Digital Camera Recommendations?

looking to spend max $200 on a new camera. we had a canon that we loved but i got sick with the E18 error, so we need a replacement, and i must confess i'm loath to give them any more money because of that issue. any thoughts?

What is important for you?

Size?
Features?
Quality?
Zoom?
Macro?
Rechargable?

Makes a big difference to what you go for?

How often will you use it?
What do you do with the images?

This is the one that SWMBO and I bought when our daughter was born. It's an awesome camera. It had better features than half of the other cameras there, and only cost about half as much. We payed about 180 $ for it if I remember correctly.

FUJIFILM FinePix A820

I like the cameras that use standard USB type cable connector at the camera end. Bought a Nikon for the daughter last year that used a different type connection at the camera. It is a bugger if you take the camera out and about and want to download pics on other comps. Won't make that mistake again.

I use this one.

It's travelled the world with me.



Specification Value
Product Type Digital camera - prosumer
Width 10.9 cm
Depth 8.4 cm
Height 8 cm
Weight 0.3 kg
Enclosure Colour Silver
Resolution 6.0 Megapixel
Optical Sensor Type CCD
Total Pixels 6,400,000 pixels
Effective Sensor Resolution 6,000,000 pixels
Optical Sensor Size 1/2.5"
Light Sensitivity ISO 100, ISO 200, ISO 320, ISO 50, ISO auto
Digital Zoom 4 x
Shooting Modes Frame movie mode
Shooting Modes Landscape, portrait mode, night portrait, sports mode, sunset

Bah Humbug said:

What is important for you?

Size?
Features?
Quality?
Zoom?
Macro?
Rechargable?

Makes a big difference to what you go for?

How often will you use it?
What do you do with the images?

Click to expand...

Size: small is good
Features: basic zoom, auto/manual flash
Quality: mostly this is for online distribution to friends and stuff, so 4 megapixels is totally adequate i think
Zoom: 2-3 times optical, 2+ times digital
Macro: yeah SWMBO likes that
Rechargeable: definitely prefered

You want a compact for snap shots.
Digital zoom will do. Optical upto x4 is a bonus.

You'd be hard pushed to spend over $200 for what you need.

The world is your oyster.

Sorry can't help more than that. I've never had a compact for my main camera.
I use my phone if I need a pocket camera.

Check out Costco, if you're a member. I absolutely love my Lumix (Panasonic), and I can highly recommend their line for inexpensive point&shoot cameras. My 2 year old has even been using it, and my father in law just bought a newer version one this last week to replace his Sony Cybershot that has broke twice in the last year.

http://www.dpreview.com/ has some great info if you like to research these things well.

I've also read some really good reviews of the Fuji FinePix line like Talley mentioned above too.

+1 on the Lumix. I got SWMBO a Panasonic Lumix FX07 for Christmas last year. It takes a fantastic picture for the price. Amazon has that very model for $199.99 right now. I took it with me on a recent trip, and I was getting point/shoot pictures that none of my friends' cameras could duplicate (we were often snapping pictures of the same thing at the same time). I have a couple of 2GB memory cards for it, each of which is good for nearly 600 pictures at the highest quality setting. All of my brew videos have been shot with it as well.

My only complaint is that the pictures appear slightly grainy at full resolution. However, they are VERY sharp when scaled to print on 5x7 or smaller paper. I haven't printed an 8x10 or larger, but I suspect that the graininess may show up at that size.

I have a Fuji FinePix from about 4 years ago, and I hate it. It EATS batteries. Maybe they've fixed that by now. The rechargeable battery in the Lumix lasted almost 2 weeks on my trip.

The Nikon Coolpix series has some on your range. The L5, takes great pics, uses cheap SD cards, has vibration reduction and it uses AA batteries, you can get a rechargeable set and then if your batteries die while out somewhere you can easily and cheaply get some fresh ones.

I'm with Bignick on this one, get something with AA's, the rechargeable AA's are great, pricey, but probably not as bad as camera only batteries.


Sorry to hear about the canon, I have loved both of mine. I have a A520, 4 mp and I can still blow up to 8X10 without graininess . Love my SX100 that I just bought as well.
BTW, what exactly is the E18 error?

I love cannon and nikon cameras. All the others I've looked at had color problems. I've got a 4 megapixel Nikon, swmbo has a brand new 6 megapixel cannon. The Nikon takes the best pics, but they have a serious shutter lag problem, especially when using the flash. It can take 30 seconds for the camera to reset after taking a flash picture. The cannon is flawless! It's incredibly fast even with the flash on. It adjusts to any lighting condition, and has good color saturation at all but the most extreme lighting. The BEST feature is the anti-shake lens. I'll never use a tri-pod again with that camera, it just doesn't need it. For extreme picture taking with individual settings carefully adjusted for a specific shot, both work very well, but how often does one take that kind of time on a picture? I used to have a fantastic nikon SLR, but got rid of it when I realized that in a year's time I used it to its full potential exactly three times. And it was way to big and expensive to take to parties, events, etc.

I was a little pessimistic with the Lumix resolution. I just scrutinized a few pictures and found that the graininess I've noticed really only appears at 66% or greater scale (from a native picture size of 3072x2304 pixels). That means that an 8x10 or even slightly larger picture would turn out just fine.

We have a Nikon and it works pretty well I think it has 9 megapixels, Its not a bad camera but We have not used it since I bought our Sony Mini DVD Camera, It goes everywhere.

knarfks said:

I'm with Bignick on this one, get something with AA's, the rechargeable AA's are great, pricey, but probably not as bad as camera only batteries.


Sorry to hear about the canon, I have loved both of mine. I have a A520, 4 mp and I can still blow up to 8X10 without graininess . Love my SX100 that I just bought as well.
BTW, what exactly is the E18 error?

Click to expand...

This E18 error is something to do with the mechanics of the lens retraction/extension. You can find more info than you will ever need http://www.e18error.com/ but essentially it's a very common fault and Cannon are not up for fixing it. It seems to be something that is caused by poor handling of the camera, sand or whatever getting in there, but there are people claiming extreme careful handling and the same issue.

I'm liking the nikon I think. Thanks for everyone's input!

Re: E18

Had the same thing on my Canon, wouldn't go away, getting it fixed didn't sound promising, so I bought a new camera. About five months later I pulled the old one out (son had the new one in Hong Kong on a band trip) and it worked fine and has continued to work since (about 2.5 years now). So while I would go ahead and get a new camera, I'd hang on to the old one for awhile; you never know.

Rick