dig. camera suggestions
 

I am looking to buy a digital camera. Any suggestions for a high
resolution camera in the $300-$500 range? My main concern is that the
camera can take high resolution photos and can handle all different
lighting situations.My current Canon digital camera (4 megapixels) is
horrible for night photos. I love the details in the photos I take with
my 35mm manual, but like the conveniance of a digital camera. Any
suggestions for a camera a little beyond basic for an aspiring
photographer? I would be willing to pay more for a camera if it was
really going to make a difference in detail, that is my main concern.
Thanks for your help!

dig. camera suggestions
 

On Tue, 09 Jan 2007 21:50:02 -0800, michell.co77 wrote:

I am looking to buy a digital camera. Any suggestions for a high
resolution camera in the $300-$500 range? My main concern is that the
camera can take high resolution photos and can handle all different
lighting situations.My current Canon digital camera (4 megapixels) is
horrible for night photos. I love the details in the photos I take with
my 35mm manual, but like the conveniance of a digital camera. Any
suggestions for a camera a little beyond basic for an aspiring
photographer? I would be willing to pay more for a camera if it was
really going to make a difference in detail, that is my main concern.
Thanks for your help!

If night photos are a priority, then save a little more and go for an
entry level SLR with an f/1.8 or faster lens. You should be able to get
one of the basic kits from Nikon or Canon and add the f/1.8 for about
$650.00 or so.

None of the point-and-shoots are _real_ good at low light, its more a
matter of some being less bad than others.



--
--John
to email, dial "usenet" and validate
(was jclarke at eye bee em dot net)

dig. camera suggestions
 

wrote in message
oups.com...
I am looking to buy a digital camera. Any suggestions for a high
resolution camera in the $300-$500 range? My main concern is that the
camera can take high resolution photos and can handle all different
lighting situations.My current Canon digital camera (4 megapixels) is
horrible for night photos. I love the details in the photos I take with
my 35mm manual, but like the conveniance of a digital camera. Any
suggestions for a camera a little beyond basic for an aspiring
photographer? I would be willing to pay more for a camera if it was
really going to make a difference in detail, that is my main concern.
Thanks for your help!

Take a look at the Fuji F31fd. Not perfect, by any means, but the best P&S
for low light situations.

However, if you're used to an SLR, take a look at the Canon XTi or the Nikon
D40, both real nice units, but out of yoru price range.

dig. camera suggestions
 

On Jan 10, 12:50 am, wrote:
I am looking to buy a digital camera. Any suggestions for a high
resolution camera in the $300-$500 range? My main concern is that the
camera can take high resolution photos and can handle all different
lighting situations.My current Canon digital camera (4 megapixels) is
horrible for night photos. I love the details in the photos I take with
my 35mm manual, but like the conveniance of a digital camera. Any
suggestions for a camera a little beyond basic for an aspiring
photographer? I would be willing to pay more for a camera if it was
really going to make a difference in detail, that is my main concern.
Thanks for your help!

Pentax K100 is selling at several places for right around $500. Also
the Nikon D50 or D40, with either Nikon you want the 18-70mm kit lens
rather than the 18-55, and that will raise the price a bit. Pentax kit
lens is OK for a kit lens. The person I share my office with just
bought a K100 for $450 with lens (after rebate), he says the price has
gone up a bit.

Tom

dig. camera suggestions
 

On Tue, 09 Jan 2007 21:50:02 -0800, michell.co77 wrote:

I am looking to buy a digital camera. Any suggestions for a high
resolution camera in the $300-$500 range? My main concern is that the
camera can take high resolution photos and can handle all different
lighting situations.My current Canon digital camera (4 megapixels) is
horrible for night photos. I love the details in the photos I take with
my 35mm manual, but like the conveniance of a digital camera. Any
suggestions for a camera a little beyond basic for an aspiring
photographer? I would be willing to pay more for a camera if it was
really going to make a difference in detail, that is my main concern.
Thanks for your help!

You might want to look at some EVF cameras (Electronic View Finder). These
typically come with a long (10x-12x) lens and are basically a 'poor man's
dslr' - what you see through the EVF is what the sensor sees. One thing
I've observed with EVFs is that most of them have relatively low
resolution EVFs - usually about 110k pixels - the Kodak models are 237k
and are a whole lot nicer to look at (on the Kodak models the resolution
of the EVF is better than twice the resolution of the back LCD). I
recently got a P850 refurb at the kodak online store - I've not yet had an
opportunity to check low light performance, but it has IS, saves as raw,
jpeg or tiff and has several programs for low light conditions.

dig. camera suggestions
 

"ray" wrote in message
...
On Tue, 09 Jan 2007 21:50:02 -0800, michell.co77 wrote:

You might want to look at some EVF cameras (Electronic View Finder). These
typically come with a long (10x-12x) lens and are basically a 'poor man's
dslr' - what you see through the EVF is what the sensor sees. One thing
I've observed with EVFs is that most of them have relatively low
resolution EVFs - usually about 110k pixels - the Kodak models are 237k
and are a whole lot nicer to look at (on the Kodak models the resolution
of the EVF is better than twice the resolution of the back LCD). I
recently got a P850 refurb at the kodak online store - I've not yet had an
opportunity to check low light performance, but it has IS, saves as raw,
jpeg or tiff and has several programs for low light conditions.

