Which Point and Shoot?

[weepete]

Hi all, my wee sis is looking for a decent point and shoot for an upcoming holiday to New York that will have connectivity inbuilt so she can upload her photos directly to the web. It doesn't need to have a manual mode as she's not into the technical side of photography but wants it to do family and friend snapshots as well as document her holidays and all that regular people stuff.

Any ideas what would be a good choice?

 

[Ido]

If she has a smartphone, it should probably be, at the very least, sufficient.
That being said, a zoom lens is a differentiating factor that, if needed, will make a smartphone unusable and a dedicated camera useful. This article should help: The Best Cheap Camera | The Wirecutter

 

[pthrift]

A smartphone was my initial thought but I figured I would come across sounding like a smarta**....

But really, fam & friend shots as well as snapshots of the trip with the ability to upload to web directly sounds like the perfect case for a smartphone.



Sent from my Samsung Galaxy S4; probably while slacking off at work

 

[pthrift]

Or maybe like an ipod touch if a smartphone isnt feasible, she could still upload while on wifi

Sent from my Samsung Galaxy S4; probably while slacking off at work

 

[TCampbell]

Canon has quite a number of Powershot cameos with WiFi... but these connect to an iOS or Android smart-phone and you use the smart-phone to upload the images to your website of choice. The camera does not *directly* upload to social media sites. Canon makes one point & shoot which can upload directly to Facebook (and nothing else other than Facebook).

But what we don't know... is her budget. That makes it difficult to make a specific recommendation. Canon has a number of WiFi enabled cameras. A Canon Powershot G-16 is a high-end advanced point & shoot... at around $500 USD. On the low end, you can get a WiFi enabled point & shoot for about $150 USD. Again... these cameras have WiFi but do not directly upload to the internet. They presume you either have a connected device such as a smartphone to handle that.

Nikon has some Coolpix models which you can add wireless... but it's not included. E.g. you buy a module that plugs into the camera and adds the wireless capability.

Another option is the "Eye-Fi" cards. This is an SD card that you can slip into many non-wireless cameras and the card itself has wireless networking. The card transfers the images to the internet and/or to your phone, tablet, etc. and they have cloud-based storage. I've always found the Eye-Fi card to be painfully slow for RAW images (which is primarily what I shoot) but ok for JPEG images (because JPEG files are much smaller so the transfer times don't take too long.). My cameras try to save battery power by putting the radio on the Eye-Fi card to sleep until I've taken new images and the camera goes "idle" for at least 4-5 seconds. At that point the card wakes up and starts transferring images (if you start to shoot more images while it's still transferring it will immediately halt the transfer and let you shoot... but it does not transfer images WHILE you are are shooting at the same time. )

There will, of course, be lots of other options...

Here's a link to B&H Photo's list of point & shoots filtered to show only cameras which also include a WiFi feature... and there are 112 of them on that list.
Point & Shoot Cameras | B&H Photo Video

I don't know what the prices are in Scotland, but B&H Photo and Adorama are in New York and if that's where she's going, she might just want to walk into their store where she can see them all, get some help, and buy one. I have not personally been to one of their stores (only online). I hear it's crazy busy.

 

[weepete]

Thanks guys. She'll have a smartphone with her but she wants a separate point and shoot too for a bit more flexibility and she'll probably take a few photos so some dedicated storage would be useful.

Anyway, talking to her last night she is thinking around £200 but she's a bit flexible so anything in the £150 to £300 range would be suitable.

I had a quick look last night and the Nikon Coolpix S9700 looked quite nice with good image quality, huge zoom range and some nice features like raw support and even a few different modes including a manual mode (just in case...lol!) so I suggested she looks at that.

Thanks for the info Tim, I wasn't aware that they were connecting through a smartphone, but as long as it has NFC or similar that shouldn't be too much of an issue I think. Stuff tends to be expensive over here so it may well be cheaper to buy in the US depending on the exchange rate.

The only thing that does put me off slightly about the S9700 is the slow lens at only f 3.7-6.4

 

[rudimaes]

You could also take a look at the Panasonic TZ40 or TZ60. Both are good travel zoom cameras with wifi and have a good automat.
Rudi

 

[weepete]

thanks mate, I suggested she look at that and also the Sony Cybershot rx100 iii as that looked top quality (short of a lecia of course) as far as pos goes.

 

[rudimaes]

thanks mate, I suggested she look at that and also the Sony Cybershot rx100 iii as that looked top quality (short of a lecia of course) as far as pos goes.

Of course the Sony Cybershot rx100 iii is one of the best compacts around today.
And the Sony compacts have two good automatic settings (iAuto and Superior Auto)
Rudi

 

[weepete]

Thanks Rudi. We had a sit down tonight and did a few comparisons. The Sony looks too expensive unfortunately but the TZ60 looks like it has a lot of good features and a strong performance with good metering and image quality. She's got that as her first choice now thanks!