Mission impossible: what compact camera are you using?

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Andreas Werth

Andreas Werth

Jack Dempsey
MFK Member
Jan 11, 2005
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www.andreaswerth.net
Hello friends,
i promised my wife to order a lightweight compact camera, one that she can carry with her while on the road with the kids (picnic, meeting other mums/children, birthdays etc). Price is not that important, if the camera is easy to handle and benevolent with its operator - i know that is an utter impossibility ;-)
It would be great if the camera performs as well under bad light conditions (indoor) and it would be great if the cam uses cf cards, because i have already 4 of these. [offtopic: actually big price recession for sandisk cards in europe, for example extreme III 4gb for 200 Euro instead of 360!]

I will add that we tried out two cameras before, Ricoh R2 and (actually to heavy) Canon G6.
Gave both bodies back.

Any hints and tips are highly appreciated, thanks in advance!
 
Hey there Andreas, I instantly thought of one of our cameras when I read this, Canon Digital IXUSi.
Very happy bout that camera, very little and light weighted, and the qualitys of the pictures are great.

It ain't hard to use, but it has many functions for beeing a average compact camera. You can read more about it here

Generally the Canon IXUS series have gotten good critics, so I might think thats a good option for your wife ;)

If you want to, I can add some pictures taken with this camera. Brought mine on the trip to German and Poland, and I usually take it with me out in the garden to shoot pond pictures or if I see something intresting.
 
Hi,


From the current crop of recent cameras, i would tell canon G6 (which you tried).

Not supporting cf cards, but doing very well in low light, you could try the Fuji F10 (rebates at the moment) or F11.

Cheers !

Marc
 
I bought a Ricoh R3 in Spain, a very nice camera. Got to love having a wideangel.
28-200mm (35mm equiv.)
I'm not sure if the R3 is more lightweight, but I would recommend it. If not, there's a Ricoh R30 comming. Supposed to be a more affordable and slimmer Ricoh.

The only negative thing is the weak ass flash.
I might be spoiled by a SB800, but I believe they could squeeze more power in there.
 
Hi Andreas ,
My cousin has been into photograpy for years . He still uses his Nikon 1Dx but has a smaller camera that he always carries with him . It uses CF cards and I have seen some great pictures he has taken with it . I can't remember what it is but I e-mailed him to find out .
 
Hi there,
thanks for all comments so far. Thanks Ron for asking your cousin. At the very moment i´m on night shift and since here is not much to do i spent the last hours comparing different camera bodies.

And found something interesting after all.
Surprise surprise - it´s a Canon ;-)

I´m talking about Powershot A620. Highly recommended at dpreview, convincing samples there as well.
Not CF but SD - yet another card in our collection.
7MP, 35-140 mm (35mm eq., F2.8-4.1), nice movie feature (30f/s at 640x480, limited by card), interesting possibility of purchasing an extra underwater case (cam has an Underwater white balance preset) for snorkelling and besides all automatic functions and programs it is always possible to use Manual exposure.

Well, i think we give this one a try. But please don´t stop sharing your experiences, it is not sure that we stay with it.
 
I think my reccomendations are a little off base compared to what has already been suggested, but we have two Kodak Easyshare 5mp in the family. My daughter's and my wife's have provided excellent and easy to capture results. In fact, my wife's cam was the p&s that I used when people started to pay attention to my photos.

If your wife is going to just want a simple and easy cam to grab quick pix, the Kodak is a good bet.
 
My cousin e-mailed me back that the camera he keeps in his vehicle is a fuji s7000 digital 6.3 MP . I have no experience with it but he likes it very much .
 
Hi,
short feedback. Amazon was fast. Our Canon PowerShot A620 arrived few days ago.
After the first approx. 300 shots we are quite happy with our decision.
It´s another league than dslr, but it does exactly what we expected.

Today we went to public zoo - it was already late, most animals were inside due to low temperatures - and it was a family trip. So don´t expect exceptional shots.

00069_ps.jpg

(M, 1/50s, F4.1, ISO50)

Although this will be the camera for my wife, i couldn´t resist to take some aquatic shots as well - mainly because i´m able to compare quality with previous works.

00129_ps.jpg

(M, 1/60s, F3.2, ISO400, denoised, no flash)

00172_ps.jpg

(M, 1/125s, F3.5, ISO50, flash (diffused))

Again, thanks for all suggestions on my initial question.
 
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