I couldn't remember what Camera it was that you bought, and couldn't find it on the HAMB search either, so I just went shopping until I found one I liked. Since you seem to be the resident professional on digital Camera's, what do you think of the Minolta DiMAGE Z1? It was only 3.2M, but the 4.0M camera's that were in my $400 price range didn't have nearly the features this thing has. The Camera salesman showed me some actual 8x10 photos taken with 3.2M and 4.0M camera's and I couldn't tell the difference. Besides that, the one I bought has 10x "Optical" zoom, and the 4.0M that was the same price only had 3x Optical. The 3.2 Pics that he showed me were as good as any 35mm Camera and I really can't see why anybody would need the 4.0M and higher Camera's, unless they were professional Photographers. They had one in the store that was 6.0M, but it was right at $1000. No way I was going to spend that much on one. here's a link to a review of it, but I don't know enough about Digital Camera's to make heads or tails of it. if you have a minute, could you look at it and tell me what you think? http://www.dpreview.com/news/0308/03080703dimagez1.asp
hey sean... the things i look for in a digital camera are: * OPTICAL zoom, which that camera seems to have quite a lot of! Digital zoom is a total***** and you may as well use photoshop. * Widest angle zoom. Because the capture area of a digital camera is much smaller than the negative area of a 35mm film, the effect is that the widest angle a zoom lens can reach is smaller, on a digital zoom. My Fuji S602 can only get 'back' to the equivalent of about 40mm zoom in the old 35mm speak. For indoor party shots, it can be a pain. * Macro. Don't know if you'd ever use this, but I often take macro (really close up shots) and the capability my fuji has is amazing in this regard. It can focus on something TOUCHING the lens! * Multi-shot: Awesome for action. In fact, a must, due to the slower nature of D-Cams. If you ever want to take photo's of that sorta stuff. * Manual Focus: Really handy in the dark, because the auto can't get it right, so you set it to manual, at about two metres, and click away. Mine totally*****s, unfortunately, but a friends pentax has a readout that tells you how far away it's focussed, making night time shots MUCH easier. Try the manual focus before you buy. They range from great to*****house... The only time you'll need to go over 4 megapixels is if you want to print something larger than about 8x10"... At about that size the pixelation will become apparent with a shot of that resolution. I know I'm not Ryan, but I love cameras too! Col.
the more pixels the better of course, if you need to cut a picture u still got alot of information to make a small part bigger without loosing so much quality.. i used to have a 3.2 camera, was pleased with it but will probally look at 5.0+ mega pixel next time..
I would advise anyone using a digital camera to use the slowest "ASA" speed setting that you can get away with for any given lighting situation. In good outdoor light there's no reason to use higher speed settings unless you're trying to stop action in some way. Digital cameras are really just relatively high quality single frame video cameras and as such have a natural built-in light sensitivity where best performance is realized. In essentially all cases this is the lowest or "best" speed setting available on a digital camera. This will give you the best color and highlight/shadow range possible. If you're just snapshooting for the web then it ain't no big deal but if you're planning on ending up with a high quality print then paying attention to the details is just as important, if not more so, than when shooting film. The absolute best marriage of film and digital I've seen so far is an image scanned from a negative and printed out on real color photo paper by outfits like Ophoto. You get the considerable image quality advantage of film combined with the ability to locally color correct, sharpen, and otherwise clean up the image before it hits the paper. This sounds like an extra expensive step in getting a good print but you can get some spectacular results. Incidentally I have noticed that in working with many thousands of images a month from widely disparate sources that the image quality of low end consumer gear is little different from even the most expensive high-end pro stuff. Sure the pixel count on pro cameras is higher but the inherent quality of the image is scarcely better at all. Mere pixel count is in no way an indicator of how good the images a digital camera makes will look.
I'm no camera expert - I'm a novice... That said, I like pretty much anything Nikon - and that includes both the film and digital worlds... If I were you, I'd look at some of the mid range Nikon Coolpiz cameras... They get serious reviews.
The real question is "What will your end use be?" For the web and email, 3MP is more than enough. You can get really nice 8x10 prints out of it as well and a semipro that shoots races around here makes much bigger prints from his 3.1 MP camera that look great, although he always shoots in RAW format instead of JPG. The 10x zoom would be a must for me. Dedicated digital cameras don't have the wide angle issue that digitals using 35mm lenses do - the lenses are designed for the camera. I don't know anything about the camera, but it looks like an excellent choice if you really don't need four or more MP and don't want to use existing 35mm lenses and system hardware. The most important factor in choosing a camera, digital or film, is whether or not you are comfortable using it and can see the viewfinder well.
Now that I have had time to play with it, it is totally amazing compared to the 2.1M Camera that I had before. The Macro is pretty cool too. I took this picture from about 2" away from the*****erfly....
And the Optical Zoom is 100% better than Digital zoom, no doubt about it. These two pics are of a Boat about a 1/2 mile away. One pic with no zoom and the other with full zoom...
OK, who downloaded the picture of the*****erfly??? Silent Rick? Was that you??? Seriously, thanks for the good advice. I just bought a 5.0 Sony that I love. You can burn through so many pics and just delete those that are junk! That is the best feature! Anybody else have any tips on getting better quality digital pics???
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