Thanks for the input everyone. xflyboy, I'll never own another HP anything, their computers suck and their customer service is worse. Photog95, I have used SLR's many times in the past. Not digital ones (although I believe my Mavica is sort of an SLR) I have a Ricoh KR5 that my mother in law gave us about 20 years ago!! It's still a great little camera and I do still use it. I even have a picture of the Hale Bopp comet I took with it several years ago, my first attempt at night photography!!

I think I'll stop at Best Buy next time I'm in the city and play around with some of the cameras and see what I like. My sister has the Fujifilm FinePix S700, so I've already seen what it offers and I do like it. I hate decisions like this!

The one I'm using now is a Sony Mavica FD95 2.1mp. Like this one http://www.steves-digicams.com/fd95.html I bought it when we had the dreaded HP computer and I was afraid to install any programs on it to retrieve pictures off of a camera (before the days of card readers and the like!!) The Mavica uses a floppy disc so it was simple and I've been very happy with the results I get. I like the 10x optical zoom, I rarely use the 20x digital zoom but I have once or twice. The macro function is cool and I've used it a time or two also but I suppose I could live without it. The problem is lately the camera will only read about 1/2 of the discs I put in it. I think the floppy drive is getting tired. I bought the camera off eBay about 5 years ago!


Oh my God!!! Look what the cat dragged in!! Inbred!! I've missed you!! You're not forgotten, several times folks have asked about you. You can drop in and hijack a thread of mine anytime sweetie, don't be such a stranger, this site needs more of the old timers around!

 

Wow, one of the old Floppy disk Mavica's. I haven't even seen one of those in a long time. Man are you in for a treat when you get your new camera. In that case, just about any camera on the market will probably make you happy. If you can though...DSLR's are the way to go. Aside from a few electronics problems I've had, my D70 has been a great camera.

 

Well, we are headed to Niagra Falls this coming weekend and our Nikon D70 has been giving us the dreaded FOR and CHA errors. Corrupting cards and such. Looks like it's going to be a $200 repair bill. My wife's been wanting a new pocket camera and we didn't have time to wait for Nikon to do the repair so it gave us an excuse to go pick one out. I played with a bunch of cameras and kept coming back to the aforementioned Canon SD1000.

I'm really impressed with the quality of the shot and the metering in particular. I took it out of the box, left it on auto and just started snapping random shots around the house, nothing artistic mind you. All the following shots have only been resized, no touching up in photoshop.

Here's a shot of my dog.
http://www.leanangle.com/pictures/sd1000/schatze.jpg

Image blown up to actual size.
http://www.leanangle.com/pictures/sd1000/schatzeeye.jpg

Here's a shot where I basically aimed the camera directly at a lamp in the living room, the camera compensated for the bright light and used the flash to fill in the back.
http://www.leanangle.com/pictures/sd1000/lamp.jpg

Man, I've been out of the camera scene for a while, this thing not only takes a great picture but has a bunch of fun stuff on it as well.

I sometimes play with spot color in photoshop. The camera does it all mostly for you. First is a shot of the various colored items I piled by the couch.
http://www.leanangle.com/pictures/sd1000/stuff.jpg

Here I've singled out the yellow.
http://www.leanangle.com/pictures/sd1000/spotcolor.jpg

Then it has a color swap ability. Here I've turned the sleeping bag green...and some of the floor too, but not the guitar.
http://www.leanangle.com/pictures/sd1000/recolor.jpg

Here I played around with it. The level on the right is actually orange, I made it the same color as the scissors. You can see along the lower edge where the shine was it was enough out of the variation setting that it didn't get colored, but that can be adjusted.
http://www.leanangle.com/pictures/sd1000/level.jpg

Not a 10x zoom, but it fits in my pocket and I think it's going to take some great pictures. I'm very pleased with it so far. Play with it at the shops if you get a chance. I found an ad in the paper for it at $179.99 and took it to my camera shop and they matched the price for me.

