Hi there.. looking for help.

[mickitaz]

Hi There,

I am new to this forum. I am looking to upgrade my camera. To give you an idea, I had bought an Olympus digital camera three years ago with 1.3 megapixels. Yeah, so I am looking to upgrade.

Here is what I am hoping to achieve with my new camera. I have a tank of Tangs that are about 2 inches. I also have a tank of dwarf blue pearl shrimp. My current camera cannot capture these guys with a clear enough picture for identification. No surprise here.

What type of qualities (megapixels, occular zoom) do I want to look for? I am looking to go digital camera, something like a Sony Cybershot to compensate for my shaky hands.

Any help would be appreciated in clearing up these terms for me. Thank you.

 

[maddog10]

Welcome to APF!

mega pixels are not that important anymore. Most newer cameras have more than enough to take good photos. For fish photos, optical zoom is good, digital zoom is bad. Optical zoom uses the camera lens to zoom in and out. Digital zoom uses a program to enlarge the photo and you lose image quality with digital zoom.

IMO a P&S type camera will not help with shaky hands unless you use a rest or tripod. By design a P&S camera makes you hold the camera away from your body with arms extended to frame the shot. In this position the camera will move even more when you depress the shutter release button.

A better solution may be an entry level DSLR. I feel, in the long run, they are worth the extra money up front.

 

[mickitaz]

Thank you for the warm welcome!

Thank you very much for the input. I was researching models online, looking at other's photos and the camera's it was taken with. I also spent about 3 hours at best buy talking with the reps.

I have re-evaluated my decisions. I am actually leaning towards the CanonPowerShot 9.0. the model is SX110IS. I don't think that is a dslr, but I like the inter-changing lenses. Plus, with a little adjusting of fundage, I think I can afford that one.

After your explanation of optical versus digital zooms, I took my research gathered and this one has both. The ratio is 10x optical/ 4x digital/ and 40x total.

Also from my understanding, it can use the lenses that the Canon Rebel uses. While those are pretty pricey, it is not totally unobtainable. (nothing that a few hours of overtime or a tax refund can take care of

Does anyone have an opinion on this model?