yeah man, just a small camera, but not a shit one do ya know? basically it has to take good photo's of drunk people etc...

money is no object... nah i don't know i mean i don't think i'd go over a grand, but then i don't know what that would get me either. What i do know is that with every product there is usually a price that separates the shit from the goodness

everyone i know has bought canon cameras thus far and are all utterly happy with them. they also seem to last alright with batteries... Mine is a low end one and its good for simple photos.... although the canon A70 seems to work pretty well for taking gig photos.... its a 3.2 megapixel camera... and not too big

questions - how many mega pixels should i at least have?

- what lowlight features should it have?
- what brands rule and which suck?
- will i need to buy other software once i get this camera and does it cost lots?

thanks for the replies

Canon, Sony, Nikon, Minolta = good

Nah, you shouldn't have to buy any extra software.

Personally, I think you should go for a Canon A75 or 80.

A megapixel is 1 million pixels by the way, and the more pixels you have the better quality your photo will be. For example blow up a photo taken on a 2mp camera and the quality will be pretty crap, but blow up a photo taken on a 4mp camera, and the quality will be alot better.

Basically the more pixels that are in an image the higher the resolution will be and therefore the quality of the image will be greater.

Yep, completely know what you mean. I'm still very happy with mine months on. I've just seen it in a newspaper at $750 at a parallel imports place, and $1000 at an electronics shop. The 128mb memory car will usually cost you another 100 bucks or so.

A friend has a Canon A70, and that's pretty good too, I think they're around $400-$500.

My camera can take about 6 minutes of video with sound on a 128mb memory card. You don't lose quality by having a camera that does both, unless you get one of those 1-2 megapixel jobs. Definetely get one with video, you don't think you'll use it much but you do. You can also take stills off the video footage with the software you get and you can get some really funny shots.

[ external link ]

hey meeka do you lose anything in still picture quality, by having a camera that does video/sound aswell?

Didn't know you had a digi meeka, how long have you had it for?

I just checked it out on the Consumer website. This particular camera gets a pretty reasonable rating at 76%. At $500 it is around $100 below recommended retail. The bundle offered looks pretty good.

But I have a couple of reservations ... image quality rating is not as high as other cameras in this price range. The Olympus C760, which has a very simliar specification and gets an overall rating of 74% has superior image quality (7.2 vs 6.0), costs around $430 retail and is quite a bit more compact and lighter. Disclaimer ... I have a C760 and have been very happy with it. Only down side if you by one is you will have to up-size the memory card as the standard on is only a miserable 16 MB. Other than tht the package is pretty complete though I would recommend getting a second battery as well. I got a pretty good deal from a local store here in Invercargill when I got mine.

But the Canon looks OK and is, according to the consumer website, very versatile and has excellent battery life.

Hope this helps

Wicky, thanks for the help. Unfortunately I can't view which ones they recommend etc because I'm not a subscriber.

OK, so.... is there a level of optical zoom that I should look for? ATM it appears that even good cameras only have about 3x zoom as standard.

Also, how much are 128MB or 256MB memory cards, i.e how much extra should I be willing to pay if the seller will throw one in? Limey, I think I'm a bit less discerning than you - I just want something to take photos that's easy to use and will last for at least a couple of years, I think around 3 MP will be sufficient, from what some have told me?.

A few people I know have Sony Cybershots and find them pretty good - some are really cheap on trade me, are they worth it? Example below.

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//4MP would be the minimum for decent printed shots.

Ah, I see. Just to clarify, you mean printed by actual camera shps, yes? Not @ home?

I have a 3MP Panasonic camera with 3xOptical zoom. Purchased Feb 2004. It's really good for happy snaps of drunk people and group photos around the house, in the back yard etc. It's arse for any shots of landscape or things in a distance. The digital zoom is worthless, absolute bollocks.

The camera came with a 16Mb card but I upgraded to a 128Mb card that fits about 70odd shots at full res and it cost about $100 when I bought it mid 2004. With that many photos on the card there's not much point shooting at the lower MP.

The photos look good printed out at those "print yr own" Fuji and Kodak machines. My home printer doesn't do them justice at all so I don't really know what quality the photos would be like at A4.

Hope that helps

...or try this link, not too sure which one needs a flickr login and which doesn't...

[ http://www.flickr.com/photos/noizyboy ]

OK, the comment above stands, but I was also wondering: most rechargeable batteries deteriorate after a few years, so that they go flat quicker etc. This will be an issue with the G2, yes? If so, then how easy would it be to buy a new battery for an old camera - especially so if it is a battery unit rather than 2 AA's?

ditto on 3MP for me too - my partner uses the camera (Kodak) for his work, which involves grabbing textures for 3D work - plus it prints good if you splurge on decent photo paper. all the pics on my flickr are from our Kodak digital (apart from a couple of live gig other-person-took shots) - think my flickr would be under iluvtheclean. lots of shots of Crete ... sigh ...

that original one you posted above, my cousie owned - he's a real techno geek and bought it yonks ago - it was nice, but lacked a few bells and whistles, and was big compared to what you can get these days.

your call, but the one above looks good - looks a lot like our Kodak, and the foldy-outy-LCD doesn't come with all of them - often that's a feature of digital video cameras not digital still ones.

often drivers are available on Canon/etc's internet site, but if you a near a Mac OS X machine the drivers are all loaded up, well, i've never come across a missing driver in the years i've been working in X. i assume Windows has the same deal - basic drivers installed, especially for the main brands.

if you can get it, ImageReady (Adobe?) is a fantastic image-reducer - takes out heaps of info you don't need if you want to be emailing files to relatives etc. or you could just post to flickr! or find some decent share/freeware programme that will reduce your filesize, if you need to reduce at all.

//Limey, I think I'm a bit less discerning than you

I wanted a camera that would be as good as me toting round 2 cameras + 3 extra lenses + an external flash. Heh. so Um, yeah, it had to do good auto, but also be capble of completely fucking manual. My camera can take 2 different types of memory card simultaneously, which is fantastic. There's enough extra space that it also doubles as a USB key. heh.

A good photo-editing program makes re-sizing photographs very easy...