A decent point and shoot camera

[Eraserhead]

While on holiday for the last month or so my trusty Canon Ixus i started crashing, so I need to get a new digital camera to replace it. I am looking for a fairly small camera, so I want a point and shoot camera rather than a SLR.

I aim to spend about £150 to £200 but I want something fairly decent. I like the Canon UI, but am totally happy to go to another make. Though I do want something fairly easy to use. It should support macro, manual and long shutter shots but I don't need any more flexibility than the ixus i. A real optical zoom would be nice too, but I did without on the ixus i so I could probably live without it. It also should be quick at taking pictures and not take too long to take them after pressing the take picture button.

In terms of megapixels I'd like at least 5, but as I've read on Arstechnica more isn't actually any better so I don't need a camera with too many .

Ideally if it supports SD cards that'd be good as I've just bought a 2GB one, but as it only cost £6 switching to a different memory type would be fine.

EDIT: Apologies if there is a recent thread on this topic, I Googled and most of the threads it found were quite old so I created this one.

 

[Mitthrawnuruodo]

My girlfriend and her two sisters just bought an Panasonic Lumix FX30 (comes in silver, black and dark blue) for their mother as a birthday present.

The Leica lens has a very nice 28 - 100mm (35mm equivalent) lens (while most point and shoots doesn't get much wider than 35-ish mm.

Also, being very small and gorgeous and in your price range doesn't exactly make it worse and, to top it off: it uses SD cards...

 

[cube]

Loose pants pocket but not shirt/suit pocket OK?

How many seconds is 'long'?

 

[Eraserhead]

Loose pants pocket but not shirt/suit pocket OK?

I'd like something similar to the size of my ixus i which is 89mm x 47mm x 12mm, though a bit bigger would be fine.

How many seconds is 'long'?

I'd say 15 seconds is 'long', but more would be better.

 

[cube]

Ultracompact cameras usually don't have priority modes, which I think you want if you're looking for manual.

 

[Eraserhead]

Ultracompact cameras usually don't have priority modes, which I think you want if you're looking for manual.

Well I wanted something not totally automatic , saying I wanted manual is probably asking for too much . But priority modes could be good, if you can recommend something fairly small which supports them that might be worth considering.

 

[cube]

Maybe you can search for stuff here and then ask for opinions:
http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/compare.asp

You'll have to look in the spec strip of each specific camera to find out the macro range and sensor size.

 

[kitmos]

we have the Canon PowerShot SD800 and love it. I reach for it over my Canon Rebel (gen 1) often -at least till I can get a 40d and better glass.
The Canon PowerShot SD800 has a nice bright screen, Image Stabilization which is really nice on a small camera, starts up quick, decent battery life -but get a spare. Ave Price of $250 currently.

 

[Eraserhead]

Maybe you can search for stuff here and then ask for opinions:
http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/compare.asp

That looks great, but its probably a tad intense for what I'm looking for .

 

[cube]

OK. Look if the Fujifilm F30 or F31fd is acceptable for you.

 

[Eraserhead]

OK. Look if the Fujifilm F30 or F31fd is acceptable for you.

They look good, I can't find the F31fd new and its difficult to get the F31fd, but it does look like a bargain, I'll think about the suggestions everyone has made so far, though if anyone has any other suggested models, or likes one suggested so far that'd be useful.

 

[cube]

amazon.co.uk

Link

 

[netdog]

I agree about the Lumix DMC-FX30 being an excellent choice if you want a small P&S that will fit in your pocket. Much better than the equivalent Canon in my opinion.

If you don't mind something a little bit bigger, I'd recommend the Lumix DMC-LX2 as it has the best piece of glass on any compact P&S. If you doubt that makes such a difference, have a look at Jim Radcliffe's site that features photos taken with a Leica D-Lux3, the same camera, just rebadged as a Leica. I think you'll see what I mean.

Either way, you won't go wrong.

 

[cube]

I used to be attracted by the OIS on the Panasonics, but then I would be turned off by the reputation of the optics being wasted on noisy sensors.

 

[balamw]

I used to be attracted by the OIS on the Panasonics, but then I would be turned off by the reputation of the optics being wasted on noisy sensors.