An EVF camera won't do much for low-light shooting though, will it? I mean,
they are basically just a typically tiny point-and-shoot camera sensor
wrapped in a DSLR-styled body after all.

dig. camera suggestions
 

Ståle Sannerud wrote:
[]
An EVF camera won't do much for low-light shooting though, will it? I
mean, they are basically just a typically tiny point-and-shoot camera
sensor wrapped in a DSLR-styled body after all.

An EVF can help a lot in low-light conditions, as they can provide a gain
not possible with the optical viewfinders in DSLRs and other cameras. You
can almost see things in the EVF which are difficult to see with the naked
eye! But not all cameras offer the "gain-up" viewfinder mode required for
this.

David

dig. camera suggestions
 

On Thu, 11 Jan 2007 12:42:26 +0100, Ståle Sannerud wrote:

"ray" wrote in message
...
On Tue, 09 Jan 2007 21:50:02 -0800, michell.co77 wrote:

You might want to look at some EVF cameras (Electronic View Finder). These
typically come with a long (10x-12x) lens and are basically a 'poor man's
dslr' - what you see through the EVF is what the sensor sees. One thing
I've observed with EVFs is that most of them have relatively low
resolution EVFs - usually about 110k pixels - the Kodak models are 237k
and are a whole lot nicer to look at (on the Kodak models the resolution
of the EVF is better than twice the resolution of the back LCD). I
recently got a P850 refurb at the kodak online store - I've not yet had an
opportunity to check low light performance, but it has IS, saves as raw,
jpeg or tiff and has several programs for low light conditions.

An EVF camera won't do much for low-light shooting though, will it? I mean,
they are basically just a typically tiny point-and-shoot camera sensor
wrapped in a DSLR-styled body after all.

I don't know. I've not yet taken the opportunity to try any low-light
shooting. You will at least get the same sort of dynamic range with and
EVF that does raw - how much that would help, I can't say.

dig. camera suggestions
 

"David J Taylor"
wrote in message . uk...
Ståle Sannerud wrote:
[]
An EVF camera won't do much for low-light shooting though, will it? I
mean, they are basically just a typically tiny point-and-shoot camera
sensor wrapped in a DSLR-styled body after all.

An EVF can help a lot in low-light conditions, as they can provide a gain
not possible with the optical viewfinders in DSLRs and other cameras. You
can almost see things in the EVF which are difficult to see with the naked
eye! But not all cameras offer the "gain-up" viewfinder mode required for
this.

David

The EVF will pump the light-gain like crazy, so I agree that the view
through the viewfinder will be bright and nice. Very true.

But the images captured by the sensor and stored on the memory card will
still suck, with massive point-and-shoot-sensor ISO noise (alternatively
over-processed buttery-soft images due to equally massive noise reduction
done to mask the ISO noise). And that's what matters in photography, yes?

dig. camera suggestions
 

An EVF camera won't do much for low-light shooting though, will it? I
mean,
they are basically just a typically tiny point-and-shoot camera sensor
wrapped in a DSLR-styled body after all.

I don't know. I've not yet taken the opportunity to try any low-light
shooting. You will at least get the same sort of dynamic range with and
EVF that does raw - how much that would help, I can't say.

It depends, really. RAW is a godsend in that it keeps the camera from
mucking around with your image (I can over-sharpen and generally mess up my
photos better than the camera can, any day of the week :), lets you freely
set white balance in post-processing and prevents the limitations of the JPG
format from clipping the ends off your histogram. But the last point only
matters if the dynamic range of the sensor is bigger than the dynamic range
of JPG to begin with, which is a bit doubtful in the case of the
fingernail-sized umpteen-megapixel sensors they keep putting in
point-and-shoots and EVF cameras. Bigger pixels give more dynamic range than
smaller pixels, if the technology is otherwise similar and the
analogue-digital converter in the camera can keep up, and even on something
like the Canon 5D with a full 35mm sensor and nice fat sensor pixels the RAW
advantage over JPG isn't all that huge, objectively speaking. More than a
stop at either end of the histogram certainly, but not quite two stops -
something around that anyway. And if there is a consumer camera
significantly better than the 5D at dynamic range, I haven't heard of it.