Alright. Here's the deal.

I'm currently searching for a digital camera, for private use. Nothing up near JuStDaVe standard, but I would still like some semi-high quality pictures. There are a few 'criteria' I would like my camera to meet. These include:
~ 4MP, or higher.
~ 4x optical zoom, or higher.
~ Medium-sized LCD.
~ Reliable.
~ Decent Warranty.
~ Under $500AUD.

To give you a very rough idea of what I'm after, I've included some links to a few cameras.
- Panasonic Lumix DMC-FZ4
- Panasonic Lumix DMC-LZ1
- Panasonic Lumix DMC-LZ2
- FUJIFILM FINEPIX S3500

My neighbour has the last camera, the S3500, and that doesn't seem too bad. If I had to buy a camera tomorrow, I'd probably go with that one.

Anyway, the purpose of this thread is to hear some opinions on cameras that kind of suit the criteria I mentioned above. I don't really want to hear about how your mum's brother's dog's husband's sister has a really cool $3000 camera, or how good JuStDaVe's photography is (we all know that already). If you could just stick to the topic with some infomative information, that'd be swell.

Post away

Because? See that's the kind of answer I don't particularly want.

And I forgot to mention, I'm unsure of prices for the top 3, the last one is $400 odd. And the list is not limited to those cameras, they were just examples.

No experience with the Panasonic gear, but I've found the Finepix cameras take a very "washy" photo (hard to explain, but theres no good edge definition on objects) and the auto mode always chooses a ridicously long exposure time which means you basically need a tripod for EVERYTHING less bright then summer midday.

Have you snooped the Sony range? The DSC-V1 (which I use) can be had for around the 600 mark new now because a few new models have been released, and there are plenty of CyberShot series below 500.

Always been a fan of Sony. Not a fan of Kodak or Canon (unless we goto digital SLRs), they always seem very "cheap" in terms of build and tacky design - more aimed at giggly hee-hees who buy shit like Ford Ka's because "its cute" than anyone serious about taking a decent photo. The menus are clunky and laid out poorly (IMHO), but thats possibly something you'd get used to. Fuji is in the same boat in terms of menu layout, but at least they look the part and feel good, even if they are pretty plasticy (MAYBE! because they are made of plastic!).

Most importantly of all, get something with manual exposure! You want full control of F value (2.8 -> 8.0 is good), ISO (100 -> 800 is good), EV (-2.00 -> +2.00 is good) and exposure time (1/1000th -> 30" is good). Oh, and MPEG video recording

Buy a sony A little more money, but worth it I reckon.

Panasonic Lumix DMC-FZ4 - Im close to you i got the FZ1, and i dont know how closely they are related, but i find it to be an awesome camera, megapixel rating isnt that high, but it still takes some nice photos.

From what ive gathered and heard, panasonic cameras arent to bad at all, and from the one i got, i say they are pretty spot on

FUJIFILM FINEPIX S3500 for the uber lens attachment feature,if it wasent for that id go the DMC-FZ4 for ease of shooting.......

Downside? No manual mode, therefore no night pics






FWIW, I take a lot of pics at night thats why I put so much emphasis on it. If you only use it during the day in bright light, pretty much any camera in that price range is going to be identical to every other one. They really are so close that mid-range cameras are all "same shit, different sticker". Its only when you get into the "tricker" (for want of a better word) sort of photos (eg: night mode, high speed action, lens attachments) that the differences show up. So if you are in the market for a daytime camera, just grab whatever looks pretty

PS - The "Finepix" is hardly a compact camera... Its like... the bulk of an SLR, with the features of a point 'n' shoot

make sure u have a good look at www.dpreview.com as they have almost every camera reviewed there.

the sony dscv1 that krawler talked about looks like the sorta thing i'm looking for right now! thanks mate.

i cant decide between Dslr or a compact digi, but that sony has most of the features i am after

i gots the fine pix one, its awesome as far as my knowledge goes

Yeh, i use the next model up (S5000), but they're a similar size. I think i prefer a nice chunky camera though, its big, but its not uncomfortable to hold for long periods and it isnt overly heavy, personal preference i guess.

I think the olds payed $480 for it aswell, so that may be an option instead of S3500 as its still under your budget, and later down the track you can get a shitload of different lenses for them on ebay or the likes. Score.

I'm a fuji user myself and i stand by them.

