I'm trying to work out which digital camera to buy. However, having a
limited budget, I am at a loss as to what to buy. I have an eight year
old Fuji 1.3 megapixel camera with no optical zoom. While I still make
regular use of it, I would like something higher in quality, with
optical zoom, and movie mode.
I'm not even an "amateur" photographer. My main purpose for the camera
is to take snapshots on family outings etc. But we do take a lot of
such shots.
Among reasonably cheap cameras, the following are possibilities.
Fuji S5700. Plusses for this camera seem to be that it's reasonably
cheap, has a 10x zoom, and movie mode. It doesn't seem to have a good
image stabilisation system, relying it seems on using a fast shutter
speed to reduce blur. Using a tripod or monopod when using higher
zooms is a plausible option, e.g. for nature shots of birds and other
wildlife.
Fujifilm Finepix S6500fd. Lower resolution, but it seems a better
camera. Still no real image stabilization. Very good reviews on
Amazon.
Panasonic Lumix DMC LZ5. Only 6x zoom. But has an optical image
stabilisation. My partner would probably use the camera as well, and
has difficulty with blurred pictures.
Panasonic DMC-TZ2EB-S. At the top of the price range I would consider.
But has only one review on Amazon. The wide-angle lens sounds useful
as I frequently have problems in rooms where I can't back far enough
away to get the shot I want.
Panasonic LUMIX DMC FZ7. No optical viewfinder. But good zoom @12x
optical. Optical image stabiliser. Again, at about £200 at the top of
my range.
For all of the above cameras, I have to check whether they have the
"gotcha" of only being able to record movies as long as fits in the
internal memory. Not the much larger memory card.
Also, I haven't ever seen movies taken using cameras of this type. So
I don't know what quality they are. I'd like to burn DVDs of the
movies I take, which would mean letterboxing or scaling the image. I
wouldn't think that scaling/cropping from 640 x 480 to 720 x 575 would
decrease quality all that much. Would it? Also, would the camera apply
considerable compression to the movies, so that they had undergone
irreversible quality loss before I could get them off the camera?
I admit that I'm looking through the cameras available, and there are
such a large number of them that it looks impossible to decide. Any
hints?
Oh ****. It only gets more confusing. The "Canon PowerShot S3 IS" has
stereo sound recording for movies, as opposed to the standard mono. It
does record long movies. Has 12x zoom and optical image stabilisation.
S5 is too expensive for me.
robotiser@googlemail.com wrote:
> I'm trying to work out which digital camera to buy. However, having a
> limited budget, I am at a loss as to what to buy. I have an eight year
> old Fuji 1.3 megapixel camera with no optical zoom. While I still make
> regular use of it, I would like something higher in quality, with
> optical zoom, and movie mode.
>
> I'm not even an "amateur" photographer. My main purpose for the camera
> is to take snapshots on family outings etc. But we do take a lot of
> such shots.
<snip>
> Panasonic Lumix DMC LZ5. Only 6x zoom. But has an optical image
> stabilisation. My partner would probably use the camera as well, and
> has difficulty with blurred pictures.
<snip>
I have the similar LZ3, and can recommend it. Keep in mind
that with many megapixels you can do a lot of cropping and
still get crisp prints, which is the equivalent of more zoom
in terms of the detail you see. The one difficulty is the
only way to frame the photo is with the LCD screen, which is
hard to do in bright sunshine. Most compact digicams are
made that way now, and the Panasonic I have at least lets
you make the screen brighter. The image stabilizer works
very well.
On 30 Sep, 16:36, Marvin <physc...@verizon.net> wrote:
> I have the similar LZ3, and can recommend it. Keep in mind
> that with many megapixels you can do a lot of cropping and
> still get crisp prints, which is the equivalent of more zoom
> in terms of the detail you see. The one difficulty is the
> only way to frame the photo is with the LCD screen, which is
> hard to do in bright sunshine. Most compact digicams are
> made that way now, and the Panasonic I have at least lets
> you make the screen brighter. The image stabilizer works
> very well.