I've "lost" more shots with my Canons due to lack of OIS (camera shake) than my Lumix DMC-FX01 due to noise on the sensor. I've also found the mini-movie mode of the Lumix to be much better than my miniDV camera.

Of course it depends on what you're using the camera for. For me, it's the tool to follow and document my young kids' lives....

B

 

[cube]

FX01, that's a different thing. I was following the LX1 and LX2. One of the bad opinions at dpreview is precisely from somebody dissapointed in moving from the FX01 to the LX2.

Although the FX01 already has some people complaining. It has indeed the tiny sensor typical of the ultracompacts and newer cameras.

 

[Eraserhead]

Sorry, you've lost me slightly, what is OIS?

EDIT: I can answer my own question, it is Optical Image Stabilization.

That sounds really useful to be honest, its annoying when my pictures turn out blurry by not holding the camera completely steady.

 

[cube]

Yes, the Panasonics have the antishake in the lens, which might happen to be better than the sensor shift found in other cameras like the F50fd, but it would really have to be tested in the specific cases.

Don't be fooled by the electronic shake reduction advertised by some cameras.

 

[Eraserhead]

OK I've decided to get the Panasonic Lumix in the end. I'll report back on what I think when it arrives.

 

[cube]

FX-30. As usual, complaining about 400 ISO and up:
http://www.photoxels.com/panasonic-fx30-review.html

The F30, F31fd have purple fringing on high contrast edges.

 

[Butthead]

OK I've decided to get the Panasonic Lumix in the end. I'll report back on what I think when it arrives.

That was quick

FX-30. As usual, complaining about 400 ISO and up:
http://www.photoxels.com/panasonic-fx30-review.html

The F30, F31fd have purple fringing on high contrast edges.

Yes, and so do other cameras, including dSLR lenses...do a search, Chromatic Aberation shows up in lots of camera lens designs, but usually at the extremes of focal lenghts or apertures. Newer Fuji F50 has CCD shift stabilization, I would choose that over the F30/F31. Ricoh Capilo R6/R7 has a wider range zoom 28-200mm, with a few manual controls in the same ~25mm thickness, slightly less noisy sensor processing than the Panasonic, but all PnS involve varying degrees of compromise... heck, I would say that perhaps with the exception of the new Nikon D3, just about all dSLR's also have something that owners wish was better...I just want all of the full frame capabilities of the D3 inside the body of a Olympus 35mm film OM-1 or OM-2 of the early 1970's at about the price/weight of a D40...is that so much to ask for, lol? Maybe in 10yrs

http://www.dpreview.com/news/0708/07082802ricohcaplior7.asp

while it has manual focus, & auto exposure bracketing, I don't think the Ricoh have any manual control over aperture or shutter speed

A thicker, more capable PnS would be the Canon A710is (can be firmware hacked to get RAW support and live histogram with zebra warning for over-exposure) which is also mid-priced. It's been replaced by a higher MP model, and the new DigicIII image processing engine, which hasn't had a firmware hack adapted to it, so it's less capable for getting marginal upgrade to the A710is.

 

[Eraserhead]

FWIW I also looked at the F40, but that seems to suck from the reviews on Amazon.co.uk, so it probably isn't a good one to get.

 

[cube]

The F50fd image stabilization is said not to work well and people are not so happy about the pictures.

I mentioned the purple fringing issue on the F3x because this is pointed out more than in other cameras, and the OP shouldn't get the impression that it is perfect.

Almost all the newer cameras with sensors around 1/1.7" are 10 or 12 MP.
The ones with fewer MP are all 1/2.5", except Samsung.
But the Samsung only has electronic antishake and no priority modes.

 

[cube]

The F20 is like an F30 without priority modes.

And high ISO upto 2000 instead of 3200.

The F20 has a smaller battery, so it's slimmer.

Max long shutter 4 seconds instead of 15.

 

[Eraserhead]

OK so my Lumix FX30 has arrived, it looks much better than my old ixus i. It auto rotate shots and seems to have a fairly large number of options, the only problem I've hit so far is that you can't take a picture of between 1 and 15 seconds which means that city at night shots with the streaming car lights are probably harder to pull off. I haven't completely got to grips with it though.

Below is a picture of the centre of Oxford I took before getting my train, its on full automatic settings.




EDIT: Thanks for the suggestions everyone . Its a much better camera than if I just got one on my own.