+Rabid Bunny Posted September 20, 2002 Share Posted September 20, 2002 NeoGranger and I were looking at digital cameras and just wondering if anyone had a suggestion/s for what to look for and maybe can recomend a good camera for under $250. Thanks! Quote Link to comment
umc Posted September 20, 2002 Share Posted September 20, 2002 I have a sony cybershot s75 and love it but it was a lot more than that. Try and get the biggest optical zoom as you can and if you can get someting water resistent go for it. I like the sony Memory stick product but it is somewhat proprietary to sony. Over all its a great camera with a lot of features but look for something in your price range with the most features that you want. Quote Link to comment
Dale_Lynn Posted September 20, 2002 Share Posted September 20, 2002 I have a Olympus D-340R its several years old now, but works quite well... Think the newer 'D' series Olympus are even better and cheaper now... They have replaceable memory cards, mine with a 8 meg card will take 122 low resolution pictures or 36 high resolution pictures.. Plenty of memory card sizes available up to 128 megs... Besure camera has same interface as your computer (serial or USB)... Dale -------------------------------------------------------- I'm Diagonally Parked, In A Parallel Universe. -------------------------------------------------------- Quote Link to comment
+Alan2 Posted September 20, 2002 Share Posted September 20, 2002 You should be able to get a 3X optical zoom with 2 megapixel digital for around $250-300. Check out this web page. They have current reviews and pricing for all digital cameras. Great site. Alan Quote Link to comment
Rickfur Posted September 20, 2002 Share Posted September 20, 2002 My bash around cameras have always been Kodaks... I own a DX4900 as well as a Kodak DC3400. I'm really happy with both. The DC3400 is really well protected with rubber seals and such, so I take it where I can't take my Sony... And it's at $200 used on Amazon... and in your price range on Ebay. It's a 2 megapixel with a 2x optical zoom. It also uses compact flash cards and standard AA NiMH batteries so you can share with your GPS... And as a final note, it's really forgiving in varying light conditions, (which my Sony DSC-F707 doesn't tolerate), and it has great color accuracy... Here's a Sample Pic taken with the DC3400 last year at a car show, medium resolution, no editing (just resized smaller.) Contents Under Pressure... [This message was edited by Acceptable Risk on September 20, 2002 at 09:35 PM.] Quote Link to comment
+Scanogram Posted September 21, 2002 Share Posted September 21, 2002 I'm also happy with Olympus. Had it for 2 years now. Quote Link to comment
+geospotter Posted September 21, 2002 Share Posted September 21, 2002 Check out www.returnbuy.com and their Olympus section. I believe they have the Olympus C-3020 (a 3.3 Megapixel camera) for $239. That's a steal! Quote Link to comment
Rubbertoe Posted September 21, 2002 Share Posted September 21, 2002 CompGeeks has some nice refurbished Fuji cameras. Depending on if you like that sorta thing, it could be a good purchase for you. I got one there a few months ago, one of their higher end models, and it works great - only thing I noticed was a bit of paint wear on the grippin' points. Might be worth checking out. Click The Toe. Quote Link to comment
+Night Stalker Posted September 21, 2002 Share Posted September 21, 2002 I have an Olympus c303Z which is a 3.4 mega pixal camera. This was a $700 camera when it first came out, but I was able to pick it up at Circuit City for $260 because it was a display unit. You should be able to find them on Ebay for a reasonable price since they have been replaced by a newer model. 3x zoom and a 2.5x digital zoom. movies, sound etc. Will print nice pictures up to 8x10's. Only problem is they come with a 16meg card which will only hold 2 pictures at the higher resolutions. Lost? Keep Going. You're making goo time anyway!! Quote Link to comment
+nscaler Posted September 21, 2002 Share Posted September 21, 2002 Hey, it only has 640 x 480 resolution (okay for a web page or e-mail), holds 100 pictures, is also a web camera with a USB connection, comes with software too. Now for the bad part. It is about the size of a alphanumeric pager (about 3" by 3" by 1/2") and runs on one AAA battery (included). The price? $39.99! And Comp-USA was selling it for $29.00 (without tax)! Disembarking from soapbox. nscaler "Anyone not here, raise your hand!". Quote Link to comment
+Faderaven Posted September 21, 2002 Share Posted September 21, 2002 I was too slow. The 3030s are backordered. Quote Link to comment
