Hello and a Quick Question

[northierthanthou]

My name is Dan.

I joined the forum mainly to get a little advice on the purchase of a digital camera.

I live in the arctic, right on the coast (Barrow, AK) and my northily-challenged friends are always asking me for more pictures. I have taken quite a few using my camera phone, and I think they are pretty neat, but they're neat because of the subject matter, not ebcause of my camera skills, and still less because of the quality of my Blackberry. Since I'm blogging about life up there, I have even more reason to want to take better pictures. So, I have resolved to purchase a camera, and i was wondering if anyone could give me ideas about what to look for?

Considerations are as follows:

Budget: $300-$500. I'm not going o turn into a brilliant photographer with this purchase, so I want to keep it reasonable. The goal at the moment is to substantially improve the quality of my pics, not to produce masterpiece quality material.
Probably Subject Matter: Outdoor pics of ocean ice and/or wildlife. I figure a good zoom is important.
Conceren 1: Extreme Novice Here - Bells & Whistles will just confuse me.
Concern 2: Cold: Most of the pictures will be taken in 20 below or worse, so it needs to be tough enough to operate in cold and simple enough that I don't have to spend lots of time with my gloves off switching settings around. I especially don't want to be swetching batteries out every 5 minutes.

So there it is. If anyone has any suggestions for purchases, I would be most appreciative.

 

[Patrice]

Quite a few companies are into 'everything' proof point and shoots. some with little tiny sensors but a few are somewhat better. These are not high iso fast shutter rate DSLR's but then again, contrary to what you might surmise from perusing this forum, not everybody needs a DSLR, nor does every worthwhile image need be taken with one. Frankly, given the budget, you will not find a weather sealed DSLR and weather sealed lens to go with it.

The first hit from a google search points to: Canon D10, Fuji Z33, Olympus Stylus 8000, Lumix DMC-TS1 and Pentax Optio W60

I'm not saying any of these is the one for you, however they are not that hard to find. It's a matter of knowing what you want, and in your case the ability to withstand a harsh environment is important.

Good luck.

(I worked in the Canadian Arctic for well over 15 years, and lived there for 7. My F4s and FM2n as wells a Canon SureShot A1 were trusted companions the whole time.)

 

[northierthanthou]

Thank you Patrice.

I know this is pretty much lame 101, but could you please tell me what a DSLR is?

 

[rexbobcat]

Digital Single Lens Reflex camera.

They are the cameras with big protruding lenses that you can change out.

They produce the highest quality photos of consumer cameras but they're usually more expensive, larger, and less user friendly

 

[northierthanthou]

Ah cool, thank you.

 

[northierthanthou]

Hm, so I am looking at the zooms and I see a distinction between the lense and digital zooms. Can someone please help me understand the difference?

 

[Josh66]

Optical zoom is what the lens itself can do - digital zoom takes that, and then digitally blows it up.

Basically, you want to only really look at the optical zoom. Digital zoom is a last resort, in my opinion...


If it says "10X" zoom, that just means the long end of the lens is 10 times longer than the wide end. For example, if the lens went from 20mm to 200mm - that's 10X. 10mm to 100mm is also "10X".

Longer "mm's" is more zoom. The 'X' factor can be misleading sometimes.

 

[northierthanthou]

Ah that does help. Thank you.

 

[northierthanthou]

Well I ended up with a canon 260X. I may buy something serious in about a year. Right now I decided to go with something that wouldn't be wasted on my limited skills. I still need to get used to being able to zoom in without walking up on an object physically. (Hm, ...shoulda zoomed in a bit more on this one, come to think of it.) Thank you to all who chimed in with advice.