Best Coolpix for HD and low light too?

"Jane Galt" wrote in message
. ..
"David J Taylor" wrote :

"Jane Galt" wrote in message
. ..
Looking some more, the S90 is also tempting, so it's between the

S90 $350
S8000 $250
and SD4000IS $350

It would stretch the budget for the more expensive two ( $350 street
price )
if it would bring $100 more joy to my shooting, but what's a credit card
for?




--
- Jane Galt

If you're paying that much you might as well get a DSLR - the larger
sensor will make for better low-light performance.

David



Its for my purse, dont want something big that I gotta carry separately.



re-define what you carry :-)

http://www.google.com/products?hl=en...ed=0CEcQrQQwAg

http://tinyurl.com/2bvkrm3



--
Peter

"Jane Galt" wrote in message
. ..
"Neil Harrington" wrote :


"Jane Galt" wrote in message
. ..
Looking some more, the S90 is also tempting, so it's between the

S90 $350
S8000 $250
and SD4000IS $350

It would stretch the budget for the more expensive two ( $350 street
price )
if it would bring $100 more joy to my shooting, but what's a credit
card for?


The two Canons you mention look sort of interesting, though if I were
buying a Powershot I'd go the extra $100 for a G11.

I mentioned that I could spring the extra from the $250 price of the S8000
to the SD4000IS. Now you're talking $450. Creeping price here. LOL

I don't know if
you'd consider the G11 purse sized, however.


Not so much?


I looked up the S90, the S8000 and the SD4000IS:


S90 3.9 x 2.3 x 1.2 6.2 OZ.
S8000 4.1 x 2.3 x 1.1 6.5 OZ.
SD4000IS 3.9 x 2.1 x .9 6.1 OZ.

G11 4.4 x 3 x 1.9 12.5 OZ.

sigh The purse IS kinda big already, to hold the size and weight of the
XD-45 ACP and the 14 rounds of JHP. Hmmm....

Is the G11 THAT much better than the other 3?
( thinking this is gonna cost me more... )

At what point will I need to start moving other stuff out of the purse to
make room for it?

I like the size of the Cyber-Shot DSC-S750 that I have in there now. It's
in a little hard shell case. It just doesn't take very sharp pictures, and
after all, what's a camera for if not that? Oh and the video it takes are
tiny. And I love the idea of taking HD stills and video...

IOW I want a new purse camera for my birthday. :-)



Happy birthday. Since it will be your only xx birthday ever, get the G11.



--
Peter

"Jane Galt" wrote in message
. ..
tony cooper wrote :

On Thu, 17 Jun 2010 14:50:08 +0100, "David J Taylor"
wrote:

"Jane Galt" wrote in message
42...
Looking some more, the S90 is also tempting, so it's between the

S90 $350
S8000 $250
and SD4000IS $350

It would stretch the budget for the more expensive two ( $350 street
price )
if it would bring $100 more joy to my shooting, but what's a credit
card
for?




--
- Jane Galt

If you're paying that much you might as well get a DSLR - the larger
sensor will make for better low-light performance.

Jane specified in her first post that she wanted a "purse-sized"
camera. No dslr is truly purse-sized.

I can see why someone wants a pocket-sized or purse-sized camera to
carry around. There are times you want to have a camera available but
not carry around a large dslr.

Exactly. I'd love to have a nice Nikon DSLR, so I could have a polarizing
lens and all, but it IS for my purse and I already have a bunch of stuff
in
there, including the XD-45 ACP,

Ooooh. My kinda woman. (Though I'm mainly a Beretta guy myself.)

so it's already pretty full and slightly
heavy. ;-)

Leave the extra magazine home and that'd save the weight of a pretty
good-sized compact camera. :-)

"Jane Galt" wrote in message
. ..
"Neil Harrington" wrote :


"Jane Galt" wrote in message
. ..
"Neil Harrington" wrote :


"Jane Galt" wrote in message
. ..
I'd like to consider a newer purse sized Coolpix. I have the 4500
which is nice, but not exactly purse sized.

I like to do a bit of low-light shooting without flash, so it looks
like the
S8000 isnt up to that, though the 10x optical zoom sounds nice.

I enjoy mostly scenery and non-flash shots of our shoulder pet birds.

My purse cam is now a Sony Cyber-Shot DSC-S750 but the image quality
isnt as
nice as the Coolpix. I suspect Nikon makes better quality lenses?

So suggestions?

I need to keep this in the under $300 street price range.