Couch_Potato Posted September 21, 2002 Share Posted September 21, 2002 Kodak, Olympus, and Sony all make very good digicams. I have an Olympus 3040 that I think is great. I had to send it in for a warranty repair and had no trouble dealing with Olympus tech. support and repairs dept. I highly recommend them Some things to consider or keep in mind as you shop about: How fully automated you you want it to be? Some of the simpler and cheaper point and shoot cameras give you no options for manually controlling the camera settings such as aperture, F stop, and focus. Digital zoom is nearly worthless. Optical zoom changes the image by physically moving the optics in the camera resulting in a cleaner image with no "jaggies" (pixellation). Digital zoom enlarges the pixel size to enlarge the image, causing severe pixellation. If you want zoom, get the largest optical zoom you can. How many megapixels? For online purposes the 1 megapixel cameras are more than sufficient. If you want to print out photos then higher pixel values will allow larger prints to be made before they start looking pixelated. What memory type? If you already have a device that can use a certain type of storage media you may want to get a camera that can share. Other than that I don't think there is any significant difference between types. Good luck finding what you want. I'm not lost! I just don't know where I am. Quote Link to comment
+cachew nut Posted September 21, 2002 Share Posted September 21, 2002 When geocaching I'd often wish I had brought my digicam along, but I just couldn't handle bringing another thing in my already full pack. So I bought a pencam to bring along (I bought the mini pencam 1.3). Now I can snap pictures at a cache without being weighed down. It cost about 80 bucks. It has it's drawbacks like no flash bulb, and manual focus, and batteries last only a week (no problem since I use rechargeble NIMH which lasts even longer) but it takes 50 pictues at 1248 x 960 or 160 pictures at 640 x 480. It will also take a movie...30 seconds higher res or 2 minutes lower res. The movie memory is seperate from the picture memory, so you can have both. This camera is not for everybody, but it works for me. I realize that this is probably not what you were looking for, but just thought I'd share that I'm happy with it, in case someone else was considering one. Quote Link to comment
+BletchleyPark Posted September 22, 2002 Share Posted September 22, 2002 you might want to look at the Olympus D380. It is currently selling for under 200 USD. I am an film-based SLR kind-a-guy, but I bought this camera for its small size, light weight and low price. It is without optical zoom but its CCD is about 2 megapixels and there are numerous settings that allow a degree of flexibility in its use. The one limitation I have encountered is the inability of the camera to save its pictures in a format other than JPEG. Even though a minimal compression algorithm is used, I have identified "artifacts" introduced through the compression process. Then again, the camera *was* under 200 USD! The prints I can generate from this camera on my HP990cse are superb, but are best limited to about 5 x 7 inches to retain maximum quality. I can print 8 x 10s but I need to do more pre-processing in Photoshop prior to printing. I will probably further explore digital photography with a more advanced camera *after* I have mastered Photoshop, Bryce and the other image editing programs that look promising. FWIW, BP Quote Link to comment
Rickfur Posted September 22, 2002 Share Posted September 22, 2002 quote:Originally posted by cachew nut:So I bought a http://www.aiptek.com/index2.php to bring along (I bought the mini pencam 1.3). Now I can snap pictures at a cache without being weighed down. It cost about 80 bucks. Hey man, do you mind posting a couple pics? I've always wondered how the quality was on those... I'll host the pics if you don't have the ability to do so... Contents Under Pressure... Quote Link to comment
+plank Posted September 22, 2002 Share Posted September 22, 2002 Casio GV-10. It's water and shock resistant. Small too. Quote Link to comment
+GoldKey Posted September 22, 2002 Share Posted September 22, 2002 I have had two different Kodaks go bad on me. Luckily I bought the extended service from Best Buy and was able to take my purchase price for full credit toward a new one. Anyway, after the second model from Kodak died and was unrepairable, I switched over to a Canon S30 and have loved it ever since. But I think that one is probably out of the price range you mentioned. When looking, consider the media also. I have stuck with cameras that use compact flash because a) that memory is usually cheaper per meg (you can get a 256 MB card for under $90) than the other types and it can be used in more things (My mp3 player and PDA both use it, plus with a $10 adapter, I can plug it into a PCMIA slot on the side of my laptop and use it as another hard drive for easy file transfers. Quote Link to comment
