Which compact camera?

[m1ke_hawkins]

Hi all,

I'm thinking of buying a digital camera to take with me on holiday this year and am finding it hard trying to decide which one to get!

I've been looking at reviews in various magazines and went to my local Jessops last weekend and took a look at the Canon Digital IXUS 65 and the Samsung Digimax L85. I thought both of these looked and felt pretty good and they both get good reviews.

I've managed to find the IXUS 65 for £212 and the Digimax for £229, so there isn't much in it between the two. I've also been looking at the Canon Digital IXUS 800 and the IXUS 750 as these two are also good cameras and the 750 is quite a bit cheaper than the IXUS 65.

Has anyone got any recommendations for me and has anyone had any experience with any of the cameras above?

Regards,

Michael

[obvious]

If you ever want to take pictures in natural light at night or in poor lighting then the Fuji FinePix F30 is a winner. Personally I hate to use flash as it distorts reality too much. Now where did I leave my LSD?

[Syd]

Hi Michael

Had the same quandry 2 moths ago, I was really int in the Ixus 800 and 750, in the end the 800 won for me and that was the one i bought, Amazon do it for around 275.

My experience has been very positive, the Image Stabalisation is very effective and allows you to take hand held/flash free photos without any blur most of the time in limited light.

It has a great 2.5" screen, is very compact and is good to shoot almost instantly. Build quality seems excellent as does colour reproduction and image quality. Battery life also is excellent.

Only drawback IMo is that the lens is not as wide as I would like (wanted 28mm) and there are very few manual controls, but for a very compact point and shoot its absolutly great, i'd wholeheartedly recommend it

Good luck choosing.

[MD]

for the money, IXUS 750 - no question.

I just went back to Canon after trying out a fe different brands - I just get much better pics from a Canon for some reason...

[Syd]

Some Isux 800 shots taken today here :

http://forums.hexus.net/showthread.php?t=80855

[nvening]

What better the 800 or the 750?

Also what manual controls do they have?

[dave87]

If you want a nice simple camera to use - then I found that I got on really well with the Sony DSC-P200, here are some shots my mum got with it...

[Syd]

Manual controls are limited on both, 800 has 6mp, 750 i think has 7 mp, BUT the IS800 has Image stabilisation which means u can photo with no flash with greater ease

[nvening]

Basically my sister wants a camera but she is an art student so manual controls could be useful - any ideas on what manual controls and cameras she sould be looking for???!!!!

[Syd]

If she is an art student, and gonna invest some time in photography, then she will be best off with a camera that gives her at least priority modes, by that I mean the ability to manually select EITHER the

1 Shutter Speed
2 The Aperture

or both. (3 Programme Mode)

IMO manual focus is not so important.

Depending on if she wants to do low light photography then 1600 ISO would be nice.

5MP is enough to do A4 Prints, any bigger allows crops.

Fuji do make some very nice 'Prosumer' models with good flexibilty, for sensible money, Or she should have a look on ebay for an older DSLR with FULL manual controls and the ability to interchange lenses.

I have just sold my Full manual Fuji and bought a pocket sized POS canon Ixus800 and am dithering over either a Nikon D70s or a Canon 30D.

Good luck to you both

[jamena]

the fuji f30 is looking like a very good buy, though the dpreview review mentioned that it would only produce the best shots in the hands of someone who knew what they were doing - a good stepping stone to dslr perhaps? also very good low-light performance going up to iso 3200! with up to iso800 looking quite useable

www.dpreview.com has a lot of good stuff they even compared the f30 to the nikon d50 (the dslr was better, but the fuji did look impressive!)

[BenW]

The canon powershot a620 allows full auto and manual controls, stunning photos and a low price, check out the review on dpreview

[McMav]

can vouch for the above camera. At least for its little brother the a610 got it for the wife and its a cracking little camera Argos had it on sale for 140 whish was a steal think the sales ended though. Its exactly trhe same as the 620 only its a 5 MP sensor.
Main benifit is it still has an optical viewfinder for the days when the sun washes out the lcd. Plus that will get you ready for when you move over to a D-SLR.

I find that even when I'm using her a610 I still use the optical viewfinder now as I've got so used to it again on my 350d

[shiato storm]

my p200 eats up dSLR's for breakfast and poo's them out by supper.

well, not really but its an awesome camera. manual controls and all that. unfortunately low-light options are limited to just flash - iso 200 is just bearable and iso 400 is nasty! but pop it on a rock/support of some kind and do a manual low light exposure, put it into delayed release as you would for a group shot (where you set it, run back and it goes off...catching the back of your head in the process!)...prints upto A2 and bigger

[BenW]

Some shots with my new a620, all point and shoot at the motorshow today. The outside ones seemed to come out best, wasn't using the flash inside with resulted in some rather blurred images due to larger shutter times. But heres a sample of the piccies







EDIT: forgot to add that i fiddled with 1 and 3 in photoshop a bit