Buying a Digital Camera?

In your opinion, which digicam would be the best buy for occasional use? I am definitely not a serious user!!!!!! My use will be limited to family tours / trips, functions etc.

Kindly advise

You are spot on......

For occasional use, there are lot of choices. Just as for cars, a lot depends on the monies you want to spend.

A general thing is that Japanese makes are costlier than the Chinese ones - So, better spend a little but go for a Japanese one.

Sony cameras are user friendly. Canon Powershot series has a clear edge on pictyre quality as the the quality of lens is better on them

I have may be answered your question - Canon Powershot series that is made in Japan.

Regards,

K Prasad

Could you please quote some model nos. also? The kind of money that I can shell out for now will be around 15k. (Wouldn't mind pinching other budgets for having something worth its price....)

Canon Powershot A720 IS is my fav. I donno if it is still available. Another one is A570.

In the IXUS series, you can try SD880 IS / SD 790 IS.

One of the best line of cameras is also the Panasonic ones - They have lenses made by Leica - Which is a pioneer in making lenses. In the Panasonic Lumix Camera range, you can try out ZS1 / LX3 models - The panasonic cameras are slightly bulkier by default, but trust me, the image quality is like no other - especially with those Leica lenses.

Regards,

K Prasad

Kvsk.

Can u compare IXUS 95Is & IXUS 100IS wrt to ur 3 points that u explained in ur previous posts(i.e censors,focal length etc.)

Also,please tell me other cam in comparison to the above two.

Link is

Rishita, you can get a rough idea on various models available and estimated price here.

Sony H50 also will come under the budget specified.

Did I mention somewhere in the forum that I was going in for an FZ50 before Charles made me switch to D40? I was so impressed with the camera, especially picture quality and manual focus ring that I was buying it despite of the fact that 1. It was costing more than a dSLR 2. Panasonic has almost zero support in India and 3. No matter what, it's not a dSLR!

KVSK, while researching for the camera I had come to know that FZ50 had poor low-light picture quality bad performance at far end of zoom (because of no image stabilization)?

By the way, I couldn't buy this camera but will definitely like to have a look sometime. Let's go outing sometime. You have a A100 which means there is no chance of borrowing a lens from you (for D40)?

Hi Banwari,

The FZ50 has the best Image Stabiliser in the entire industry. Is it is a motorised image stabiliser and trust me this is the biggest USP of that camera. A lot of firms tried to adopt the same technology but even till date which is 3 years after the launch of the FZ50 and 5 years after the launch of FZ30 which has a similar OIS, no one has yet come up to the same level.

Go to www.dpreview.com and check out the review section. There is a fantastic italian website that gives a side-by-side comparison of results of various cameras and guess what FZ50 has won the challenge with Canon EOS400 !! I forgot the address of this - But, will post it the moment I get to know of it.

Low light performance of the camera is a tad low - again, it has got to do with the sensor - too many pixels (10.1 MP) on a small sensor (1/1.8 inch sensor). To add it, the Venus Engine 3 which processes the images, does a bit of too much in terms of handling the image noise and results in water color effects - this is specifically high if you are doing ISO400 plus work on this camera.

But of this minor drawback (trust me it is not too severe), the camera is stuff of legend - Panasonic has not even bothered to get an upgrade to this camera over the past 3 plus years despite of the fact that the competition has brought a lot of models and Panasonic also has brought a lot of models in their other lines, but FZ50 still remains a stuff of legend.

D40 is an excellent entry level SLR and it has got the correct number of pixels on it - 6 MP is just the correct one for a digital camera and it is a fantastic piece. When going for a DSLR, it is always adviced to go for either Nikon / Canon as they have the widest range of lenses - This is a lesson I have learnt the hard way and after getting by A100, I am planning to pass it on to my dad who plans to use it for normal day to day usage - costly stuff.

Hi,

I would advice you to go for IXUS 95 IS for the following reasons:

1. It has the same lens as the other one - The wide angle is a tad low - but only by a couple of mm - Not going to mean much.

2. The sensor size is the same - 1/ 2.3" However, the IXUS 100 IS has about 2 million more "unwanted" pixels - That is lot of pixels and it will only result in more noise from the image.

3. Both the cameras have the same processing engine - So, they are going to handle noise and other factors of the image in a similar manner.

IXUS 100 IS has a HD movie option - but you need a gigantic memory card to shoot a movie in  HD format. So, you can very well ignore that feature.

Regards,

K Prasad