Thank you. Does your camera allow you to take long movies up to the
size of your memory card, or can you only take movies to the size of
the internal memory? Also, it has a "serial shot mode" I see. Does
this mean that you can set it to automatically take photos every N
seconds, where N might be something large like 30 or so?
robotiser@googlemail.com wrote:
> I'm trying to work out which digital camera to buy. However, having a
> limited budget, I am at a loss as to what to buy. I have an eight year
> old Fuji 1.3 megapixel camera with no optical zoom. While I still make
> regular use of it, I would like something higher in quality, with
> optical zoom, and movie mode.
>
> I'm not even an "amateur" photographer. My main purpose for the camera
> is to take snapshots on family outings etc. But we do take a lot of
> such shots.
>
> Among reasonably cheap cameras, the following are possibilities.
>
> Fuji S5700. Plusses for this camera seem to be that it's reasonably
> cheap, has a 10x zoom, and movie mode. It doesn't seem to have a good
> image stabilisation system, relying it seems on using a fast shutter
> speed to reduce blur. Using a tripod or monopod when using higher
> zooms is a plausible option, e.g. for nature shots of birds and other
> wildlife.
>
> Fujifilm Finepix S6500fd. Lower resolution, but it seems a better
> camera. Still no real image stabilization. Very good reviews on
> Amazon.
>
> Panasonic Lumix DMC LZ5. Only 6x zoom. But has an optical image
> stabilisation. My partner would probably use the camera as well, and
> has difficulty with blurred pictures.
>
> Panasonic DMC-TZ2EB-S. At the top of the price range I would consider.
> But has only one review on Amazon. The wide-angle lens sounds useful
> as I frequently have problems in rooms where I can't back far enough
> away to get the shot I want.
>
> Panasonic LUMIX DMC FZ7. No optical viewfinder. But good zoom @12x
> optical. Optical image stabiliser. Again, at about £200 at the top of
> my range.
>
> For all of the above cameras, I have to check whether they have the
> "gotcha" of only being able to record movies as long as fits in the
> internal memory. Not the much larger memory card.
>
> Also, I haven't ever seen movies taken using cameras of this type. So
> I don't know what quality they are. I'd like to burn DVDs of the
> movies I take, which would mean letterboxing or scaling the image. I
> wouldn't think that scaling/cropping from 640 x 480 to 720 x 575 would
> decrease quality all that much. Would it? Also, would the camera apply
> considerable compression to the movies, so that they had undergone
> irreversible quality loss before I could get them off the camera?
>
> I admit that I'm looking through the cameras available, and there are
> such a large number of them that it looks impossible to decide. Any
> hints?
I would go for the Panasonic DMC-TZ2EB-S. It is available from quite a few
mail order suppliers on the Internet and has excellent reviews.
> I would go for the Panasonic DMC-TZ2EB-S. It is available from quite a few
> mail order suppliers on the Internet and has excellent reviews.
Great personal review for this camera on Amazon ....
'...I ordered my Panasonic DMC-TZ2EB-S from Amazon but the item actually
came through Pixmania.com.
It's a great Camera with excellent features however the instruction manual
for this item comes in bloody French and trying to get an English version is
proving virtually impossible.
Not very helpful... '
:-D
Not a rebutall of your recommendation, Dennis. Just funny.
On 30 Sep, 20:04, "Chris Gilbert"
<christopher.DELETEgilb...@virgin.net> wrote:
> Dennis Pogson wrote
>
> > I would go for the Panasonic DMC-TZ2EB-S. It is available from quite a few
> > mail order suppliers on the Internet and has excellent reviews.
>
> Great personal review for this camera on Amazon ....
>
> '...I ordered my Panasonic DMC-TZ2EB-S from Amazon but the item actually
> came through Pixmania.com.