ifranz Posted September 22, 2002 Share Posted September 22, 2002 I have a cannon S100 with the water proof case that I use for caching, it’s rated to 3 meters and is perfect for caching snapshots. I have a portfolio on my web site, take a look looking for a spicy cache? Quote Link to comment
+cachew nut Posted September 22, 2002 Share Posted September 22, 2002 quote:Originally posted by Acceptable Risk: quote:Originally posted by cachew nut:So I bought a http://www.aiptek.com/index2.php to bring along (I bought the mini pencam 1.3). Now I can snap pictures at a cache without being weighed down. It cost about 80 bucks. Hey man, do you mind posting a couple pics? I've always wondered how the quality was on those... Let's see if this works...the first two are geocache pictures, the other three are just random shots I took at the botanical garden. I'm still learning to work the focus picture 1 picture 2 picture 3 picture 4 picture 5 Quote Link to comment
+cachew nut Posted September 22, 2002 Share Posted September 22, 2002 quote:Originally posted by Acceptable Risk: quote:Originally posted by cachew nut:So I bought a http://www.aiptek.com/index2.php to bring along (I bought the mini pencam 1.3). Now I can snap pictures at a cache without being weighed down. It cost about 80 bucks. Hey man, do you mind posting a couple pics? I've always wondered how the quality was on those... Let's see if this works...the first two are geocache pictures, the other three are just random shots I took at the botanical garden. I'm still learning to work the focus picture 1 picture 2 picture 3 picture 4 picture 5 Quote Link to comment
NightHiker Posted September 23, 2002 Share Posted September 23, 2002 I've got an Olympus C-2000z and it's a great camera. Takes great pictures, uses SmartMedia memory cards, lots of features, but it's just too bulky for easy placement in my Camelback MULE. I've recently started looking at the cheap/small alternatives which will fit in a shirt pocket. Cashew Nut's pen cam sounds like the perfect solution. If your camera needs will extend to general photography, then you'll probably want to opt for a more full featured camera, but if Geocaching is your main use, get something small. Quote Link to comment
+Alan2 Posted September 23, 2002 Share Posted September 23, 2002 My PC which I would want to use does not have a USB connection. My laptop comes with a USB and PCIMIA. What do you suggest? Alan Quote Link to comment
+Alan2 Posted September 23, 2002 Share Posted September 23, 2002 Oh. I'm looking into digital video as well. same problem and question as last post. Tks Alan Quote Link to comment
umc Posted September 23, 2002 Share Posted September 23, 2002 Video, I like my Sony TRV 20 Its been a great little cam. Quote Link to comment
+travisl Posted September 24, 2002 Share Posted September 24, 2002 A couple months ago, I picked up the iConcepts digital camera at Office Max for $15 (after $5 rebate). It takes pictures just about what you'd expect from an el cheapo digital camera. Some of the pictures I've taken with it are at this cache, this benchmark, and this benchmark. Other than the lousy picture quality, the other two drawbacks to this are the camera will constantly draw power from the two AAA batteries (so it's no good for an overnight trip), and the battery compartment is prone to popping open in my pack (another use for duct tape!) But for $15, you get what you pay for. "Why don't you just ask somebody?" "No, no. I've got a map. Don't worry about that." Quote Link to comment
TriCityGuy Posted September 24, 2002 Share Posted September 24, 2002 I like the Olympus D-520Z. I found it online and delivered for $217. 2 Megapixels make it able to do 1600x1200 pictures (more than enough for most folks) and I think the 3x optical zoom is critical. The 16MB card was on the smallish side, but I then found a 128MB card for $59 at Best Buy. Finally, I like the camera so much because it's so compact. The C series are higher end, but the bang for the buck was what convinced me. Prices continue to drop so much I can't bring myself to spending more on a digital camera. Quote Link to comment
+Faderaven Posted September 24, 2002 Share Posted September 24, 2002 Returnbuy has more 3020s...hurry! More 3020s Quote Link to comment
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