Archive through August 24, 2002
TV ClubHouse: Archives: 2003 March:
Anyone have a digital camera?:
Archive through August 24, 2002
Jewels | Wednesday, May 08, 2002 - 07:22 am     That sounds like a good deal Admin! I have an Olympus 1.3 megapixel that I have had for about 2 1/2 years (back then that was really high quality)and I really like it. You are right, it is not that great for printing pictures, but it actually does print pretty good 4x6 pictures. My mom bought me mine before I had my son, she lives about 250 miles away and this way I can e-mail her pictures all the time, it has been wonderful. I use it constantly and the quality is really good for e-mailing. The camera itself has all sorts of bells and whistles that I still haven't figured out. It does have the floppy card, but I have never taken it out. I just download the pictures by hooking the camera up to the computer instead. 1.3 megapixel is plenty for internet use, I've never had a problem with quality at all. Good luck in your hunt...at least you have a couple more months to find one before baby arrives!  |
Grooch | Wednesday, May 08, 2002 - 07:26 am     Jewels is right. You better buy one before the baby comes, or you will be in deep doo doo! |
Twiggyish | Wednesday, May 08, 2002 - 08:14 am     My Olympus was excellent for the internet. Also, I don't agree about the printing pictures part. I have an HPPhotosmart 100 Photo printer (along with a regular HP Deskjet Printer) My photo printer can be used WITHOUT the computer. In other words, I can take it anywhere and print pictures. The quality is excellent. My pictures are clearer with the printer. It's lightweight, small and very easy to use. Plus, I can use the photo printer to upload pictures to the internet. It has an interface which is great. (icon on the desktop). I really really miss my Olympus!!! By the way, we are getting our new one soon! I am in the business, so having a good camera is important. |
Admin | Monday, May 13, 2002 - 09:11 am     The guy with the used 1.3 mp Sony cancelled the deal. I'm not thinking about just going for it and getting a 4 mp camera..something I can make good quality prints from should I want that. A salesman at a store gave me these two sites to check out...they look pretty good at first glance. http://dpreview.com/ http://www.steves-digicams.com |
Admin | Monday, May 13, 2002 - 10:08 am     Also, http://www.consumerreports.org |
Admin | Friday, May 17, 2002 - 03:33 pm     http://www.imaging-resource.com/INDEX.HTM |
Keepitreal | Saturday, May 25, 2002 - 07:10 am     Another good site for digital camera reviews is: http://www.dcresource.com/ |
Scribe | Sunday, May 26, 2002 - 12:07 pm     I have had 4 dugital cameras with the first one about 5 years ago ... loved each one but my favoritie is the subject of this post ... I got the Pentax 330 that uses Compact Flash cards and card reader. The camera is great, small small and goes with me everywhere so I can actually use it .. makes a difference .. my other ones (a great new one Sony with 5mega pixel power) are all larger and can't just be dropepd into a backpack or bag...but the pentax is the size of the cannon elph and works wonderfully. Now to my question .. if anyone has an answer or a suggestion where to go, would be greatly aprpeciated. The Pentax 330 uses Compact Flash cards on which to store the digital pics. I have several that work/were formated correctly. But I have a new one that I tried to format on the PC (Win XP) using the format function for the card reader (drive). I did it with the FAT format (read on Sandisk that FAT was to be used and not FAT32). But it showed as NOT FORMATTED when I put it into the Pentax. Then I found the Pentax instructions and it had an internal formatting function. Unfortunately sicne I formated with the PC FAT the camera formatting function doesn't seem to work. Is there anyway I can erase/reformat this cf card or is it now unusable with the camera? Thanks in advance for any help or wisdom even if its bad news. Scribe |
Dahli | Tuesday, May 28, 2002 - 04:18 pm     OHMIGAWD Admin - when I read your Pentax comment I had to rush down here to add my 2 cents! I am in the same boat - big money for a piece a' Pentax crap~!!!!! never ever again It does everything automatically - too bad they didnt' mean correctly! AAAAARRRGGGHHHHHHHHHHH |
