Wondering What A Next Camera Would Be.

[AudioInjectedSoul]

Hi Guys.

I'm looking for a bit of guidance if anyone's willing to offer it. I was just wondering what would be a next camera for me. I've looked on the Jessops website, but I don't know which is good or bad or the rest. Here's what I'm looking for ideally in a camera.

A high level of detail, preferably around 4-5 megapixels, I'm not looking for SLR quality here.

Not really interested in an optical zoom, they never focus correctly on my old camera, and digital zoom isn't very good at all.

Something that can give me a good DOF effect, I don't really understand apertures and all that.

Something with a good macro mode.

Something that focuses well, or maybe has a manual focus so I can choose what I'm focusing on.

Most importantly.. A low shutter speed option. I like messing around, so I reckon a low speed will help me in my more abstract pictures and just for some blur really.

You don't have to give me a actual camera, just point me in the price range and what I should be looking for. Thanks for all the comments on me so far by the way, I don't want to seem stuck up!

-Steve-

 

[Rob]

A high level of detail, preferably around 4-5 megapixels, I'm not looking for SLR quality here.

Not really interested in an optical zoom, they never focus correctly on my old camera, and digital zoom isn't very good at all.

Something that can give me a good DOF effect, I don't really understand apertures and all that.

Something with a good macro mode.

Something that focuses well, or maybe has a manual focus so I can choose what I'm focusing on.

Most importantly.. A low shutter speed option. I like messing around, so I reckon a low speed will help me in my more abstract pictures and just for some blur really.

You don't have to give me a actual camera, just point me in the price range and what I should be looking for. Thanks for all the comments on me so far by the way, I don't want to seem stuck up!

-Steve-

A high level of detail is a difficult thing to achieve with a compact sensor, because regardless of the number of megapixels, the sensors tend to be smaller, thus reducing the area of capture. Compare the sensor sizes on the cameras you are looking at as well as the number of pixels. "Not looking for SLR quality" but wanting "high level of detail" is a bit of an oxymoron though!

Pretty much all of the digital SLR and compact cameras will come with a zoom lens. This is what the market is demanding - people look for a 28-2000mm lens and say that it must be better than a 28-80mm as it "goes further". You're not likely to find a fixed lens option really without customising and spending more. Webcams tend to be fixed

DOF effects are achieved with a low f-number, or a short focussing distance and a long background distance, so look for lenses which are say f2.8 to f4 rather than f8 to f22. The compact cameras tend to hide this information in favour of the length of the zoom and the MP.

Macro modes are available on most of the compacts, I'm not aware of any which particularly lead the way - some of the others will know better than I. My Olympus C60 was dreadful at this!

Manual focus generally is a dSLR feature - again, not commonly found on the compacts.

Good luck with your new camera!

Rob

 

[AudioInjectedSoul]

A high level of detail is a difficult thing to achieve with a compact sensor, because regardless of the number of megapixels, the sensors tend to be smaller, thus reducing the area of capture. Compare the sensor sizes on the cameras you are looking at as well as the number of pixels. "Not looking for SLR quality" but wanting "high level of detail" is a bit of an oxymoron though!

Pretty much all of the digital SLR and compact cameras will come with a zoom lens. This is what the market is demanding - people look for a 28-2000mm lens and say that it must be better than a 28-80mm as it "goes further". You're not likely to find a fixed lens option really without customising and spending more. Webcams tend to be fixed

DOF effects are achieved with a low f-number, or a short focussing distance and a long background distance, so look for lenses which are say f2.8 to f4 rather than f8 to f22. The compact cameras tend to hide this information in favour of the length of the zoom and the MP.

Well, there are camera's that offer 5-6 megapixels, which I consider good quality. I don't really do a lot of printing, so I guess I just want something that looks good on computer. You can definitely get good quality on a compact camera.

I don't mind having a optical zoom, I just don't think that I'd use it very much, and the zooms are pretty poor on the camera's anyway. They only go to about 2-3 ahead of you. I'm not a safari photogropher so I've no need for a telephoto lense.. and yeah. I just thought it'd be cheaper without it, but, it doesn't matter now!

The problem is I'm just a kid really. And the most I could probably go up to realistically is £200, so I've got no chance of getting anything near the quality of even the worst SLR.

So yeah, thanks for the pointers!

-Steve-

 

[Ant]

I think Jessops should still have the Canon A75 in stock for less than £200. It should have most of the features you want. I bought one as a present to my g/f and was pretty impressed with it.