Buying a new camera

My trusty Fuji A202 is starting to get a little fuzzy round the edges, so I’ve decided to get myself a new digital camera. With a £300 budget, I’ve got my eye on one of these new-fangled 5 megapixel jobs. The market is vast, with new models coming out every week, but I’ve managed to narrow the choices down to these 3 :

I recognise a good shot when I see one, and don’t really mess with manual controls much (the A202 is fully automatic), so I’m mostly a point-and-shoot kinda guy. With this in mind, good automatic results are important, though plenty of manual controls are welcome if the need arises. Other features I’m interested in are good movie capture, battery usage, panorama controls and quick start-up times.

All 3 also use different types of memory — SD (Nikon), CompactFlash (Canon) and Memory Stick (Sony). Of these 3, the Sony Memory Stick format is by far the most expensive, although I’ve no idea how they perform against each other.

Anyway, before I wander in John Lewis and hassle the guys in the Consumer Electronics department, I’d thought I’d post here and see if anyone had any recommendations or things I should be looking out for.

Which would you choose?

Posted 5 years, 7 months ago

Canon :)

Pete · www · 5 years, 7 months ago

All those cameras are pretty good. IMHO (I’m no expert but did do quite a bit of research before I bought one for my folks) get the Canon. Apparently they rule!

mars · 5 years, 7 months ago

The Canon is good, and compact flash is great.
I’ve always like Canon digi-cam’s colour, they don’t wash-out in bright light like many others.

The Nikon has a much faster CCD than the others - the same as using faster film in a regular camera; you’ll get better shots indoors and in bad weather. Faster CCD also reduce the effect of shaky hands (although a good tripod or handy fence-post works just as well)

I’ve never seen a good Sony camera yet.

IEB · www · 5 years, 7 months ago

Sony.

Tommy · www · 5 years, 7 months ago

Go for Nikon. NIkon is choice for pro-use always. Sony’s are neat but for photography Nikon is way to go.

jp · www · 5 years, 7 months ago

Panasonic DMC FZ10. Buy two, give me one. I’ve been watching for this baby coming out and now that it has i can’t afford it! Bah!

http://www.steves-digicams.com/2003_reviews/fz10.html

Andrew

Andrew · www · 5 years, 7 months ago

Canon Ixuses (Ixi?) have always struck me as very solid and capable little cameras. I’d go with one of them.

Matt · www · 5 years, 7 months ago

My preference would to go with one of the Canon A-series. They have very sharp image qualities and low light photography is good too. Haven’t tried any sony’s, but from what I hear they aren’t that good to begin with.

Nikon is also a fine choice. I’d stick with the canon due to the media format (CF) since it’s readily available and cheap at the moment.

Thinh · www · 5 years, 7 months ago

i recently bought a fuji finepix s7000 or something like that and i am very pleased with the results it has given me so far.

i got it for 300 quid from a place in stevenage called digital depot.

great pics with a good zoom, manual controls and most importantly a good auto mode!

it’s also 6megapixels and with some digital magic it can create pics of 12megapixels effective (or something like)

nice site

dino

dino · 5 years, 7 months ago

Thanks for everyone’s feedback :-)

I chose the Nikon in the end. After a demo of the Canon and Nikon I couldn’t decide which took the better photos - they were both excellent.

I chose the Nikon over the Canon for a few reasons -

Superior movie capabilites - 640x480 pixels at 30fps, limited only to memory card size, as opposed to the Canon : 640x480 pixels at 10fps, limted to 30 secs).
Quicker start-up time.
Lighter.
£40 cheaper.

Phil · www · 5 years, 7 months ago

Nice choice Phil, look forward to seeing some of your new photos!

Gav · www · 5 years, 7 months ago

I have been working with a Sony DSR-W12 - it is wonderful, fast, reliable, the batteries last forever. It equally took me a loooong time to choose and decide. And despite the more expensive Memory Sticks this one is incredibly delightful.

Tom · 5 years, 6 months ago

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My name is Phil Lindsay, a web guy from Scotland, now living in Newcastle upon Tyne in England. I also run a web design company called Presence. You can email me at phil@xlab.co.uk, read more ramblings on my Twitter stream and view my photos on Flickr. You can grab the RSS feed for this weblog here.