Recommend a digital camera

[dkmech]

My Fuji Finepix 6800 is slowly losing its modes (only sequential, manual and auto left, no viedo, audio or landscape presets/night thingy) as the selector is skipping on every other click. It also uses smart media cards which are small, expensive and not very reliable (although it may be the camera). It has had a long life and suffered some abuse and served us well, but its time to find a replacement.

The budget is ~£150 (+1gb card on top of that methinks)

Similar sort of size will be fine (it's normall thickness but squarish). Apparently my mum doesn't want a smaller one as it will be difficult to hold, but I am willing to try holding it first before I make the judgement

My priorities are - wide enough angle, half decent zoom, FAST RESPONSE (sick of waiting half a second or more for things to happen), a sensible memory card type, good image quality. I would probably prefer a li-ion battery to AAs, as the rechargable AAs aren't as good. It also needs to be able to record video with sound.

I am not too bothered on the pixel count, as I've been using 3mp on the fuji and it's been fine (if anything i'll need to get a bigger hdd if i go much higher res ), but a good quality ccd(?) and processing logic would be more important.

I hope the experts out there can give me a hand in finding a pearl in the sea of shellfish that is the digicam market.

[Syd]

I recentley researched this subjuect and came up witht he Canon Ixus 750, can be had for around the £200 IF your budget can stretch, will take up to 7.2MP, nice and compact(as long as your mum doesn't think its too small!!!)

http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B...lance&n=560798

Or

You could always talk her into going slightly bigger and look at my great used Fuji 602Zoom HERE:

http://forums.hexus.net/showthread.php?t=78654

Good luck

[dkmech]

Hmm, the Ixus 750 looks interesting. Slight problem is that one needs to add another SD card £20-£40 depending on size and a carry case £16 to complete it, which adds up. But I will consider it.

Is there anything else closer to 130-150 mark which also stands out? Fast focus and capture response would be very useful to have.

[dkmech]

Been looking around and found this site here with a lot of info and some very in depth reviews:

http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/specs.asp

Still not settled on what to get though.

[Koolpc]

Canon everytime. Awesome products

[joshwa]

The Fuji F10 or F11 can be got for around 135-145 - does your current cam take XD?
F10/11/30 are all very fast at focusing, responding, and taking the picture etc. Also very good in low light.

[BenW]

Canon a620, ordered one myself from amazon for £157 last night, still waiting for it

[dkmech]

Originally Posted by joshwa

The Fuji F10 or F11 can be got for around 135-145 - does your current cam take XD?
F10/11/30 are all very fast at focusing, responding, and taking the picture etc. Also very good in low light.

Yeah, i was just looking at those today, looks quite good. And the current camera takes the dead format that is smart media (128mb max ). I am slightly concerned about xD cards as they are more expensive than SD and have lower maximum capacity... Don't want to be stuck with another dead format in two years time...

The ixus 750 seems to be poor regarding camera shake and motion blur (or so a few amazon reviews say). Its also quite expensive.

Looked at fuji f30 but thats a bit pricey too (so back to f11 for now).

I'll have a closer look at the a620 too. Let me know what its like when you get it.

[dkmech]

Ok f10/11/30 are out coz they don't have an optical viewfinder and my mom wants one. I quite liked those i have to say.

[dancingtornado]

This is just £9 more that you wanted to spend!

To be honest, i am seriously thinking of buying this aswell haha.

Long link

[joshwa]

Originally Posted by dancingtornado

This is just £9 more that you wanted to spend!

To be honest, i am seriously thinking of buying this aswell haha.

Long link

Or the Sony W30 is around £140 at Amazon. Takes sony memory sticks though. But with memory card prices always getting lower it isn't too much of an issue these days.

[dkmech]

An update:

Budget has been raised - i can stretch for the ixus 800 (£265). This seems to be rather good, if only the Fujis didn't embarass it on the higher ISO settings.

Optical viewfinder is a must (bye fuji's I loved your image quality and amazing light sensitivity)

Movie mode is a must (bye Canon A620, hello Canon A700)

I will look into the sony ones, although memory sticks are annoying just out of principle

So with mind of the new budget keep them suggestions coming (won't be raising the budget any more though )

[BenW]

Originally Posted by dkmech

Movie mode is a must (bye Canon A620, hello Canon A700)

A620 has a fairly good movie mode, see the samples on review sites. Its so much cheaper than most other cameras with similar image quality which i believe is because it's slightly bigger.

I should be getting mine today so i'll let you know how i get on

[dkmech]

Hmm, Canon's site said there wasn't any movie mode on the a620... Bah, stupid comparison section. Ok, it has them. Welcome back A620. Let me know how you get on and post some pics

[Syd]

800 is great, Im really pleased with the quality, build and compactness, the only other consideration you may want to look at would be the (fully manual controlled)

http://www.ebuyer.com/UK/product/75516

Or its slightly newer brother the S80, but for the record I love the portability of the Ixus 800.

[dkmech]

Could you post some pics you did with it?