Good but not too pricey digital camera

Bryony84 · Post by **Bryony84** » Wed Dec 27, 2006 3:04 pm

Need a bit of advice really, got some money from my grandparents to go towards buying a compact digital camera to carry around when I can't be bothered with lugging my SLR and 2 lenses about!

Does anyone know of a good high megapixel (6mp+) digital camera for about Â£150, preferably with a wideish lens (28mm-32mm).

I was looking at the Fuji e900 which is 9megapixel 32mm widest and takes raw (uncompressed) pictures, but apparently its save time is very very slow.

Anyone got any ideas?

dragon_green · Post by **dragon_green** » Wed Dec 27, 2006 3:36 pm

well i've got an older fuji (e500 i think) - i think the e900 is one of it's replacements. mine is about 18 mths old i think.

anyway, i've been very pleased with it, even though it's only a 4.1mp camera. I'd be happy to buy another one.

Post by **Josh_PoloGTi** » Wed Dec 27, 2006 3:41 pm

Fuji Finepix Z1

Bryony84 · Post by **Bryony84** » Wed Dec 27, 2006 3:42 pm

Yeh, to be honest I'm still tempted by this one, as I would use RAW files all the time and they seem to be what slows the camera down. For the price I found it (Â£150) - its quite cheap for 9mp, not sure I'm going to do any better than that but I wanted to see if anyone could think of any other options before I part with my cash!!

Bryony84 · Post by **Bryony84** » Wed Dec 27, 2006 3:44 pm

Josh_PoloGTi wrote:Fuji Finepix Z1

Lovely camera but only 5mp, not enough for what i need unfortunately!

Ollie_R · Post by **Ollie_R** » Wed Dec 27, 2006 3:45 pm

If you can afford to spend an extra Â£50, I'd recommend a Fuji F30. I've been really interested in this camera recently, and I've heard it is an amazing camera. There's the F20, too, which is the older version. It goes for about Â£130, IIRC.

Flickr have a good camera recommendation site, with examples of photos taken with the cameras. It's http://www.flickr.com/cameras.

Bryony84 · Post by **Bryony84** » Wed Dec 27, 2006 3:58 pm

I wouldn't mind stretching an extra Â£50, but for a camera with 3 less mp i'm not sure it would be worth it?

Ollie_R · Post by **Ollie_R** » Wed Dec 27, 2006 4:06 pm

Straight after my last post, I noticed that the F30 is going for Â£160 on the PCWorld site

The F30 has been getting good reviews. Some of the pictures I've seen on flickr taken by this camera are amazing.

http://flickr.com/photo_zoom.gne?id=328555023&size=o

And the review:

http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/fujifilmf30/

Bryony84 · Post by **Bryony84** » Wed Dec 27, 2006 4:20 pm

Was more tempted by that one until I saw the lens length, 36mm is the widest and thats not really enough for me unfortunately!

Ollie_R · Post by **Ollie_R** » Wed Dec 27, 2006 4:55 pm

There's the Sony DSC-S600, which has a 31mm widest Zeiss lens. It's not as well-specced as the Fuji E900, but it's still a good camera.

I'm impressed by the E900 though. It looks like an excellent camera

Bryony84 · Post by **Bryony84** » Wed Dec 27, 2006 6:00 pm

Lens on that isn't bad - not really enough features for me though - given that I'm used to an SLR. Definitely moving more towards the fuji, only things is someone on a photography forum said that a 9mp camera with a compact sized sensor will produce noise - no idea if this is right or not but it puts me off a little.

toXXin · Post by **toXXin** » Wed Dec 27, 2006 6:08 pm

Your memory card is the reason why it'll be slow to save RAW files.

I'm gonna sell my digital camera, but seeing as its 5mp its gonna be no good.

Bryony84 · Post by **Bryony84** » Wed Dec 27, 2006 6:22 pm

Yeh, I've heard xd cards can be slow, not sure if you can buy better quality ones or not.

toXXin · Post by **toXXin** » Wed Dec 27, 2006 10:30 pm

High speed compact flash and SD cars will be really quick. I have a cheap but high speed CF card in my dSLR and its saving my 8mp RAWs in a few seconds.

Bryony84 · Post by **Bryony84** » Thu Dec 28, 2006 8:32 am

Yeh, I've got SD cards for my DSLR but there aren't many compacts out there that shoot RAWs so I don't have much choice as far as storage is concerned!