They are awesome quality for their pricing, always at top or near top of each of the mp range they are in.

i'm a fuji user and will never again buy one!!! (s3000). If you want night shots the fuji's are not the go. Also as someone else mentioned auto mode is shocking with exposure times unless it's bright and sunny.

i'd say have a look into the cannon range instead of going for the panasonic.

the fuji s7000 is fantastic for night modes.

so the sony one. its got everything you are after, its a bit more than the 500 mark, but you pay for what you get

Okay, well I really don't want to go up towards $600, 'cause money doesn't flow my way. However, I have seen the quality of your photos, and I likey. In fact, your shot of the ICB at night is my background at the moment :wub: I may consider some of the slightly cheaper Cybershot cameras, but I don't want a drastic drop in quality, as you could understand.

Alright, you lost me. Wanna try to explain? Basically, I'm looking at plenty of day shots, maybe a few night time shots, but I'm not aiming to be the next JuStDaVe. I'm interested in a reasonably high-quality shot, without getting all professional.

I forgot to mention about the MPEG video recording. Would definetely be a big plus, but I'm not going to rule a camera out because it doesn't have MPEG. Usually that feature alone jacks up the price a fair bit doesn't it?

DAL32 has that model, and I have used it as well. Once again, I likey, but I only got the chance to use it once, and it was while we were driving, so I'm not sure about quality of close-up/night/whatever shots.

Thanks for all the help guys, keep it coming

I purchased the Canon A520 ;

4.1MP / 4x optical.

I have posted a few thread in Offtopic with some examples of the picture quality. The LCD size is perfect and overall features of the camera are more then adiqute. These days cameras are basically identical with features, but some are just a little harder to use with the GUI.


I went and visited goodguys and for a total of $570 .

Canon A520
512 memory Stick
4 x Rechargable Batteries with Charger, and car kit
Camera Bag

Sounds appealing, bar the price tag. Then again, that does include the extras, so....

What are the night-time photos like Nath?

Looks aight, but as krawler said, may not be great for night-shots? 12x optical zoom sounds like a big plus, though.

Krawler - Can you take a look at the Fujifilm FinePix S3500 for me, the stats are down the bottom. What do you think of that, based on what I've said? Would the Fujifilm FinePix S5500 be heaps better? how much more would you expect to pay?

here's a lineup of some cameras that have been mentioned, side by side: DPReview

I like the look of the 2 sonys, I've seen the V1 on ebay for around the 500 mark

My camera dowes have night time mode, but as andrew said, its not manual, automatically "measures" the amount of light coming in and that determines the length the of how long the shutter is held open, maximum of 10 seconds i think.

have a look at the Canon IXUS i.. i bought mine for $481 and the 128MB SD card was $39.95

here is some more info for you
http://canon.com.au/products/visual/camera...gitalixusi.html

i have had mine for a while now, and i cant find a fault with it very good picture quality pics

Well it has manual mode so the night time pictures are excellent. !!!!!

If those are your main contenders, I would go with the S5500 fo shizzle.
Reasons:
Manual white balance (good)
F2.8 -> F8.0 (good)
ISO 64 -> 400 (would be good to see ISO 800, but I guess you rarely use higher than 400.. 64 is nice!)
Movie at 30fps instead of 10fps (wtf! 10fps!?@# Are we living in the 1920s)
Manual exposure mode (Doesnt say the longest shutter time though... And it says manual, but never mentions fully manual control over shutter time, more "priority" modes which is not nearly as good. Maybe query this? No wait I found it ( http://home.fujifilm.com/products/digital/...mages/S5500.pdf ) - 15 seconds maximum, which should be enough for most night shots at BWCP etc so long as there are incandescent(sp?) lights, or fluros or better yet halogens.)
10x optical zoom (nice!)
video out (gimmicky, but good for showing relatives the photos on TV)

You can buy it from http://www.geckosales.com.au/index.cfm?act...catalogueID=324 for $555.54 (item number 110871), see http://www.geckosales.com.au/index.cfm?act...itemcode=110871 for exact link.

IM(h?)O, its definately worth getting over the S3500

Sounds like you sure know your shit, krawler.

Hahaha, I thought the same thing about the fps rate.
As for the rest of that specs, I'm not a big camera wizz. Would I be able to pick it all up fairly easily, just reading the manual and mucking around with the camera? I don't want to pay $200 more, for features I don't know how to use. Speaking of which, you say the S5500 is better, but is it $200 odd better?

Thanks for all the help guys, I do appreciate it.

We were originally looking at spending $600 on a camera, but after looking at what was available we ended up buying the DSC-V1 for ~$1100 (obviously a LOT cheaper these days! This was 2? or more years ago when 5MP was super new and "the shit").

