O/T Camera Recommendations

Go hold them at the store and play with them. Some fall to hand, some don't. And it varies depending on who's hands.

Something I didn't figure out that's bit me later is lag time. The time from the click, until the camera actually takes the picture. Mine is the better part of a solid second, and many snap-shots are missed as a result of this lag. I'd pay much closer attention to this if I were to buy the camera again.

I have a Sony, 5 megapixel, alot for what you want, but I wanted a tremendous optical zoon for taking outdoor pics at air shows and other activities, It works great. Don't go on "a Sony is bad" based on the experience one person has had with one camera, or for that matter "a Kodak....." or "a cannon...." or whatever. Pick a model with the features you think you can use, and then look at reviews of THAT camera.

A couple of words of advise, get one that uses AA or AAA batteries, the rechargeable NiMH or anything else. Don't get tied into a specialized battery, pricey and hard to find.

I have a Toshiba that is pretty darn good too.

A website that is all reviews of digital cameras and accessories is Steves Digicams.

Charles

• Digital Camera Reviews

For what you are doing I would not buy one unless it had two things.

One is the ability to use ordinary AA batteries. They are available no matter where you are, and have a good "shelf life". Having said that, I would also get some good nickel metal hydride batteries and a charger and use those as the primary power.

The other thing I would make sure the camera had is a "macro" mode. Not everything interesting is large. This last spring I had a gas engine I could not read the numbers on through the paint. I eventually used the macro mode and took the pictures into the parts place. They were able to tell me there were places with numbers missing. I then knew I needed to sand off the paint in some places to reval the very faint hidden impressions. That last photo we could make out all the number/letters!

My son is a photographer and he picks my cameras for me. When my Canon A60 wore out he replaced it with a Canon A510. It's cheap, uses a very small card and two AA batteries. A thirty-dollar card (512 meg) and two batteries are good for about 300 pictures without a refill. It worked very well at the Plowing match where I recorded a lot of interesting tractors.

• sample at 1/2 meg

• Camera reviews & stuff

My wife has had a Fuji FinePix camera for a couple of years ago, a 3 megapixel model with a 3:1 optical zoom. Our college-age daughters both have Olympus digital cameras, one with specifications similar to the Fuji but in a significantly smaller package, the other with a 10:1 optical zoom in a larger package. All three of these cameras provide good photos if / when the photographer does her part, and I'd give all three cameras a "thumbs up".

Having said that, there are things about all three cameras that I dislike: two of the cameras are too bulky to slip into a shirt pocket, and the one that is small enough to fit the shirt pocket uses a proprietary battery that is recharged by plugging the camera into the charger. (Since my daughter hasn't complained about not being able to take pictures while the camera is plugged in, I haven't checked about the possible availability of an extra battery and stand-alone charger.)

All in all, I now consider a pack-of-cigarettes sized camera to be about ideal. A 3:1 optical zoom, 3-megapixel-or-greater "image size", and rechargable batteries are MUST-HAVEs. I also prefer a hold-up-to-eye-and-peek-into-viewfinder sighting system, which has been deleted from some of the newer camera designs. The look-as-display-screen-on-back-of-camera sighting system not only sucks down the batteries rapidly, but in some situations is harder to use than the old-style viewfinder.

John