DavidG

Lots of you must have digital cameras to get pics of your beloved motors onto your websites, so this must be a good place to ask for recommendations for a digital (stills) camera.

I'm not looking for anything too fancy but must have reasonable picture quality, cost say around £500.

Also, preferably, storage medium should be smart media cards (i.e. little flat rectangular cards with one corner cut out of them) as I already have a reader for them, but if you tell me they're cr@p I'll go for something else.

Any recommendations? What should I look out for and what should I definitely avoid?

Thanks,

David

SecretAgentMan

Hi!

I got myself a digital camera recently, after some looking around I decided to pay a little more and got myself a Canon Powershot S20, 3 megapixels, very small and great results.

It made a hole around the size of 650 £ in my account, but I'm very happy with it - haven't got anything negative to say about it.

It fit well into my selection, based on size (if it's large you'll never bring it with you) and top quality images.

It usescompact flash cards, and the small 340 Mb hd from IBM can be used as well.

(I love it)

gregh

As an alternate I looked into this, and ended up getting a digital video camera, which allows me to get digital stills and video, as I wanted a video camera and a digital still capability.

Stills aren't as good as a high quality digital camera, but I think they are good enough for me.

Latest examples of digital stills at:

Big Bear

I bought my camera about 2 months ago and have never regretted it . I got an Olympus C-21 which has 2.1 megapixels it set me back about £300 inclueded in the price was nearly £100 worth of extra software .
Dave

DavidG

Thanks for the responses, guys!

Gregh - nice pictures (couldn't open the video though). How much was the digital video camera?

SecretAgentMan - nice pun ("haven't got anything <B>negative</B> to say about it")

Anyone know a good place to buy this stuff? I want it tomorrow so would prefer one of those new "shops" that Johnfelstead talked about rather than the traditional online shopping. I'm in London.

Thanks again.

gregh

Dave,

Mine is a JVC DVL9000, I think they are down to around £800 now, but they are other models out that now do DV-in as well as DV-out.

Wot happenned when you tried to dload the vid?

Greg

DavidG

Greg, thanks for that. When I tried to download the vid I got a page that said "Video not available, cannot find vids:iv50 decompressor". I'm using Netscape 4.51 through a firewall.

Cheers,

David

SecretAgentMan

*lol*

Was waiting for that David....

Check out

AllanB

You should be able to get something very good for £500. Things that will dictate the picture quality are the number of pixels and if you need a zoom try and get one with an optical zoom. Most cameras use smart media or compact flash but .If it was my money I'd go for Kodak or Olympus or maybe Sony. Be a little cautious of some less common makes as although they may seem to use standard Smartmedia/ compact flash it may be of an unusually specification like some of the older Fuji cameras.


AllanB

DavidG

Thanks for all the input. I finally went for an Olympus 2020 Zoom, which has 2.1 megapixels. The review on the site that SecretAgentMan recommended (which I only saw after I bought) was glowing, which is nice. That's an excellent site, BTW.

I ended up choosing between that Olympus and the Canon PowerShot S10, which I think is a neater looking camera. However, the Zoom on the Olympus was better and the Olympus uses smart media cards, which as I mentioned is a plus point for me as I already have a smart media reader.

Thanks again for the helpful responses.

Dave Thornton

Didn't make it in time for you but look at

Bajie

Sony dcs70.
Absolutely superb.
You can take a picture, then zoom anywhere in that picture, and save another snap, Bladerunner style.
Anyway, you can get it on the web for around 500, its worth a look.

DCI Gene Hunt

How times have changed.... 3 Megapixel/£650....

ChefDude

3mp which, ironically, is more than enough for print quality 6x4s which most people are happy with yet they *have* to get 10+ megapixels lol

Trucker Ted

I thought i was seeing things there ,then just realised its a 7 year old post

Sonic'

Me too and was going to perhaps suggest something like the new Canon G9

My old 2 mp camera still produces good pictures, I just cant really print anything bigger than 7 x 5 with them without noticing pixels

DCI Gene Hunt

I have a Canon Powershot 350

It has 350 THOUSAND pixels ....... it cost me nearly £800 in the day

No autofocus, just a slide lever that moves a lense down... compact flash as well