I've never regretted it since, simply because of the manual options. Plenty of the other things it has I could live without, but without manual options you're left with a fairly useless camera for anything other than daytime. It opens up so much more interesting aspects of photography and actually makes you a little keen to get stuck in and have a go, instead of just using "auto" mode during the day to take photos of your cat.. your dog... your car.... and maybe some pics from a car show (daytime only). I think if I'd bought a "normal" camera back in the day, I'd never have bothered with entries simply because there was nothing special about it, ya dig?

All the manual modes are easy enough to pick up just by fiddling really. I mean, its digital! Its not like it matters if you take 500 photos of the one thing, you can then take the best of those 500 and chuck it up and everyone will be like "woah...good photo man". Someone once said to me "The only difference between a good photographer and a bad photographer is the photos you show the public", so go nuts and take heaps of photos and experiment with the manual modes and learn what they mean and how the affect the outcome of the photo. Thats how I learnt anyway, god knows if I'm doing it right, but the pics come out how I like them (clean and crisp) so screw you professionals.

Spend the extra and get something decent with some good modes straight off the bat rather than pussy footing around with a "cutesy ford KA *giggle* hee hee" type camera. If it were me, I'd spend even more and get something real trick, but you know, I'm just rolling in money *cough*. The only reason I havent gone up to a digital SLR is because the camera I have takes good enough photos for what I do (ie: net entries). The only reason to go more hardcore is for submitting to magazines etc.

Watch me rant

So you reckon the settings aren't that bad, and won't need like a 10yr course in photography to pick up? Because I really just want the photos to be at the top of the 'regular photographer' kind of area, rather than in the 'JuStDaVe/carlwitt/Skidman/whoever' class.

I've gotta agree with Nathan's suggestion on the Canon A520. I have it's older, smaller brother - the PowerShot A75. Main differences are that mine is 3.2mp, and has a 3x optical zoom.

So what owns about the camera? Photos taken outdoors turn out simply awesome. I take most of my photos on auto mode, and while they aren't quite true photographile (is that even a word) quality.... they're more than adequate to show off to a few mates, on the web etc. There's also a kickin' manual mode, with a few adjustments. These include ISO levels (50, 100, 200, 400), shutter speed (1/2000th of a sec to 15sec), and aperture (2.8 to 8). Lastly, the video mode is pretty swish. It's capable of delivering up to 30seconds of video at 640x480 (with audio), or 3mins or so at 320x240. Quality is pretty reasonable considering it's not a digital video camera.

I was thinking about buying the Fuji S3500 (I bought my camera last November), but I decided to get the A75 instead. Probably the main reason for this was the price - the S3500 cost a lil more than the A75 in initial purchase price. However, XD memory cards were nearly twice as much as CF cards, so the A75 was a fair bit cheaper overall to buy. I also learnt after buying that the Canon that the Fuji's manual mode isn't too good - apparently you can't adjust ISO settings, and the shutter speed is restricted to 2 seconds.

The only two things I can fault with the camera are the slightly flimsy build quality, and the quality of indoor photos. Well to be fair, most reviews say that the A75's indoor photos are excellent for a camera in it's price range, but with the flash off, it's not quite perfect. Overall though, I do not regret buying this camera one bit.

I will admit though, I haven't paid much attention to Panasonic's latest offerings, so I wouldn't be able to say if they'd be a better buy than the Canons.


And here, for the sake of it, are some sample photos. First photo was taken on auto mode, next two on manual. Last image is to more show off it's night-time capabilities. Please excuse the scenery, it was taken in a rush, on the roof of the car as I'm too pov to buy a proper tripod.

Krawler - apparenty the S5000 only has 3.1 effective MP? What's the go there? And maximum shutter time is 2 sec? (Taken from here).

Oh, and apparently the S5000 is going for US$240 odd, which is only $310AUD???

Are you looking at the S5000, or the S5500? Cause I was looking at the S5500 ... :S

The s5000 has been superseeded by the s5500 (s5100 in US) and is 4.0MP instead of the s5000's 3.0MP.

Retail is $549 but you should be able to get it for less ($52X for me using my Coles Myer discount card). Wait for a good special to buy the memory as XD is more pricey (got my 256MB for $75 from Myers, bargain).

I'm haven't spent much time using the camera but it doesn't seem to hard to pick up the different modes. I find the pictures come out quite impressive, even just using the auto mode. Longer shutter speeds are easy to use in the Shutter mode (up to 3 sec exposure) with the camera automatically selecting an aperture. I don't know enough to have tried full manual mode yet (15 sec exposure).

I'll find some sample pics i've taken and post them up.

