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Decent cheap digital camera?

X

xSauronx

Lifer
Im looking at getting my wife a digital camera for her birthday, nothin too fancy, around 75 or 100 bucks or so. just something to replace the 35mm she has.

So what can I expect to get? Where should I buy it? What should I be looking for?
 
ill look for it
any others around a hundred bucks? saw the Blink Digital Mini Camera on thinkgeek.com and thought it wa sneat for 50 bucks, nothin special about it, anyone know anybody whos got one?
 
I got the HP 320.

2.1 MP, only $149.00

Not bad for a 2.1 MP camera. No optical zoom tho, only 2 & 4x digital zoom.

Also figure on spending more for the expansion memory on most digicams as a 2.1 MP will only handle 7 pics at max res with the standard 8MB they usually come with.
 
Sure the Canon A200 is a nice camera but it also costs twice as much as the HP 320 even tho the image quality is the same. (2MP)

IMHO I don't even use zoom. I have a zoom camera (regular film non digital) and I hardly use the zoom. Just stand closer to your subject. You normally might anyway. When all is said and done and the pic is taken no one's going to know if you stood 8 feet away using 2x optical zoom or stood 4 feet away and used no zoom. What you want to shoot for is the highest MP rating for the lowest price for her first digicam purchase. If you try to enlarge a 1.x megapixel image to 8x10 as often people want to do when they want to print some of their best pics, they're not gonna be happy with the pixelized look of an 8x10 taken by a 1.xMP cam, but 2.x MP handles it beautifully.

JMHO.

 
Just so you are aware, there really aren't any consumer level digital cameras that I'm aware of that are good "35mm replacements." Digital quality just isn't at the level of film. Just a warning. 🙂
 
Originally posted by: element®
Sure the Canon A200 is a nice camera but it also costs twice as much as the HP 320 even tho the image quality is the same. (2MP)
Click to expand...

There is more to image quality than mega pixels. The canon has a better lens.

IMHO I don't even use zoom. I have a zoom camera (regular film non digital) and I hardly use the zoom. Just stand closer to your subject. You normally might anyway. When all is said and done and the pic is taken no one's going to know if you stood 8 feet away using 2x optical zoom or stood 4 feet away and used no zoom.
Click to expand...

The two images will not be identical. The zoom will compress depth of field in a picture. A 2x zoom does nice things for portraits.

What you want to shoot for is the highest MP rating for the lowest price for her first digicam purchase. If you try to enlarge a 1.x megapixel image to 8x10 as often people want to do when they want to print some of their best pics, they're not gonna be happy with the pixelized look of an 8x10 taken by a 1.xMP cam, but 2.x MP handles it beautifully.
Click to expand...

I think that at her price range her best bet will be something that is very easy to use and produces decent 4x6 images for the purpose of emailing them. I'd look for an old canon or olympus around 1MP on ebay. If the price pain point can go to 2MP I'd do that. But don't buy a bad camera just for the extra MP.

 
I think that at her price range her best bet will be something that is very easy to use and produces decent 4x6 images for the purpose of emailing them. I'd look for an old canon or olympus around 1MP on ebay. If the price pain point can go to 2MP I'd do that. But don't buy a bad camera just for the extra MP.
Click to expand...

What defines a bad camera? In my opinion lower resolution does. Certainly not the only factor, but one of the most important if you ask me. A 1MP camera is useless for enlargements. It's resolution must be 800x600 cause my 2 MP produces 1600x1200. (actually its 1632x1232 cause its 2.1MP but you get the idea) So a 1MP would be half that, or 800x600. So the 1MP cam would be useless even to make windows backrounds unless you use a lowly 800x600 res which people are doing less and less of.

I'm just saying I'm very happy I got my 2MP 1632x1232 res cam for a very good price. It's all up to the user what they want to pay for, resolution, or other features. In my case I wanted to be able to enlarge to 8x10 and I got it at almost 1.xMP prices.
 
There is more to a digicam then just its megapixel resolution, while it should be a major factor, a good quality lens and CCD from a well know manufactuer are crucial, without these it wouldn't matter how many megapixels, the image would be rubbish. Usually it's better to buy a digicam from a manufacurer that has been in the camera field for a long time. Some other manufactures are starting to use lenses from well know specialists.... Panasonic and Sony (and some HP's) are doing this.

Cheers
 
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