Photography Question - Digi Cam

[Delta Whiskey]

Originally Posted by Jon T

Anyone got any thought on the Fuli Finepix S5600, thinking getting one when I get paid, current camera is Finepix A205.

It's on sale in Tescos for £114 and at ASDA for £104, surely at those prices you can't go wrong.

The S5700 is new out, I'm sorely tempted as QVC are doing it today as a TSV with payments over two months. It's over twice the pixels and three times the zoom of my current Capilo RR30.

DW

as ive said ive been using the s5000 for a couple fo years now and its a wicked camera so the updated models I would imagine are also wicked lol

s5600 115 quid s 5700 149 quid 2 megapixels difference and thats it mines only 3.1 but by the looks of it not a lots changed except ccd resolution

[Stuart]

Originally Posted by andygrif

More optical zoom = good.

Good point. Although, unless you have a steady hand or some sort of surface or tripod to put the camera on, getting closer is better if possible.

More megapixels = not necessarily good, but more will allow bigger prints

Good point, and one camera manufacturers tend to ignore. We have an old Powershot G3 that, while only 4MP, produces far better pictures than some of the cheaper 7 MP cameras I have seen, purely because it has better optics. Although it isn't a patch on the EOS 300Ds we also have at work.

SD cards are cheaper than xD cards, a bit. Do your research before you buy.

Good point.
Does camera come with rechargable batts and charger? Regular batts won't last 5 mins.
[/quote]
Alkaline batteries actually last quite a while (admittedly, not as long as a rechargable), but they also have the advantage that if they die, you can usually just pop into a store and buy more.

How does camera feel to hold?

Another good point. We have one of the first generation powershots at work (2 megapixel and nearly ten years old). It's a wierd looking (and actually extremely ugly) camera, but is extremely easy to hold steady while taking shots (really needs two hands though).

I personally find a lot of the smaller cameras a little difficult to hold comfortably.

What software does camera come with?

Another good point. Although XP can directly import images from most cameras, and most of them now support some sort of picture transfer over USB standard (such as PictBridge) so you can use software such as Picasa to import, manage, edit and print your photos.

[Tezcatlipoca]

Originally Posted by andygrif

The Powershot range from Canon would be a good place to start

The Powershot range is excellent.


Canon make great cameras.

[Stuart]

That, they do.

The IXUS is quite good as well. Not as easy to hold as the Powershot though.

[Delta Whiskey]

Originally Posted by Delta Whiskey

The S5700 is new out, I'm sorely tempted as QVC are doing it today as a TSV with payments over two months. It's over twice the pixels and three times the zoom of my current Capilo RR30.

DW

I bought one. QVC sold over 3000 of them in 24 hours.


DW

[keithwalton]

Originally Posted by Stuart C

That, they do.

The IXUS is quite good as well. Not as easy to hold as the Powershot though.

I got an IXUS 900 to replace my fuji 201 just before christmas and the ixus is just fantastic. Its a small fit in your shirt pocket camera that just takes fantastic pics. It is pricey tho it does have a hughe screen on the back, 10mp sensor and 3x optical zoom (could do with abit more but the mp more than make up for it).

What makes this camera is its DIGIC III processing which they've lifted straight from the current generation of EOS cameras its a very clever automatic system which can control everything for you if you want it (i have taken excellent pics in a dark nightclub with the normal flashing lights before, after i'd had a few drinks :-)) to but you can still burry yourself in the menus fiddling for hours!

[Jon T]

I've been looking at the fuji finepix range and it's either going to be an S5600 or an S6500 I think i'll pass on the S5700, it's missing RAW mode and also a few other things the 5600 does have.

[Delta Whiskey]

Originally Posted by Jon T

I've been looking at the fuji finepix range and it's either going to be an S5600 or an S6500 I think i'll pass on the S5700, it's missing RAW mode and also a few other things the 5600 does have.

Unless you are a pro, or like to spend lots of time fiddling about in Photoshop I think RAW isn't a necessity. My friend has just bought the Nikon D80, it saves both RAW and JPG copies of each image. The RAW image is 8Mb, the JPG 3Mb, I honestly can't see a great deal of difference between them. The majority of the images I take are printed as is, I rarely feel the need to manipulate the image in any way, maybe a bit of cropping now and again if I didn't get it right in the camera.

