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

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.