Of the current crop of Coolpixes, the S640 looks about the best for
your purposes. Its lens is a relatively fast f/2.7 at the short end
and it also has Nikon's "4-way VR" -- both of which will help in
low-light shooting. The "4-way VR" is actually a combination of
optional features and includes Nikon's exclusive Best Shot Selector
feature, by itself a big help in low-light shooting (BSS lets you hold
the shutter release down for up to 10 shots, then saves the sharpest
one; since slow-shutter-speed shots usually vary a lot in sharpness,
this helps a great deal). Also part of the "4-way VR" is the camera's
offering auto ISO settings up to 6400 -- great for low light, though
at the cost of increased noise. I have found high-ISO settings very
useful in Coolpixes despite the increased noise, but I may be more
tolerant of noise in photos than some other people.

I don't have that particular model myself so can't speak about it from
experience, but I do have a gaggle of other relatively recent
Coolpixes and have consistently fine results from them all. The S640
has a MSRP of $219.95, so street price should certainly be no more
than that. And it is very compact -- no problem at all for your purse,
you could carry two or three there if you wanted to.

Before coming back here to see this, I've been loking around, and am
very tempted by the Powershot SD4000IS now, except for the price. Whew.
Then the
Coolpix S8000 is PHAT too. sigh What to do, what to do....

Buy one of each? :-)

ROFLMAO

If only...

The S8000's lens is just over 2/3 stop slower (f/3.5 vs f/2.7 of the
S640), which gives the S640 a slight advantage in low-light shooting,
all else being equal. Also the S8000 does not have quite the wide-angle
capability of the S640 (30mm equiv. vs 28mm), which might be of some
importance to you since you've mentioned your interest in scenery. These
are reasons I suggested the S640 as being perhaps the best choice for
your purposes.

The S640 doesnt get such great reviews on Amazon, though not many reviews
there. Dont see anything about high def stills or movies either.

Most of what I want to do is either scenery or my pet birds, or
combinations thereof. ( I take one of my parrots out for walks in parks,
on
a leash )

Now THAT must be worth taking a picture of!

I'd also wish for a polarizing filter for any of these but am not
sure if they can do that. Makes a big diff in scenic shots.

Very few compact camera lenses are threaded for filters, and really none of
the kind we've been talking about (those with lens retracting behind a
self-capping gizmo). I should think you could just hand-hold a polarizer in
front of the lens and rotate it to suit, though I've never actually done
that myself.


Frankly I'd love a $3000 Nikon DSLR but it's like with guns. They say that
the smaller gun you can carry is better than the bigger gun that you have
to wind up leaving at home. Same with this. If it fits my purse, I have it
in a snap. pun If it's baggage, I probably would leave it at home most
of
the time, then I'd miss something like that video of Congressman ( Thug )
Bob Etheridge if I saw something like that going on. :-)

Yes, wasn't that something.


Yes, the 10x zoom is nice, provided it works well. I had (very briefly)
a Coolpix S10 which also had a 10x zoom, nice lens except for its
horribly unreliable autofocus at the longer focal lengths, which made it
practically useless. I promptly returned it for that reason, the only
Coolpix I have ever returned. Of course that doesn't mean the S8000 has
a similar problem, but it did tend to make me leery of superzoom lenses
in very small cameras.

Other than that, the S8000 has what advantages? It's a 14-megapixel
camera instead of the S640's 12, but the 12 is already cramming far too
many pixels into such a tiny sensor as far as I'm concerned. I have
Coolpixes in 8, 10, 12 and 14 megapixels -- and I routinely set them all
to 5 megapixels. The Great Megapixel Race serves no purpose as far as I
can see except to help manufacturers sell more cameras to people who
think their pictures aren't sharp because they don't have enough
megapixels.

True. Well now that I have a HD 24" LCD monitor ( Asus VK246H ) and HDTV
at
home, I'm really enjoying true HD, so it would be awesome to be able to
take full HD photos and video and see them on these at home, even as
wallpaper.

I see David has already pointed out that HDTV is only about two megapixels.
And that's at the highest available resolution regardless of screen size:
1920 x 1080 = 2.07 megapixels.

"Jane Galt" wrote in message
. ..
"Neil Harrington" wrote :


"Jane Galt" wrote in message
. ..
Looking some more, the S90 is also tempting, so it's between the

S90 $350
S8000 $250
and SD4000IS $350

It would stretch the budget for the more expensive two ( $350 street
price )
if it would bring $100 more joy to my shooting, but what's a credit
card for?


The two Canons you mention look sort of interesting, though if I were
buying a Powershot I'd go the extra $100 for a G11.

I mentioned that I could spring the extra from the $250 price of the S8000
to the SD4000IS. Now you're talking $450. Creeping price here. LOL

Yup. :-)


I don't know if
you'd consider the G11 purse sized, however.


Not so much?


