My grandson has asked his uncles and I about digital still cameras £200-£250 for a present.
It is some years since I knew anything about still cameras, so I thought I might get some quick replies here. (All my recent queries have been about slides and stills, but my real interest is Video, Promise)
I am pretty sure he is looking for compacts and the rest of us all have Sony cameras so I imagine his uncles will be reccomending various Sonys, but I seem to remember hearing good things about Canons, which were my choice back in the non digital days.
BobA
Bob, I assume you know of this site: DP Review - great for reviews, comparisons, etc.
No quick recommendations, but you certainly get a lot of good, free information.
The Buying Guide is good for comparisons, feature search, top cameras, etc., both for compacts and full size cameras.
I've had bad experiences with Canon compacts, specifically with the lens mechanism. I have a Nikon SLR but that is well out of the price range and probably too big anyway. I don't know the Sonys so, one quick recommend. Take a look at DP Review but start with Panasonic Lumix at that sort of price. My neighbour takes fantastic pictures with a £250 ish Lumix. It seems to be reasonably robust with excellent battery life, a wide zoom range and optical stabilizer. So good are his pictures that I sometimes wonder why I bother with the SLR.
Canon and Olympus compacts have always come with excellent lenses - this applies to digital as well as 35mm. My wife gets excellent results from a 5 Mp Canon whose successor would come within this price range. A friend has largely abandoned his SLRs in favour of one of the dearer Panasonic Lumixes (correct plural?). Many of the latter have a very useful image stabilisation feature.
A local camera repairer once warned me off Nikon digital compacts, on the grounds that they kept him in business!
Thanks all. I have emailed him with a few ideas and a link to the latest Lumix which seems to be the current champ in the size race.
BoBA
I second the Olympus choice! We have an 8mgp Compact & an E-300 DSLR both give very good results.
Hi Bob!
The Lumix from Panasonic, with the Leica lens is a great choice. I needed a point and shoot camera and went for the DMC-LX1 some 18months ago and have never regreted it.
I have had different Canon, Sony,and Pentax but for ease of use and build quality non of the others came close. I dont know what the current model No is, but the DMC-LX1 has the following.
1) Very small and compact.
2) Excellent Leica lens f2.8 (very good in low light)
3) 16x9 ,3x2, 4x3 shooting options with excellent "Steadyshot"
4) Excellent build quality
Try handling one in Jessops or similar, and if you take along an SD card they will maybe let you take a couple of test shots.
Hope this helps Mike