Hey guys: which digital camera do you recommend to buy? I'm thinking to get one; but do not have much idea. The price should be in the range $250 - 350. Thanx..

Oops.. I couldn't decide! jacksparrow: which one you prefer?

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Get canon for $350..

Most of the Fujis and Hps camera are like: disposable lighters.
They cannot be repaired.
It is worth to invest in Canon.
Repair and spare parts are guaranteed.
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Canon Poweshot 520 was my first canon.
Second one 530 Now I got Canon PowerShot G7..
and Canon 400D SLR..
I still have all of them and they are all excellent cameras.
I use them all for different occasions..
They are handy and easy to operate.
Canon software is made very simple...
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I recommend you SONY DSC N2.

Here is New York Times' David Pougue's e-mail of May 3rd to "me".... sharing just with "you" with only pertinent information related to your question...


Pogue's Picks

I don't know how the other Times columnists keep up with all their reader e-mail, but I'll tell you how I handle mine: with great difficulty. I try to answer pretty much all of it, thanks to some kind of weird Midwestern sense of obligation.

Lots of people want help troubleshooting this or that computer or Web server; I have a macro that politely explains that I don't know the answer.

Lots of them, too, ask what camera/camcorder/computer/whatever they should buy. That's a crazy question, because there are so many models and so many people with different priorities.

Still, if someone forced me to declare a winner in every category - for example, if they threatened to make me live in Internet Explorer 1.0 for the rest of my life if I refused - I think I'd come up with a Best list that looks like this.

Best Small Camera: Canon SD800IS. The IS stands for "image stabilizer," which makes an absolutely enormous difference. It saves about 90 percent of the low-light photos that would otherwise have been ruined by blur.

To make matters even better, this camera ($305) offers a 3.8X zoom - better than the 3X on most pocket cams. It also offers face recognition software that properly exposes and focuses on people in your scene. Although no pocket cam eliminates shutter lag altogether, this camera comes very close. And 7.1 megapixels is exactly enough.

Oh, and one more thing: it takes fantastic photos.

Best Amateur SLR: Nikon D40. This camera is small, like Canon's Digital Rebel, but it doesn't pinch your right fingertips like the Rebel does. The price is amazing ($530) considering everything you get: fast startup, zero shutter lag, fast autofocus, big sensor, spacious and bright viewfinder, big screen.

Note that for $200 more, you can get the new D40X, which has a faster burst mode (3 frames per second vs. 2.5) and more megapixels - 10 instead of 6.1 - if you're into that sort of thing.

the best one i had. still taking good picture.

you may go to http://www.cnet.com to find helpful information. take the camera buying lesson from the professional in the website for free.

Sayami, have you ever used Fuji before ?
Like said before..it is best to go to camera review sites and related forums. But if you go for Fuji's F series camera then you won't go wrong. Sayami, do u know that the sensor used by F series is bigger than Canon't G7 ?

Really want to Buy? Then Buy Casio Exilim EX-Z60BK 6MP Digital Camera with 3x Optical Zoom

Dear Lifeinspires, i-Nepali, Sayami and ssNY,

Just a quick question to all of you above-

Are these cameras which you mentioned on this thread are equally good for indoors and outdoors???

Well, I do have a Olympus SP-500, and what I realized is, it is horrible in indoor especially when the lighting inside are not proportionate. Outdoor shots are awesome, but whenever I take pictures indoor, even thuogh selecting the right options is not helping me that much.

Perhaps it has to do with an amateur photographer; if you have any suggestion for indoor shooting, please give me some advice. Also, do you mind sharing pictures (any) taken by your cameras, indoor.

Thanks!

I have a same problem as with RSVP. Almost all compact and ultra compact cameras have poor performance in night mode and indoor photogaraphy. I am thinking on switching to SLR but I do not have much information about the specification that I should consider while selecting SLR. I am planning to invest around $500. Please dorp your experience with SLR........................

slowPoison, got get yourself Fuji, the F series. It is the best PNS camera which offers the best result for low light photography - only DSLR can better it

i would say for that price range Canon SD800 or SD700. Please check review on cnet.com

slipknot_iw Bro, have you seen the sample photos ?
No doubt that Canon is the no.1 camera maker but the product that you have mentioned is a bit more expanesive.