I looked up the S90, the S8000 and the SD4000IS:


S90 3.9 x 2.3 x 1.2 6.2 OZ.
S8000 4.1 x 2.3 x 1.1 6.5 OZ.
SD4000IS 3.9 x 2.1 x .9 6.1 OZ.

G11 4.4 x 3 x 1.9 12.5 OZ.

sigh The purse IS kinda big already, to hold the size and weight of the
XD-45 ACP and the 14 rounds of JHP. Hmmm....

I suppose one full magazine of .45s should be fairly close to the weight of
the G11, and not TOO much difference in overall size. So think of it as more
or less like carrying the extra magazine.


Is the G11 THAT much better than the other 3?

I think so, yes. I don't have one yet myself -- being mainly a Nikon guy --
but the G11 is really getting under my skin and I'm gonna have to get one
soon.

I need Yet Another Digital Camera like I need another navel, but heck, as a
friend of mine used to say, "The one who dies with the most toys, wins."

( thinking this is gonna cost me more... )

At what point will I need to start moving other stuff out of the purse to
make room for it?

I like the size of the Cyber-Shot DSC-S750 that I have in there now. It's
in a little hard shell case. It just doesn't take very sharp pictures, and
after all, what's a camera for if not that? Oh and the video it takes are
tiny. And I love the idea of taking HD stills and video...

IOW I want a new purse camera for my birthday. :-)

I don't think you'd go wrong with any of those we've talked about. In the
end the only FULLY satisfactory solution is to buy them all, as then you
will never say, "Gee, maybe I should have bought ------ instead." But of
course that solution has its obvious down sides as well.

Neil Harrington wrote:
"Jane Galt" wrote in message

Exactly. I'd love to have a nice Nikon DSLR, so I could have a polarizing
lens and all, but it IS for my purse and I already have a bunch of stuff
in
there, including the XD-45 ACP,

Ooooh. My kinda woman. (Though I'm mainly a Beretta guy myself.)

Kinda like Rita, I bet. A lady but not a woman.

--
john mcwilliams

"John McWilliams" wrote in message
...
Neil Harrington wrote:
"Jane Galt" wrote in message

Exactly. I'd love to have a nice Nikon DSLR, so I could have a
polarizing
lens and all, but it IS for my purse and I already have a bunch of stuff
in
there, including the XD-45 ACP,

Ooooh. My kinda woman. (Though I'm mainly a Beretta guy myself.)

Kinda like Rita, I bet. A lady but not a woman.

Really? What makes you think that?

Neil Harrington wrote:
"John McWilliams" wrote in message
...
Neil Harrington wrote:
"Jane Galt" wrote in message
Exactly. I'd love to have a nice Nikon DSLR, so I could have a
polarizing
lens and all, but it IS for my purse and I already have a bunch of stuff
in
there, including the XD-45 ACP,
Ooooh. My kinda woman. (Though I'm mainly a Beretta guy myself.)
Kinda like Rita, I bet. A lady but not a woman.

Really? What makes you think that?

The same sorta stuff that made me know "Rita", aka "Larry Thong"
recently, was a guy.

Were you the one who was so skeptical about my claim re "Rita" when you
first came to this NG? I never did get an enthusiastic thank you from
the guy whoever he was.

--
john mcwilliams

I know that you believe you understood what you think I said, but I'm
not sure you realize that what you heard is not what I meant.

On 6/18/10 4:42 PM, in article ,
"John McWilliams" wrote:

Neil Harrington wrote:
"John McWilliams" wrote in message
...
Neil Harrington wrote:
"Jane Galt" wrote in message
Exactly. I'd love to have a nice Nikon DSLR, so I could have a
polarizing
lens and all, but it IS for my purse and I already have a bunch of stuff
in
there, including the XD-45 ACP,
Ooooh. My kinda woman. (Though I'm mainly a Beretta guy myself.)
Kinda like Rita, I bet. A lady but not a woman.

Really? What makes you think that?

The same sorta stuff that made me know "Rita", aka "Larry Thong"
recently, was a guy.

Not to mention the subject matter of "Rita's" contributions: I REALLY would
surmise that a woman would not be so much into dog**** as "Rita".

Were you the one who was so skeptical about my claim re "Rita" when you
first came to this NG? I never did get an enthusiastic thank you from
the guy whoever he was.

"David J Taylor" wrote :

"Jane Galt" wrote in message
. ..
[]
True. Well now that I have a HD 24" LCD monitor ( Asus VK246H ) and HDTV
at
home, I'm really enjoying true HD, so it would be awesome to be able to
take full HD photos and video and see them on these at home, even as
wallpaper.

You do know that "full HD", and your monitor, are only about 2MP, I
presume?

Cheers,
David



Oh my.

Well whatever makes it look so sharp and clear, I want it.

--
- Jane Galt