Page 1 of Digital Camera recommendations

My wife wants a digital camera. I`ve been looking on the internet and to be honest find it all a bit much. Too much detail and too many to choose from.

We want a point and click camera, compact size, with a zoom and flash. I`d say good picture quality is the most important requirement. I`ve been looking at the Olympus Mju 400 (£260 on Amazon). Can anyone make any recommendations, or let me know what this one is like.

Cheers

Wad.

We have an olympus C-120 and it is a really good camera. It is 2.0 mega pixel. easy to use and the picture quality is good.It is a good size, not too big and not too small.
I am sure you can pick them up for around 150 quid now. maybe cheaper. It was a prezzie from the wife so not sure the exact price.
I am sure there are better cameras out there though.

i think you really ought to be looking for 4 mega pixel plus... personally i would up your budget and look at a minolta dimage f300, i have one of these... a replacement for a fuji finepix, and it by far a much more superior piece of equipment,
cheers, mark.

"I`m going to live forever, or die trying"...

Depends a lot on what you wish to use it for - if its a simple point & click as you say - I would suggest that a 2-3 mega pixel is more than sufficient. Will produce excellent photos up to normal print size.
I would suggest two - the Canon A70 (PCPRO magazine A List) £225 and the Sony
DSC P72 ( Sept 2003 Which magazine camera test) £187 - both prices are Amazon. Word of warning - budget in another £50 for memory cards ( now pretty cheap ) and a decent set of rechargeables.

Peter

I had a 2 MP Olympus stolen earlier this year. It was my first Digital camera so while I did`nt really have anything else to compare it to I was quite happy with it. I replaced it with a 3 MP Nikon Coolpix and I must say that the picture quality is noticably different. It is an excellent compact little camera bursting with features, definately one to have a look at. I find it very easy to use.
P.S. Check out www.mymemory.uk.com for memory cards ( very cheap ! )

Have a look at The Kyocera Finecam S5. A 5 megapixel camera for £256 delivered with a 16Mb SD card (http://www.buyacamera.co.uk/xsearch.asp?RecId=KYOCA400). Gets good reviews although Nomatica have the Minolta F300 for £275 delivered with a 64Mb SD card and it`s more flexible with batteries (http://www.nomatica.com/index.asp?devise=GBP&langue=EN&pays=UK). I`d be happy with either :-)

Or indeed The Minolta F200 for £224! (Nomatica again).

This item was edited on Sunday, 2nd November 2003, 01:30

How much do you want to spend?

You can get a 4mg pixel camera for around £400, or a 5mg pixel for £550 or a 9mg pixel for £1000+.

You pay for what you get so set yourself a budget and get the best for it.

It also depend on what you want it for, my brother has just bought one from jessops, not the best spec you can get, but it does for what he wants and it was cheap? (£300)

At the end of the day, it`s down to what you can aford and what you need!!

Cheers for all that. We want to spend up to 300 quid, with an extra 100 for a bigger memory card.

The main reason we`re thinking of the Olympus Mju 400 is its a 4 mega pixel camera. Do we really need this though, I doubt we`ll print photos bigger than A5 size very often. Are the extra pixels just of use when wanting larger prints, or do they affect smaller prints also ? The Olympus C350 is a similar spec camera only 3 mega pixel, yet half the price.

Thanks

Wad

i didn`t have a proper look but lidl are advertising a 4 mega-pixel camera for 199quid
like i say i did not look at it but there electrical stuff is usually pretty good

If you can afford it, go for more megapixels. The higher the resolution, the more flexibility you have for cropping and printing at larger sizes-many mediocre shots can be vastly improved by some judicious cropping and they are likely to have better lenses than their lower resolution cousins! The Olympus is a very good point and shoot camera, whereas the Minolta offers a fully auto mode and various manual control modes, should you feel a litle adventurous or end up in a situation that a fully automatic camera could not cope with. Additionally, the Olympus uses XD cards-£80 for 256Mb and a Li rechargeable. The Minolta uses SD cards-£55 for 256Mb and has the flexibility of using a Li rechargeable or AA Ni-MH rechargeables (cheap charger and battery sets from 7DayShop).

At the end of the day, regarding the resolution question, you can`t put information back that wasn`t there in the first place, it`s always better to have more than you think you need. Regarding which camera, if none of the factors above matter to you, go into a shop, try the cameras out and go with the one you feel most comfortable with-if you don`t feel comfortable with the camera or it doesn`t feel intuitive to use, you won`t use it and it won`t matter how many megapixels it has. Certainly, between the Olympus and Minolta, they`re both very good cameras that won`t disappoint and this can probably be extended to include cameras of similar spec from Canon and Nikon. Go and try them!

This item was edited on Monday, 3rd November 2003, 02:02