Perhaps you should also check the sensor size of Fuji snd the competitor's and as far as I know cnet.com is not really the best site for photography review. I higly recommend dpreview.com which does a very depth review of selected cameras.

All of you seems quite familiar with photography, and my opinions may not count right to agree to all of you guys.

If I were to buy a camera right now, I will pick Canon S2 IS, though its a bit old model, otherwise I will wait 6 month or a year more to buy the next version of Canon G7.

I am not a fan of Canon, but I admit it is the best one for still photography. The latest series of canon camera sensors offers variety of ISO equivalent ranging up to 3200, which you require to take awesome pictures in low intensity of light or capturing fast moving objects. Most of you guys have noticed that many of your choice camera does quite a good job in daylight but they frustrate you in indoor shoot. That is exactly where the canon offers you unbeatable advantage.

The next big advantage of canon is its image stabilizer, that prevents blur in the photo due to your slight motion of hand when you press the shutter button.

The third big advantage of canon is its multi point auto focus technique.

The reason I prefer canon S2 IS is because of its very large optical zoom 12X (Max 48X if used with Digital zoom), decent funcionality, AA batteries and acceptable 5 MP resolution. You might think of getting higher resolution, but they eat up a lot of space that you really don't need all the time. Quite often you might need to resize the photographs loosing all your advantage to a much smaller size when you want them to upload on a web or emails.

Canon G7 is one of the latest product, but this unit does not have all features that canon could have packed on it. So, there is speculation that Canon will soon upgrade this version after a brief while, perhaps they are testing a new marketing policy. People are expecting Canon to bring a new product that comes with all of G7 and S3 IS features in one unit.

Sony, Casio Exilim and Fuji are good too to impress newbie. But they all lose the competition against Canon if all features are tested. I have once tested these 4 different cameras to take the picture of same location at the same time with same resolution settings. Then I compared these photographs zooming down to pixel level to test how well they were recording the colors of the object at their each pixels. My finding was that the Canon was able to record the largest number of pixels correct producing the best photo. Fuji was second best, and sony was the worst among four. Sony uses some sort of auto-intelligence algorithm, which actually does bad job.

If you do not like canon then I recomment Casio Exilim as the second choice, because it has sleek design, longer battery life and easy to handle. Fuji, although better than Casio, I did not like it for its style, design and weights. You may think in another way.

Hope, this information would help you guys to chose a good camera for you.

chanaa_tarkaari, you too seem to be well versed as well and I am sure what you have written will be very useful to the "unitiated".

I also liked S2 and G7, especially G7 as it is small and looks better aesthetically.

From my own experience with digital camera, I think when it comes to high end product, Canon and Nikon are definetely on the top. But when it comes to the low budget models, there are just so so.

It is common trend to misled the consumer that the camera has IS, anti blur and high ISO and it is quie unfortunate that many peopl have falled for this trap. Though they look fantastic wiht thier spec, but getting good result is completely a different story.

The best way to choose a camera is go to the review site and see how the choice of your camera fares and also go to camera related forums. The best site for camera review is : www.dpreview.com. I have been to many review site and admit thatd it is the best around. Just pay a visit to the site.

If I am to compare the noise of the camera model mntioned above with Fujifilm F series, all of them loose outright even though they are much cheaper.

I am buying the following
- http://reviews.cnet.com/Kodak_EasyShare_Z612/4505-6501_7-31738566.html

12X Zoom
6.1 MP
$ 196 (This is the cheapest i found while googling)
As good as Canon Poweshot s3 IS but $100 cheaper.

Thanx all of you guys! I am going for Casio Exilim. Lets try its slimness and moderate price !

REad this article

http://www.dpreview.com/articles/compactcamerahighiso/

if you can add $150 more then i'd recommend the new Olympus 550UZ. I checked the camera last time and it was just amazing. 7.1MP with 18x optical zoom with dual image stabilization. check the one even if you are not spending more.