DW

[andygrif]

Whilst RAW is a nice thing to have if you're planning on doing a lot of post processing, it's something that most people simply wouldn't use. Files are huge, take a lot of time to process on the computer and in most cases don't produce shots that are any better than JPEGs stored with a large fine setting.

[Tezcatlipoca]

Originally Posted by Stuart C

That, they do.

The IXUS is quite good as well. Not as easy to hold as the Powershot though.

I've still got an old Powershot A70. No good for big prints, as it's only 3MP, but still great for "normal" size prints.


Ally has an IXUS 800 IS - very nice little camera.

[Shaun]

Originally Posted by Matt D

The Powershot range is excellent.


Canon make great cameras.

I love my A80. Takes a stunning photo!.

[Hom3r]

Barewolf

Try the library or cheapo bookstore on photography.

These books can give valuable tips & advise on taking pictures.

[Barewolf]

Well Louise gave me the camera last night and ive only had chance to play with it today. Its really nice. Good zoom for what i want. 5x Digital. Not alot but makes a big difference to my old one.

Ive set the quality to medium and its set on 5 megapixel. Can only take 15 pics with the cams memory with that, 20mb. Got a 2gb SD Card coming tomorrow so should be ok lol.

My problem is even at those settings the pics on the PC come out at 1.7mb Each mostly. Thats pretty big for a Jpeg, my old ones were 600kb ish. Is this just sods law if i choose hi pixels?

All camera settings are on auto at the moment, Whitebalance is on auto, Flash, ISO? That goes up to 1000 but i dont know if i manually select it or not, manuals a bit confusing as to what these things do rather it tells you how to alter it if needed.

Ive taken one on this new camera of my cake Louise made for me, i really cant eat it so i keep taking pics of it instead. trouble is that its not really sharp. It has a little hand that comes up when you take a picture to tell you if the camera is shaking. No i normally have a steady hand being an artist so the camera wasnt shaking, its very hard to get rid of this icon on the LCD display when trying to take a picture. Perhaps its coz i used zoom maybe?

When i can compress the images i will upload them so you can see, but there way too big at the moment.

Not sure, still learning. Any tips would be gratefull.

About the large files. i dont know what to do to compress them and if i will loose quality, is it easier to just lower the megapixel? or compress them afterwards on pc? Which is worse for the quality of pic?

[idi banashapan]

The size of the file depends on what level of compression the built in processor uses for the JPEGs. Not all cameras are the same.

Your ISO level is the sensitivity of the ccd to the amount of light available in the shot. The higher the ISO level, the less light you need, but bear in mind that it dramatically reduces the quality of the image due to noise and the ccd will over-pickup to compensate for lack of light. ISO levels are used in conjunction with the Aperture setting, which controls the diameter of the diaphragm when open. This also affects the Depth of Field and exposure length (shutter speed). When using a camera on manual settings, these 3 all affect each other. If you just want to point and click, use auto.

The hand symbol does not always mean the camera IS shaking, it's more a warning that camera shake will affect the result. You can reduce the blur by using flash. Most cameras have auto flash levelling these days, which cancels out any 'burning' (bright white areas) on the main subject (depending on your metering mode - the bit that evaluates the light levels within the image).

So, a breakdown;

ISO = sensitivity of the sensor to the light available in the frame. The lower, the better the image with look, but you need to be aware of the exposure level.

Aperture = diameter of the opening which the light travels through to reach the sensor. This determines Depth of Field. the lower the Aperture level, the bigger the hole, the more the background will be blurred in comparison to the main subject.

Shutter speed = how long the blades open for exposing the sensor to the light.

Please note that with compact cameras, although these options may exist, they are really only pseudo settings. Compact cameras merely use software to simulate these effects as all that happens when you press the button is that the sensor is turned on for a period of time determined by the shutter speed setting. In SLR / DSLR cameras, the settings affect physical parameters.

If you need any more help or explanations, please let me know. I'm quite into photography!