Questions regarding a digital camera....................

[limsandy]

My friend is offering to sell his Canon S20 digital camera to me for $400. It includes 2 rechargeable batteries, 1 battery charger, 16 MB memory and 1 leather carrying case. I am in the market to buy a new/used digital camera for under $500. If my friend sells this digicam to me, I would buy a brand new 128 MB compact flash for around $60. The total comes up to ~$460.
Do you think I should jump on this deal? I believe the camera is in good condition plus he is my friend so I can trust him.
Anyone here has had experience with Canon S20? How is the quality at 1280 X 1024?
If I would buy another 128 MB of memory, what brands do you recommend?

Before you answer my questions, I would like to say thanks in advance.

limsandy

 

[LuDaCriS66]

Check out the user reviews at this site

Dpreview.com Canon S20

I have an S10 the images are great.. I assume that the S20 is better especially with the higher megapixel rating. For compact flash, I think you should go with viking

 

[tomrizzo]

Hey I think it is a very good deal, go for it. And for your other question what kind of mem to get, I would recomend the Kingston brand, I haven't had a bad experience yet with them.

 

[heartsurgeon]

i've used sandisk and lexar - no problems at all.

should be able to get 128 meg for approx $52

don't know anything about Mr Flash CF, but 128 meg of this costs <$50 at N@wEgg.com

don't forget, you can unload the 16meg card on Eb@y!. you won't want to pulling the CF card in and out of the camera once you get the 128 meg card - thats alot of pics.

 

[limsandy]

Thanks for the inputs, may I hear from the rest please ?

 

[pm]

Edit: nevermind, I mixed up the S20 with the S30. I've read the S20 has a bit of a blue-shift to images. Take a look at some pictures from it (particularly with the flash) before you buy.

 

[sanz]

Sorry to hijack the post limsandy....

Just a quick question to pm... I've got S110 as well.. while I'm happy with it, I find that most shots look.. blur. Just wondering about your pic quality. Any feedback would be appreciated.

Either I'm a lousy photgrapher or my S110 has problems.

 

[pm]

Ack. Meant to PM and replied to the thread instead... need more sleep. Anyway, I was going to PM, but since I posted, here's my advice on S100/S110 pictures.

The S110 needs a lot of light - which makes sense since the lens is pretty small. If you have it set to "auto" mode, it holds the time out on the shutter (to capture more light) and if you move while it's doing this, you end up with a blurry picture. If you take pictures indoors, make sure the lights are turned up high and/or use a tripod/tabletop/something to steady your hand.

I have taken a lot of wonderful images... outdoors. Indoors, it works well, but only if the lights are turned up a lot. It's a shame the S110's flash is so weak because a decent flash would solve the problem too.

Also, I've taken about 1200 pictures with my S110 (one of the handier parts of having it automatically track the photo number) so I have gotten used to the manual settings over time. Play with the exposure and "white adjust" (light source) controls on the manual menu and you can get good results indoors with that. It makes a big difference simply to set it to "indoor incandescent" (the first icon, I think) rather than leave it in auto mode.