Bargain Digital Camera- right for you?

[UncleS2]

If you like bang for the buck, read on.
I was kinda interested in getting a new digital camera to replace my nice, but old Minolta 1.3MP zoom. For ~2 months I've looked on the internet & in the Sunday Paper sale ads; in the Bang-for-the-buck dept., I kept coming back to a little Fuji model A330; 3.2MP, 3X optical zoom, going for $150 at Target, WM & BestBuy, recently offered with a free extra memory card but I missed that one. So, for me with 8.25% sales tax, that comes to $162.38.

Only bad points about this camera I can spot:
1. screen on the back is only 1.5 inches, that's pretty small, though it is as big as on lots of other cameras.
2. Uses the newer, tiny XD memory cards- these cost more than Compact Flash(CF). The one that comes with it is a 16MB. 8^P

So, nothing really bad at all. Good stuff? Small, light, will fit in a shirt pocket, & uses AA batteries. I already have a charger & 8 rechargeable AA's.

Still, I never bought one. Considered more expensive cameras that would be marginally better(Canon A75, for instance), never took the plunge.But last night, I saw that the Dec. Popular Photography magazine had rated the little Fuji as a raging Best Buy at ~$140. Hmm...

Looked on the internet, Found the little Fuji A330 on Amazon for $135, w/free shipping. Pretty good, but wait, it gets better. If you sign up for their Amazon Credit card & are approved for it, you can get $30 off your first order with it. There are some restrictions & fine print, of course, but the short version is, I now have a new Fuji A330 on the way- for $105 total.

If you've ordered from amazon before, & have the camera sent to the same address you've used before, and you get approved over the I-net for their credit card, you can do it too. May even work for new customers, I dunno.

If you're interested, go to Amazon.com, search for Fuji A330, & best of luck.

I've also found a 256MB XD card from another source for ~$44 shipped- but that, Grasshopper, is another story.

 

[kenw]

Personally I love bang for the buck. Photography is my main squeeze (hobby-wise that is).

I think you made an excellent choice. You knew your needs well, balanced them well with availability, did some research and waited for the right price.

Have fun!

fwiw, here's some pics of mine:

http://www.railroadforums.com/photos/showgallery.php?ppuser=136&cat=500&thumb=1

no cut-up oil filters, but hey, it's a hobby....

 

[Pablo]

For the same price the Pentax Optio 30 is also an excellent deal. I have a 512 meg card in it.

Worked fine for 2 weeks of China factory photos.

No I didn't stop at any oil shops. Bummer.

 

[roadrunner@rps]

This is not going to help, but I love my A75. I took some photography classes in high school. I retained a very small bit of it, but the A75 gives just enough features to let me get some good pics (also to really mess some up playing with f stops and shutter speeds). Great battery life to boot. CF is a dying media but I think it will still be around for some time now.

 

[1sttruck]

I'm looking to upgrade a Fuji FinePix 1300 that I bought for the kids a couple of years ago, and am also quickly converging on 3 megapixel cameras. So far I'm leaning toward the Canon A75.

The Nikon D70 is attractive as I have a few Nikkor lenses, but I'll wait until the prices come down more before taking the digital plunge on the SLR. It's still fun with the film cameras. My son found an older screw mount Fuji at a garage sale for $20, we cleaned it up and have found a couple of mint Pentax Super Multi-Coated Takamars (?) that fit it, for about $30 each. It's one of the better price/performance setups that I've seen.

 

[Al]

Great deal. Personally I don't think that the 256K memory is necessary. I have 2 64K memory cards and with mny 4 MPXL camera my usual resolution gives me around 130 pics per card. I really wouldn't want to chance putting too many pics on a card..they can and do fail sometimes for no apparent reason. Its not permanent but reformatting is necessary.

 

[Pablo]

Al - is that true? Yikes...I haven't uploaded my China picts from my 512MegB (SD) card yet. I must admit the memory has been behaving perfectly. I have almost 200 shots and I mean it will hold over 800 above average quality picts! Try that with a roll of Kodak!

(I know KodaChrome is better)

One thing about fast film vs. digital....is well it's faster. With fast film and flash - holding the camera steady was tertiary to following the subject, focus, etc. Now with digital - the steady hand is #1. I don't see how a digital camera would be so good for action sports at night, etc??????

 

[XS650]

quote:

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Originally posted by Pablo:


One thing about fast film vs. digital....is well it's faster. With fast film and flash - holding the camera steady was tertiary to following the subject, focus, etc. Now with digital - the steady hand is #1. I don't see how a digital camera would be so good for action sports at night, etc??????

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Pablo, have you broken down and read the manual?

Many digital cameras have an "ASA" setting buried in the menus that lets you set the ASA from a standard 100 to as high as 400.

The only downside is that you get abit more visual noise in the form of an occasional speckle in the picture. On my previous camers it wasn't realy noticable unless you know what to look for. I haven't tried it on my new camera.

Beats blured pictures.

 

[kenw]

quote:

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Originally posted by Pablo:
One thing about fast film vs. digital....is well it's faster. With fast film and flash - holding the camera steady was tertiary to following the subject, focus, etc. Now with digital - the steady hand is #1. I don't see how a digital camera would be so good for action sports at night, etc??????

---

shutter speed and aperture work the same no matter if it is film or digital. And most digitals can do the equivalent of faster film (ISO 400/800/1600 and +).

I'm not sure I understand what you mean by the differences; if you had a good fast lens, fast film and are now comparing it to a cheap digital with a slow lens at ISO 100, well, that's more than a bit bogus of a comparason.

