Occasionally people ask me what’s a good digital camera to buy. Well, like just about every electronic device these days, the answer can change just about every week. Here is my latest response which will probably change in about two days!
All the digital P&S cameras look good as far as I can tell. So it pretty much comes down to what features you want, like a real viewfinder for example. Most of the digital point and shoot cameras today do not have an optical (old fashioned see through viewfinder) but force you to rely on the LCD screen instead. Even a few of the up scale ( $500 - $800) cameras do not come with a standard viewfinder, but make it a $200 accessory instead as on the new Olympus EP-1 and the Sigma DP-1 to name two. Incidentally, the Minox DSC has a nice viewfinder for a such a tiny camera. The LCD screens however can sometimes be a problem if the sun is glaring onto the screen or if you are taking pictures when it is too dark to be able to see anything on the screen. The optical viewfinders on cameras that do have them are usually very tiny peepholes anyway compared to the kind you might have been used to on your old film camera.
As far as megapixels are concerned, anything 5MP and over is plenty, and virtually all of the digital cameras today are at least 7MP anyway. Unless you are going to make prints bigger than 8x10 it’s not an issue anymore despite what sales people might tell you.
As far as memory cards go, stick with the SD card type. This is becoming the standard now anyway and you will find it on most cameras with the possible exceptions of Sony and Olympus. SD cards are much easier to find and are very inexpensive compared to almost anything else. And use the card over again by deleting the pictures after you load them onto your computer. A one gigabyte card is plenty big enough even if you want to shoot short video clips and should cost about $10. It’s probably better to have a few smaller (1 GB) inexpensive cards than just one big (4 GB) card, that way if you lose one (they are pretty tiny) it’s not a big deal.
For specific recommendations, here are my own opinions but like I said there’s plenty of things out there. On the cheap side, there’s the Fuji J20. The last time I checked it was $109 at Ritz Camera, that’s $10 cheaper than even WalMart or Target. I got one for my daughter and it takes very good pictures. It is 10MP and uses an SD card, has a 2.7” screen but no optical viewfinder. Speaking of Walmart, they have a very capable looking 10 megapixel Panasonic for $99. marked down from $159. Like all the Panasonic digital cameras, it sports a Leica lens, at least that’s what it says on it. It may very well be Leica in name only under license. Who knows who makes it or where. Personally, I like Canon cameras in general. The first digital camera I had was a Canon A5 Zoom in 1999. It worked pretty good until a few years ago. Since then I've had two other Canons and they both work fine. Also, most of the Canons have optical viewfinders, which in case you haven’t noticed, I like.
The Canon SD 780 is real nice, but compared to the Fuji J20 or the Leica….uh, err, Panansonic it’s tough to justify the double in price.
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