Scribe | Sunday, June 02, 2002 - 07:07 am     As a follow up to the various posts regarding Pentax cameras. I've had a couple pentax point and shoot and wasn't particularly happy with the lens quality prefering a nikon or even better my tiny canon elph. And my first digital camera was the Sony Mavica I think even predating the one Admin references above. But I loved the Mavica because of its 3 1/2 floppy storage process. But it is big and cumbersome and I just didn't carry it with me much. After 911, when I started going back downtown to the site I wanted to take pictures of where my office building had been and what damage had been done to surrounding structures. So, I recently upgraded to the Sony Cybershot 770 (5 megapixels) and it takes awseome pictures and quickly. Great lens quality, great zoom, e-mail function, lots of otherstuff too. I have a wideangle attached that is unbeleivable, can get fishbowl effects using it. However, it too is cumbersome and I do not take it with me all the time. I did get good pictures of downtown but later on as more and mroe streats were being openned up I wanted to have something with me so that I could use it whenever I sawsomething I wanted to record. So I gave my Canon Elph to my son (aps non digital) and he loves it, and I went out and got the Pentax 330 ... same size as the Elph and had good reviews. Don't get me wrong, I am not a Pentax lover, but this little camera has been terrific and I have great pictures from it and many many more than I had with any of my previous cameras .. As an alternative to Pentax, if you really don't like the company, there are some other really good choises out there for realy small digital cameras ... Nikon Coolpix 775 and Minolta Dimage X. I took the Pentax because it had the longest Zoom and was 3.1 megapixels but I would suggest a small one so that you can take it with you. If you don't mind carrying something around with you or you are taking most pictures at home where it doesn't matter then I have to say the the Sony Cybershot 770 is just outstanding. I had actually gone in to get as my second camera (to the new Sony 770) the new Sony Mavica that saves to CD not floppy disk. But then it is really pretty heavy and very slow and I finally after several trips back got the small camera and love it. No problems so far. It does not have an e-mail function so you do have to use one of your photo applpications to e-mail pictures but a small camera is really neat. Well, I hope whatever everyone gets they have as much fun taking the pictures that I have had. I just love the digital environment. Scribe |
Admin | Tuesday, June 11, 2002 - 05:33 am     Thanks Scribe, great information. What you say is true about size. I find I never use my video camera because it's a pain to carry around, take out, set-up and then use. I don't want to repeat the process with a camera. I want something small I've decided. I'm still reviewing possibilities at Steves Digicams It's a nightmare! I think I'll eventually just pick one and say "That's it, that's the one I'm getting whether it's the best or not" because I'm wasting valuable picture capturing time here! |
Admin | Monday, July 01, 2002 - 10:52 am     Still reviewing...looking at the Canon S30 and S40 right now. Leaning heavy towards the S30 even though it has fewer megapixels, many people say it takes better shots. I'm worried about it having a poor macro and being too complicated though. Found this fantastic site that lets you compare pictures from different cameras. http://imaging-resource.com/IMCOMP/COMPS01.HTM |
Scribe | Thursday, July 04, 2002 - 04:46 pm     Admin - Go with your gut - if you are concerned about it being too complicated (i.e. you don't want to have to read the booklet each time to use a function) then go with that ... beleive me when I say, small and easy beats super mega picels and multiple features ... I have a fairly small video camera (not digital just vhsc) but it is still too big to drop in my backpack or purse and not notice its weight .. also what I lvoe about the small digital camera is that I can grab it and press the on button and off I am to the picture factory ... I have never taken so many pictures in my life ... So go with simple and small ... Canon lenses are good .. keep in mind that if the camera has a lot of features it might not matter if the autofocus feature is simple and you can just forget about the other features most times. Scribe |
Admin | Wednesday, July 10, 2002 - 10:20 am     With a 3.1 megapixel camera, what would a professional print (not a homedone print off a printer) look like at 11 X 14? Or 16 X 20 for that matter? |
Twiggyish | Wednesday, July 10, 2002 - 10:45 am     Just remember the higher resolution picture loads slower on web pages. Although, for better print quality, you do want the higher one. As to printing, I have the photosmart and it works great. I just printed out a large amount of pictures, with excellent quality print and I still haven't run out of ink. |