In the situations you seem to be describing, the LENS makes the difference. Cheap cameras, whether digtial or film have cheap, slow lenses. It's why you don't see disposable cameras at the sidelines at NFL games. What you do see are film and digital bodies with some big honkin' $5000-$10,000 lenses. you gotta pay to play with the big boys.....

Yes, digital media can fail. It's rare, but it happens. It probably has less chance of happening than someone losing your film, scratching your negatives or cooking the negatives 30 years later. It's NOT a downside to digital.

I've been using digital cameras since about 1999, film (in a serious manner) for about 10 years prior to that. I've had one card fail, it was the first I ever had and it had no pics on it.

I usually recommend that you get 2 smaller cards rather than 1 large, but more for convenience than anythign else. While one is downloading you can have the other loaded and ready to shoot. That does have the benefit that if one should fail (again, rare), you still have one to use.

Other tips: always shoot at the highest resolution JPG (some may shoot TIF or RAW, that's another story). The reason is that with higher resolution you can crop significantly and still have a full-frame subject and have a printable pic without distortion or pixelization.

btw, my present setup is a Canon EOS 10D digital SLR. I primarily use a 28-135IS lens but also have several others. Just the body and that 1 lens set me back almost $2000, so you can tell I'm pretty serious about the hobby. I've sold a few pics over the years but I'm keeping the day job...Last time I looked I was averaging about 1GB of images per month, that's probably about 400-500 pics. And you think you oil nuts are intense....

I'm not the world's foremost expert but am willing to share my experiences with anyone who asks. You can reach me thru this site:

http://www.railroadforums.com/photos/showgallery.php?ppuser=136&cat=500&thumb=1

(it's the same one I posted earlier)

 

[Pablo]

I am definitely not doing a fair comparison. Just in my mind comparing my old Mamiya with the $135 Pentax digital......

I'll read the manual. I'd been meaning to do that

 

[XS650]

quote:

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Originally posted by Pablo:
I am definitely not doing a fair comparison. Just in my mind comparing my old Mamiya with the $135 Pentax digital......

I'll read the manual. I'd been meaning to do that

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It's also a good idea to carry the manual, or at least a copy if the important parts with you on trips. Not that I follow my own advice

On a trip to Mexico last year I was going reviewing my pictures in the camera and deleting the obviously bad ones when I inadvertantly selected the wrong option.

I didn't notice until I was done and noticed it said 0 pictures in camera. There should have been about 100 pictures in the camera at that point, Including the Casa Grandes ruins and a railroad trip through the Siera Madre. Made me kind of tense. The only glimmer of hope, ws the the phots remaining count dropped by about the same amount as the pictures I had "lost".

Turned out I had caused the camera to create a new directory for the old pictures and present me with a new empty directory. After 4+ years with that camera, I didn't know I could do that.

 

[T-Keith]

We have a Fuji Digital Camera. Takes AA batteries, uses fairly cheap memory and we love it. Great pictures except in the dark.

-T

 

[XS650]

quote:

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Originally posted by T-Keith:
We have a Fuji Digital Camera. Takes AA batteries, uses fairly cheap memory and we love it. Great pictures except in the dark.

-T

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My camera takes excellent pictures of the dark

 

[Al]

quote:

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Originally posted by kenw:

Originally posted by Pablo:
[qb] Other tips: always shoot at the highest resolution JPG (some may shoot TIF or RAW, that's another story). The reason is that with higher resolution you can crop significantly and still have a full-frame subject and have a printable pic without distortion or pixelization.

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I wouldn't want to argue that point. But my typical picture is around 200 K Bytes. nd that gives a nice quality pic in a standart film size. The added time to wait for the pic to load after taking it and also the time needed to download and then host on a web based server makes a very high resolution impractical (for me). If I know that I intend to blow the pic up or otherwise want to insure a great quality-I'll crank up the resolution. But again that's just what works well for me.

 

[spinfire]

Some new cameras like the Panasonic Lumix series and the Canon Powershot S1 IS have Optical Image Stabilization which works to eliminate hand shakes in long exposure pictures. This is the same technology used in the Sony Handycams that have a similar feature. IIRC, its done mechanically, not digitally. And it is done very well.

Those cameras, of course, are not "budget"

 

[XS650]

quote:

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Originally posted by spinfire:
Some new cameras like the Panasonic Lumix series and the Canon Powershot S1 IS have Optical Image Stabilization which works to eliminate hand shakes in long exposure pictures. This is the same technology used in the Sony Handycams that have a similar feature. IIRC, its done mechanically, not digitally. And it is done very well.

Those cameras, of course, are not "budget"

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My Lumix DMZ-FC10 has 12x opticaly stabilized optical zoom. I've taken hand held pictures of the moon that look like they were taken through a small telescope on a tripod.

20 years go an optical stabilization system that worked that well would have cost $20k and weighed 20 lbs.

About $500.

 

[sprintman]

WE have a Canon S45 and very good it is too. Selected after reading the review at www.dpreview.com. Well worth a visit if you have any interest in digital photography.

 

[satterfi]

The Fuji entry level cameras are a great value. I bought one for my daughter.

I couldn't resist buying the Canon A75 for me. The manual controls on the A series cameras aren't found on most cameras in that price range.

 

[1sttruck]

Ended up getting a Sony DSC P41; 4 megapixel non-zoom for $170 something. Reviews indicated decent battery life with NiMH (picked up a set as it comes with alkalines) as long as you aren't playing the LCD a lot, it has a very short recycle time between shots, and seems to have very good image quality as long as you shoot it like a real camera (or a firearm :^). I didn't want a zoom on our film P&S so we ended up with a Yashica T4, and now the wife and kids won't get confused with one on the new digital camera :^)