probably fairly subtle down there. Quite impressed with the in-camera NR on the 40D - deals with the coloured speckles, doesn't touch anything else, so ISO 800-1250 barely needs any more work.

I use Lightroom as an organisational tool for everything, so anything Flickrable gets a bit of a tweak in there too. Sometimes a lot more than a tweak (and there's no hiding this fact on Flickr any more - More Properties gives a complete list of LR parameters so people can see exactly what you've done!)

This one is ISO 1000 - just to try to get a max shutter speed and freeze the spray (failed). No shadows though, so it's not really much of a test of NR:

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3553/3364276388_2c745d579e.jpg

Alternatively, get a proper camera!

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3249/3143225099_cd9340ca24.jpg

(Which I take more photos OF than WITH).

The white balance setting that Nath mentioned is pretty useful (though I need to get myself - or make myself - an 18% gray card, I think), especially if you're just shooting JPEG and you don't have quite as much control over white balance afterwards (with Raw you can dial in any colour temperature from 2000K to 10000K, post-prod).

I still favour JPEG - even though I have a camera that can shoot fast bursts of Raw now and not get stuck writing to the card (like the old 300D did), Raw still feels like overkill for snapshots (which is what I do 95% of the time).

(and there's no hiding this fact on Flickr any more - More Properties gives a complete list of LR parameters so people can see exactly what you've done!)

you can disable this.

I'm nto tempted to shoot in raw either, cause doesn't it slow down?

^^^ I don't know what this means.

The white balance adjust in Aperture is enough for me; I wouldn't be confident judging on and LCD screen, I'd much rather look at it on a nice big Mac screen afterwards and adjust it then.

JtM: Isn't that just a case of turning the EXIF data off in Flickr account settings? Or do you have more control than that?

I don't really want to nix EXIF - happy for people to see shooting data. I don't even care if people can see that I've gone mental with the saturation/tone curve/whatever to get a particular effect. I think the full Lightroom data thing is quite a recent addition to Flickr though (unless it's to do with the way LR 2.1 or 2.2 exports).

(I think Nath means that shooting Raw slows the drive mode, fills the buffer quicker, etc. Prob the case with the 1000D).

yes.

but if you're really worried about overrunning the buffer by shooting RAW... what the hell are you shooting?

My old 300D couldn't shoot more than three Raw frames in continuous mode - it would hang while it cleared to the card. In a strip-lit windowless registry office last summer, I switched to Raw to better deal with the weird lighting, starting shooting away at the happy couple...it hung and I missed the kiss. I don't think I'll forget that.

hey just wanted to back up and say thanks for the thoughts you guys. definitely leaning 1000D now. hearing that you can get good shots in a pub is actually a ringing endorsement for me.

You need a nifty fifty lens though! The cheap one Michael mentions.

have a G10 and it's really fun to use and very convenient - there are definitely limitations (mainly sensor size - there are some pics that one of those DSLRs can take that the G10 won't manage) - it depends what you like to do: i really like having the camera around with me always in a coat pocket and take pictures of pretty things as i encounter them and so a decent compact is good for me (i wouldn't do the same if i owned something much bigger) and it has so many accessible options to explore. i think as someone said upthread best is to go to a camerashop and try out some of them and see.. if you like the 1000D i think you should definitely go for it.