>
> It's a great Camera with excellent features however the instruction manual
> for this item comes in bloody French and trying to get an English version is
> proving virtually impossible.
>
> Not very helpful... '
>
> :-D
>
> Not a rebutall of your recommendation, Dennis. Just funny.
>
> Chris
You can download English manuals for Panasonic cameras from:
I'm looking through some of the manuals now to learn more about the
cameras.
There are a lot of recommendations for Panasonics, both here and
elsewhere. But I must admit that the stereo sound recording of the
Canon S3 IS is very tempting.
On Sun, 30 Sep 2007 12:58:22 -0700, "robotiser@googlemail.com"
<robotiser@googlemail.com> wrote:
>On 30 Sep, 20:04, "Chris Gilbert"
><christopher.DELETEgilb...@virgin.net> wrote:
>> Dennis Pogson wrote
>>
>> > I would go for the Panasonic DMC-TZ2EB-S. It is available from quite a few
>> > mail order suppliers on the Internet and has excellent reviews.
>>
>> Great personal review for this camera on Amazon ....
>>
>> '...I ordered my Panasonic DMC-TZ2EB-S from Amazon but the item actually
>> came through Pixmania.com.
>>
>> It's a great Camera with excellent features however the instruction manual
>> for this item comes in bloody French and trying to get an English version is
>> proving virtually impossible.
>>
>> Not very helpful... '
>>
>> :-D
>>
>> Not a rebutall of your recommendation, Dennis. Just funny.
>>
>> Chris
>
>You can download English manuals for Panasonic cameras from:
>
>http://www.panasonic.co.uk/customer-...oad-centre.asp
>
>I'm looking through some of the manuals now to learn more about the
>cameras.
>
>There are a lot of recommendations for Panasonics, both here and
>elsewhere. But I must admit that the stereo sound recording of the
>Canon S3 IS is very tempting.
Before you decide on the S3 or others you might want to check out the CHDK
add-on for the S3 IS (freeware). http://scratchpad.wikia.com/wiki/CHDK It adds a
whole other set of menus that aren't normally part of the Canon cameras. (It's
not possible to provide this for the S5 IS cameras at this time, and it looks
like it may never be. Canon changed their firmware to make it very difficult.)
Be sure to check out the firmware usage page to see all you can do with it.
There is now a motion detection version for them too, which works amazingly
well. Totally integrated with CHDK's scripting features. I was testing the
latest version today. After selecting how many detection cells you want it can
display them on the screen as green squares. If any of them detect motion (with
a user-input detection threshold) they turn red. Up to 1024 detection areas may
be defined by rows and columns of them. Areas may also be defined for exclusion
in case you don't want it to detect motion in certain regions. The author is now
working on optimizing the code so it can be used to detect lightning fast enough
to shoot lightning displays, but he already reports the motion-detection routine
has a 10 millisecond (1/100th second) response time which in my opinion should
be fast enough as a lightning-trigger, because of how lightning strikes happen,
there's always a pre-strike that triggers the full lightning bolt. Some
companies sell a similar lightning-detector/trigger device that's only available
for use on some SLR cameras, for hundreds of dollars. With CHDK it will be built
into the camera, for free. In all cases just create simple scripts to tell the
camera how you want your camera to behave when it detects
motion/lighting-changes -- record still frames, record movies, record burst
sequences, etc. Conversely you can even have it not take photos while it's
detecting motion, for those group shots that you want to get into. When everyone
stops moving only then will it take the photo. The possible uses are endless and
under your complete control.
Scan through the scripting tutorial to see all the camera commands that you can
control automatically with small programs that you write.
If you have no need for any of those things, then the Panasonics are also very
nice. I was impressed by photos recently where some of them can outperform a
$12,000 DSLR with "L" glass lenses in image quality. I am a fan of the low-noise
high-ISOs of the Fuji lines too. Their higher ISOs can be almost as beneficial
as a good image stabilization on other cameras.