 

Have it and love it.

 

How many cycles are on the odometer on it?

If' it's close to 100K then dont mess with it, if it is then it's time to upgrade, your shutter is going to freeze soon too. By the time you pay this bill and that one (when it comes) you could have bought a brand new camera.

 

I'm guessing not even close. As far as ametures go I shoot fairly heavily, and after 2 years my D200 has 4,285 on it as of last night. I think the average person would have a hard time taking the shutter out of any of these cameras, even the Canon Rebel

 

The canon rebel doesn't have that problem, but you have to replace 15 Zoom motors for every Nikon Shutter.

I just sent a pair of stock D200's back 2 weeks ago with frozen shutters.

The D100's we have now, how ever slightly modified, have proven to be work horses, stock shutters and lenses though.
We were just talking about how impressed we all are with them Friday, as we were turning them in for the season.
My D100 had little over 50K on the clock when I turned it in Friday. I had given it 40,236 cycles this season, (Since July 28th). Thats ALOT of freaking kids!!!!

I put dibs on that camera again for next season (starts next month), I'm anxious to see how far it will go. It's gotta fry soon, maybe they'll get me the D300 and we'll see how it does. Not holding my breath though.

 

Now I know damn good and well it said 150K but now it says 50K.

I think the D100 was rated at 100K so if it is 150K you are lucky, and if it is 50K you are only half way there.

 

Yea I know if I'm trying to remember, I'm wanting to say 150 because it was used at least 2 seasons before I got it, the average is 30K per season. So thats 60K + my 40K. That only comes to 90K but it may have been used a 3rd season before me and one or two photographer may have been faster than me or had busier schedules or bigger territories. It very well could be 150K but that seems like an awful LOT. I'd think the Lead Photographer would have insisted on pulling it at that point and retiring it but she didn't say anything besides WOW.

ETA
These are highly modified, barely resemble anything of the D100 anymore, internal or external. I'm pretty sure it's the same stock aperture though. This was our first season with them, so we are not sure what they are capable of yet.
The D200's are stock we use tehm for sports and group photos, and we've had them for 3 seasons now. We are finding their limits....

ETA 2
We have 2 seasons per year.
A season for us is
Spring = January - May is 1 season
Fall = August - December is 1 season

 

Thanks gixxerjasen, it is a nice little camera and seems to take great shots, I'm just really wanting something with more zoom. I enjoy the 10x zoom I have now and really would like to stay with something with 10x or better.

OK Matt and Photog...you guys are really confusing me with this talk of odometers and cycles...what the heck are you talking about??

 

I'm just a casual photographer, just do it for fun. I'd be suprised if I have 10K on the D70. It's already suffered the BGLOD and that was thankfully fixed for free via Nikon.

 

An SLR counts how many times the shutter is cycled. Usually each cycle is hopefully a picture was taken.
Every time you push the button it counts it. Thats the camera's Odometer.
Just like a car it helps you keep on top of routine maintenance.

 

Hey Rose, check out www.dpreview.com I learned about that site in my digital photography class. It's got great information on all types of cameras. I did a lot of research and found that the Canon Powershot seemed to have gotten the highest ratings on all sites I went to. I got it and it's great for a small camera!

 

Kobi's™ next camera is the Canon G9 (because I need RAW format without going the SLR route).


http://www.usa.canon.com/consumer/co...&modelid=15669

Every review I've read and folks I have spoken to who have used it say that it is the best camera since the dawn of recorded history.

In fact, when God spoke to Richard Roberts and told him to resign from ORU, He also told him to get one of these cameras. Evidently, if you were to ask WCWJU (which camera would Jesus use), this is the one . . . so this might be one of the ways to get to heaven (thus keeping the folks over in that thread happy).

 

The Canon I linked to (SX100 IS) has a 10x optical zoom *and* a 4x digital zoom. It has image stabilization and 8mp too.