Not sure how these will go after the resize but anyway:

First day i had the camera, obviously could take a better shot if i knew what i was doing but anyway, still nice colours:


First day again, still hadn't figured out macro mode, just using full auto mode:


Auto mode still, should have tried sports mode:


First attempt at using Aperture Mode:


Full 36x zoom, no tripod:


Lightning shot (wet window blurred photo):



I still need to learn to use manual mode, 3 sec exposure on night shots isn't really enough. Overall, i'm very happy with my purchase, about as close as you can get to an SLR digital for the money.

Dammit, now I've got myself confused. Basically, depends on which is the better VALUE. I know the S5500 is better, but is it better VALUE?

I don't know where you'd find an s5000 in Australia now anyway, they stop selling them about 6 months ago.

Krawler - at www.dpreview.com it says that the max shutter time for the S5500 is 0.25secs? WTF?

Oh wait, is it 15 secs MANUAL shutter speed?

Are you sure all these settings wont be that hard to pick up?

You gotta learn a bit about how a camera works, just basically what settings to change to let in more/less light etc, but the manual should go through the basics of it. You should be able to pick it all up by just experimenting with the settings, all the techo shit you can live without if you're not that serious about it.

Sir Holden, if you dont wanna take the time to learn the "funky" features, you may as well get any middle of the road cutesy hee-hee camera really, they are so identical its not really worth a thread

Its really easy to pick them up, just have a fiddle! I gotta admit those photos by neil are quite nice, very crisp. Thats what I hated about the Finepix was that they always appeared a bit fuzzy and washed out, but the daytime stuff neil posted looks really crisp and clean. Prehaps it just suffers more at night? Prehaps the nighttime pics I've seen from Finepix (And done myself although I hardly spent anymore than about 30 seconds playing with it) always appear.... blurry is not the right word, but yeah. Fuzzy. Not sharp.

That is the coolest fucking dog ever.

We have a miniature chocolate poodle and she looked exactly like yours, but shes almost 10 now and her hair has faded to a light light brown

End off-topic. Cool dog

I'd have to agree with you there. Haven't seen any night pics from the FinePix, but I have a few day shots from the S3500, like this one:



Might've been my poor photography skills, or the fact that I didn't play with the settings at all, but as you can see it is quite washy in some spots. Well more 'not sharp' than anything.

I don't want to be paying $200 extra for a camera that will do this. But at the moment, I'm thinking of spending the money, because if I can get used to the settings, I'm sure the S5500 has the ability to take a much more crisp photo than the one above.

Haha, cheers SAAB 900. Its a pedigree purebred toy poodle, about 9 weeks at time of photo i think. Parents also have a black (now grey) minature poodle, 8yo.


The photos above have been reduced so will look crisper, but they still look good in full size as well, much better than the one of the supra.

Exactly my point. I just wanna know if it's because of my poor skills, and the fact that I didn't change any settings on the S3500, or if the S5500 takes way clearer pictures naturally.

Buy the better option. If you dont need the extra functions, you wasted ~100 bucks. If you buy the shit camera and realise later you DO want the extra function, you'll go wasting the whole ~500 again.

Diggit.

Indeed; that's a mighty fine point you have there.

I guess all that's left to do now is to put on the good on thinkin' hat, sit down in my thinkin' chair, listen to some thinkin' music, and have a good ol' think. I'll keep ou guys updated. Cheers for the help

The best thinking music is by "The Dillinger Escape Plan"

That would have to be one of your most respectable posts ever.

Time to give this ol' baby a bit of a bumpitty bump bump.

Looking for a few opinions, especially krawlers, regarding these two cameras: HP Photosmart 945 vs. Fujifilm FinePix S5500 . I can get the HP945 for slightly under $350, second hand but apparently in good condition ($750 new, so not too sure about the actual condition , would have to chase that up), or I can get the S5500 for $529 brand new. Now, if the HP945 is in decent nick, going by my limited knowledge, I'd say it seems a much better camera, yeh? Worth looking at the HP945 2nd hand? (wouldn't buy new, too expensive) or should I stick with the S5500?

Thanks guys.

i retrack my previous statement about fuji cams and night shots here are some i took a couple of weeks ago with my s3000 I'd say go the fuji man!

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Very nice. I think both of the cameras I mentioned could take some awesome shots with the right settings and right photographer.

Sweet shots TUN35. What settings were you using?

All those shots are just on your standard night mode. I've forever fiddled with the manual settings at night on this camera and they just turn out shit due to lack of exposure.

Thanks for the kind words guys