Now for some CHDK bad news: For those that invested in Digic II and Digic III
DSLRs it is sad to report that porting CHDK and all its amazing features to
those DSLRs will be impossible. Without having the real-time EVF/LCD viewfinder
data there's no way that any of this can be done. Enjoy your "superior" optical
viewfinders that you like to go on and on about so much. :-)
robotiser@googlemail.com wrote:
> I'm trying to work out which digital camera to buy. However, having a
> limited budget, I am at a loss as to what to buy. I have an eight year
> old Fuji 1.3 megapixel camera with no optical zoom. While I still make
> regular use of it, I would like something higher in quality, with
> optical zoom, and movie mode.
>
> I'm not even an "amateur" photographer. My main purpose for the camera
> is to take snapshots on family outings etc. But we do take a lot of
> such shots.
>
> Among reasonably cheap cameras, the following are possibilities.
>
> Fuji S5700. Plusses for this camera seem to be that it's reasonably
> cheap, has a 10x zoom, and movie mode. It doesn't seem to have a good
> image stabilisation system, relying it seems on using a fast shutter
> speed to reduce blur. Using a tripod or monopod when using higher
> zooms is a plausible option, e.g. for nature shots of birds and other
> wildlife.
>
> Fujifilm Finepix S6500fd. Lower resolution, but it seems a better
> camera. Still no real image stabilization. Very good reviews on
> Amazon.
>
> Panasonic Lumix DMC LZ5. Only 6x zoom. But has an optical image
> stabilisation. My partner would probably use the camera as well, and
> has difficulty with blurred pictures.
>
> Panasonic DMC-TZ2EB-S. At the top of the price range I would consider.
> But has only one review on Amazon. The wide-angle lens sounds useful
> as I frequently have problems in rooms where I can't back far enough
> away to get the shot I want.
>
> Panasonic LUMIX DMC FZ7. No optical viewfinder. But good zoom @12x
> optical. Optical image stabiliser. Again, at about £200 at the top of
> my range.
>
> For all of the above cameras, I have to check whether they have the
> "gotcha" of only being able to record movies as long as fits in the
> internal memory. Not the much larger memory card.
>
> Also, I haven't ever seen movies taken using cameras of this type. So
> I don't know what quality they are. I'd like to burn DVDs of the
> movies I take, which would mean letterboxing or scaling the image. I
> wouldn't think that scaling/cropping from 640 x 480 to 720 x 575 would
> decrease quality all that much. Would it? Also, would the camera apply
> considerable compression to the movies, so that they had undergone
> irreversible quality loss before I could get them off the camera?
>
> I admit that I'm looking through the cameras available, and there are
> such a large number of them that it looks impossible to decide. Any
> hints?
>
Any of the cameras mentioned are so much better than your current one, I
can't imagine you being less that pleased with any of them.
As for 'movie mode'. The movies are usually 640x480, which is about as
high as the resolution on a DVD player displayed on a standard
(NTSC/PAL) TV. The main limitation, compared to a real video camera, is
that zoom often doesn't work in movie mode, and some cameras won't even
do autofocus when shooting movies. All cameras I am aware of compress
the movie data, most with either AVI, .mov (Apple Quicktime format), or
MPG 2 or 4. Effect on displayed resolution seems minimal.
> robotiser@googlemail.com wrote:
[]
>> Panasonic DMC-TZ2EB-S. At the top of the price range I would
>> consider. But has only one review on Amazon. The wide-angle lens
>> sounds useful as I frequently have problems in rooms where I can't
>> back far enough away to get the shot I want.
I recently had the chance to see a lot of images from the Panasonic TZ3
and they are first-class. Yes, having the extra-wide zoom frequently
helps, and it's well worthwhile. The TZ3 is a bit more expensive than the
TZ2, but I think the image quality will be similar. The Leica lens and
optical image stabilisation work very well.
Digital Camera confusion 
Linear Mode