Admin | Thursday, July 11, 2002 - 06:57 pm     After much deliberation and a fair amount of research, I've purchased a digital camera. I even practiced sending photos to the local Future Shop high tech store and having them developed. It was super easy! You download their small software application and it automatically emails them the photos, then you go and pick them up 24 hours later, after you get an email saying they are ready. I did not read everything on all cameras..that's too much work. I started by reading a few things and narrowed my search to a few I liked the sound of. I then looked for features I wanted, like zoom, high megapixel, good personal reviews, good close-ups etc. I bought a Canon Powershot S30 (3.2 megapixel). Most reviews from actual users and all actual photos I saw showed the S30 took better pictures than it's twin, the S40 (4 megapixel) even though it's got a higher pixel rater. Seems this particular CCD is optimized for the lower rate. Anyways, I haven't actually opened the box yet...but will soon and will let you know how it works out! Either way, the convenience of being able to select the photos I want to print and the option to crop and fix photos appeals to me greatly. |
Grooch | Thursday, July 11, 2002 - 07:03 pm     <thwump!> |
Max | Thursday, July 11, 2002 - 07:15 pm     GOod choice. I have the older 2.1 megapixel version and I love this camera. Small enough to take anywhere and takes good pictures. Enjoy! |
Admin | Monday, July 15, 2002 - 07:46 am     So far so good on the Canon S-30. It's working great! Already I've snapped more fantastic photos than my life combined! It's so easy to get good photos in the AUTO mode. I've snapped some really cool action shots of my friend playing ball hockey with his son, and some nice low-light ones too. I've only just begun to explore what this camera can do. |
Enbwife | Monday, July 15, 2002 - 08:07 am     I LOVE our new camera!!! It's awesome! |
Admin | Friday, August 23, 2002 - 11:38 am     So far the camera is working well. I mostly use the auto settings, but sometimes it's too bright out or too dark, so I'm experimenting with the manual settings. It's compact size and high resolution are great! It fits neatly in the diaper bag and I've been taking it everywhere. My prints are fantastic. I've done some 5X7 prints too, they look fantastic too. My sister inlaw and wife both recently had a baby, and it's been great for that! It seems the photos I've taken are suddenly the defacto standard photos for the entire family, from here to England and Italy! Everyone has seen the ones I've taken and put online, and everyone wants copies of them! About Organizing software: I've tried many different software packages for this, freeware and buyware, but ACDSee http://www.ACDSYSTEMS.com seems to be the best. It has a built in HTML generator for making online albums too, but I found a great little freeware program called Web Page Generator for making online albums that I like better. http://go.to/ckso A lot of people seem to swear by the older version of ACDSee, version 3.1 so I'm going to try and get that instead of buying Version 4.0, apparently Future Shop has a CD with the older version for $9. A word about photo developing: I've sent many photos off to Future Shop (http://www.futurephoto.com) for developing. I think they may only be a Canadian company? Anyways, I've found that their software is buggy. On normal prints everything looks fine, but on some artsy close-ups I did I noticed a small portion of the top, bottom and sides was cropped off, regardless of what I selected in the software. I've re-sent a particular series of photos 4 times, following every direction I've been given, and they continue to turn out with a small crop. Today I called the manager of their photolab and he explained a solution. He says he is aware of the cropping problem, and assured me to resend the photos him him personally and he would make sure they were done right. He says you need to add a 1.5% border to the images before sending them, then the lab equipment will print them correctly. I agreed to give him one more chance, but I'm not happy with results or the solution. I'm going to try Black's for developing next and see what I get with them. I'll let you know. |
Poco | Friday, August 23, 2002 - 08:15 pm     I have an older Sony Mavica (73 model) and I absolutely LOVE it. The convenience and cost savings of the floppies sold me, but the pix and prints are great as well. As a matter of fact, I just applied for a graphic artist job today and I presented my portfolio, including pix I took with this camera (and printed right on my printer). The tekkies were impressed too. If you'd like to see pix taken with this camera, you can go to: http://poco_the_tabby.tripod.com |
Twiggyish | Saturday, August 24, 2002 - 11:48 am     Poco, you're story is touching. I loved the pictures of your Kitty. |
Poco | Saturday, August 24, 2002 - 12:04 pm     Twiggyish: Thanks so much! When you write about something THAT personal, you worry about how others will perceive it. I appreciate you taking the time to tell me that you liked it. ((((Twiggyish))) |
Moondance | Saturday, August 24, 2002 - 12:29 pm     Poco... Click here |
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