On 04 Jul 2004 00:33:11 GMT, (Sabineellen) wrote:

I never got the sense that QVR-51 made anyone really impressed, at
least not as much as the S500 & the W1 when describing the image
quality and shooting performance.

People have their biases and historically Canon and Sony had quite impressive
marketing. I wouldn't expect those reviewers to be as excited about a casio as
they would be about a canon, and that bias could affect their evaluation.
Remember that those are individuals.

Here's something I find more more reliable

http://dima.pmai.org/pdf/2004_camera_winners.pdf

Note that the Casio is there... Note that the highly reputed Olympus 5060 and
8080 are there too, so is the Leica digilux 2.

Read carefully what it said. It's a result of voting by a panel of expert
judges that included "some of the most well-respected names in he industry". I
have the understanding that those tests were done "blindly" (they voted on the
images without knowing what cameras produced them) hence the entry number of
each camera was mentioned after its name in the press release. Certainly if i
was doing such a test I would make it a "blind" test to avoid any biases.

Wow! That certainly is an impressive credential for a camera. I was
hoping that I could find the list of all the entrants in each of the
categories, but I'm sure Canon and Sony would've entered their cameras
as well in the $300-$399 and $400-$499 categories. Sure would've been
nice if DIMA released at least the top three placements in each of the
categories, if not the whole list of all the cameras entered.

But I think I'll be going with the W1. Its video record capability is
far superior to ignore for me and while I don't plan on stop using my
JVC digital camcorder, I've never carried it around with me, like I
plan to do with my digicam and it just would be nice if I can take
clips more than just a few minutes if need be with a digital camera.

If W1's photo quality and imaging capabilities were noticeably
inferior and poorer to that of the S500 or the QVR-51, then it
wouldn't matter how long it can take a video for. But seeing as how
its quality seems to be quite respectable, I probably will go with
that.

And even if the tests were not performed blindly, I have read indepth
reviews of the cameras from at least three, sometimes four websites
and they don't seem too far off from each other in evaluating each of
the cameras in question. So, I do take some comfort in that.

But that $200CDN price difference at the store I plan on buying my
digicam is way too much for me to ignore as well. Arrrrgh!!!
Decisions, decisions.....

Oh, and your other recommendation, the G500, also has very limited
video capabilities and has no histogram for some reason in the record
and playback mode. I read steves-digicam.com's review of the camera,
along with www.imaging-resource.com's and dcresource.com's and nothing
was there that made me want to take it over the W1 because of far
superior photo quality.

Sabine, thanks for all your input and for your time in helping me
consider some other cameras other than the S500 and the W1. Truly
appreciate it!

Steve