Topic Digital Camera Hunt

Indiescribe

This is a thread to take in the user opinion of the best medium range Digital camera in the market. I am considering three brands -

Canon

Sony

Panasonic

I would like to ask what features are absolutely essential for eg, is it optical zoom over digital zoom, memory etc.

What features are desirable? E.g, dock support etc

What features we can live without?

Help me out guys!

-HAL-

I've always been a Canon fan myself..

Are you looking for a compact camera or a bigger "pro" one??

You can safely pay no attention to how "good" the digital zoom is on different cameras since will make the picture quality worse, no matter what the manufacturer say...
3-4x optical zoom, a good optical stabilizer, 8Mpix (or more) are normally good enough on compact cameras since you'll need a tripod in most cases if you're going to zoom more than that since shaking hands will make the picture blurry..

senojekips

I bought a Canon S5 IS about five weeks ago. 8 Megapixel, 12X optical Zoom 4X digital Zoom and it takes 4 x AA batteries.

These were the main considerations for me. The Zoom was so the little woman could take pics of the parrots that land in the almond tree in our back yard,the rest of my preferences were merely because they were better than similar mid range extended zoom cameras in the price range. (A$400)

The ability to use AA batteries is essential as these batteries can be found anywhere, unlike prepacked units, I bought 16 x 2300 mAh NiMH rechargeables on EBay for A$24.00 with a charger. I get about 300 photos per charge The camera uses SD HD cards which are cheap and easy to find. 8Gb for A$28

I'm really happy with it. Below is a pic of a house on an adjoining hill approximately 1200mtrs away at 48X magnification (12X optical and 4X digital) the wind turbines in the background are 16 Kms away. So the 4X digital zoom is quite effective.

Unfortunately the first shot was taken as part of a panorama without the house in mind and as a result it is only partially visible just to the left of the Boxthorn bush.

Both of these photos have been reduced to 30% of their original size and cropped, and as a result have lost some clarity