OT:Digicams

Wifey and I are after a new digital camera. Money isn't a huge issue but we are totally sick of waiting for the camera to f*ck around after we press the button. I know this topic has come up before. Anyone here got any recommendations?

Fraser

Reply to
Fraser Johnston
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I use a D200 - It has a start up time of 0.2 secs. You can take a picture fast! Its instant. If its turned off, and you hold the shutter release, it fires a focussed shot so fast it feels instantanious. They dont come any faster or better. But the thing with a 18/200 lens will cost you about 1800 quid.

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Reply to
Burgerman

I have a slightly pikey Kodak DX6340 - it takes decent photos, and you don't have to wait for ages after pressing the button. It was only like, £140 and that was a few years ago. Also, you can get a little dock for it for peanuts now that is quite handy. I'm not a professional and i'm not claiming it's a high end piece of kit, but it does the job I want, it has millions of modes and options if you're into that kind of thing, in short, I have no complaints. Could do with a little tripod mind you, as when in auto night mode, when it does long exposures its really hard to hold it still and stop the photos blurring.

Reply to
DanTXD

I've got an Olympus CAMedia, 3 megapixel jobbie. Not sure the exact model no, but it's reasonable quality - I've never had the inclination to fart about with any of the settings, but it does the job, lasts forever now I've got some decent batteries (only AA unfortunately, no fancy battery with a dedicated charger) - lasted a good couple of days of moderately heavy use once, when it's previously eaten utterly s**te Panasonic batteries in under an hour.

Anyway, it doesn't hang about when you press the button, is reasonable quality, and with XP you just plug it in and open it up as a folder ("Mass USB storage device") if you haven't got around to installing the software which basically does the same thing anyway.

Mine cost about £30 off a mate's girlfriend, who wanted rid of it, but at the time they were going for about 60 quid on ebay. You could probably get a new, slightly better model, for about £200 or so, at a guess.

Reply to
AstraVanMan

Ah yea, mine has a rechargeable pack that comes with the dock, just sit it on and it charges up. Or it takes AAs. I've never ran them out, so they must last resonably well.

Yea I don't have the software installed either. Press button on dock, windows scanner and camera thing comes up and sorts it out, naming them all etc.

Reply to
DanTXD

Fast memory cards. Its the WRITE speed of memory cards that are a large proportion of the problem.

Reply to
Conor

Me too. The delay is even shorter if you use a SD card with a fast WRITE time.

Reply to
Conor

You probably don't want a Fuji Finepix A370 like mine then.

I takes great photos but you have to wait ~5s between them, AF is a bit crap in low light too...

A
Reply to
Alistair J Murray

I have a 350D and it's mighty impressive on shutter response ideal for sports shots thanks to a large high speed buffer.

Reply to
Depresion

Ahh you want a fast one.

Panasonic / Leica. All very very fast operation (I have the LX1BS) and great optics - CCD can be noisy in low light but flash is better than most. Shutter release is almost instant, depending on autofocus lock (can set it to continuous lock).

Manual functions are excellent, and there's a raw shoot mode...

Reply to
Tim S Kemp

Actually it shouldnt make any difference because the photo in most modern cameras is first written to an internal buffer memory. And of course that writing cant effect the start up/focus and fire time because it happens after the shot. Of course it can effect the next one though.

Reply to
Burgerman

Just use a real 35mm for the shots you want to keep. Digital cameras are for arsing about with.

-- Stuart

Reply to
Stuart Gray

The problem with that being that you don't know which shots you want to keep until you've had them printed....

Reply to
SteveH

I have nikon 35mm digital and film slr cameras. There really is no point using film any more unless you want to shoot super fine grain slow film for a billboard or advertising shots in a studio. And even then the quality difference is debatable.. And then its better to get a digital large format instead.

Even the photographers that I used to work with on bike magazines like PB or MCN etc all use digital now.

Reply to
Burgerman

I came back from hols with photos from a Minolta X700 35mm and a Canon A85 4Mb digital - printed to 6"x4" I can't tell the difference. So it looks like the Minolta's days are numbered.

Only problem is the digital photos sometimes seem to need a little bit of lightening.

Reply to
Halmyre

I'm talking about quality shots though. A digital is ok to frame it, and analyse the final shot, but you still can't beat 35mm with a good lense. It's getting close, but not yet for me.

-- Stuart

Reply to
Stuart Gray

Virtually nothing is done on film now, I'll lay good odds on 99% of photos in newspapers, magazines and on even the largest billboards being taken on a high end digital unit. I know a couple of people who still like to use large format film but even they normally use digital for commercial work. 35mm though is dead.

Reply to
Depresion

If you're that concerned about image quality, what are you doing pissing around with 35mm? Why aren't you using medium or even large format?

cheers, clive

Reply to
Clive George

Bollocks. 35mm is dying rapidly, 6x4 is going the smae way. It's hard to get hold of fresh quality films now as well.

Reply to
Tim S Kemp

No. Not true.

I used to shoot with a pair of Pentax 35mm (one loaded Ektachrome, one loaded either Reala or the kodak C41 400 ASA fine who's name I can't even remember now) and a Minolta Rangefinder loaded normally with a fine b/w or more ektachrome.

Now I have just the cheaper of the pentax bodies (the throwaway MZ50 modified with a manual focus screen) which has been in its case for about a year (in fact it was stolen, and recovered, and still unused) and a Panasonic LX1 (8.4MP Leica glass slow CCD) - the only time I'd use the Pentax now would be for motorsports where fast film and long lens is order of the day.

I'll get a Pentax digital body sometime but it'll wait until I have the cash spare, not a priority really - as I say the camera cases are gathering dust, they get opened every three months or so just to run a few blank frames and keep the motors going - the digital is with me all the time.

I can see very little difference between shooting a quality digital with RAW capture and full in-computer processing than shooting film and spending proper lab time - CCD noise can be an issue on night shots but other than that for me (a rangefinder shooter at heart) I can't see me buying any film any time soon - if I got desperate and had to make money using my cameras again I'd go grab a digital Pentax.

Now if Leica did an M series with a digital back I think I'd be getting a loan...

Reply to
Tim S Kemp

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