about $200 to spend on a Small point and shoot

[ljump12]

I need something to take to colelge with me; and document life... i want something small (fit in the pocket) but also something that takes good quality pictures... for those times i wana take pictures of the awsome city im in (Charleston, SC)

i also dont wanna spend to much money; cause then id be afraid to take a $600 camera and get drunk at some party with it.

Sooo

I was thinking Of the cannon Powershot SD??? Series, my sister has the SD200 and its reallly nice onlt about 150 too... i looked and they have a SD550 for about $250 a little overbudget but... Its 7 megapixels and has a niice 2.5 inch screen. Any suggestions guys? Thanks!!!

 

[Abstract]

Well if you can get the SD550 for that price, then go for it. Otherwise, any of the SD cameras are quite good, so if you have to go with an older model, that's fine. I still use an SD300 that has had beer spilt on it and bits of sand lodged in cracks all over the place, and it works perfectly.

You could probably get a Casio or something that's thinner than the Canon SD series, though. They're thin, but thinner cameras exist. Otherwise, fantastic camera, except the lack of a decent battery warning. Once it runs out of juice, it gives you a warning, you take 1 photo, then shuts off. They don't give you much warning.

Oh, and just get whatever camera, and forget about the megapixels. Lots of the small cameras are around the same in terms of photo quality, and they all have AUTO mode. You're likely using the camera in the same sort of situations I sometimes get into, and frankly, you're likely going to be happy with any of the small cameras as long as it doesn't break or malfunction.

 

[blitzkrieg79]

Actually I am also a fan of Canon when it comes to point and shoot cameras but my recommendation goes to Canon Axxx series. I have Canon A520 and the camera takes beautiful pictures, it has few preset auto modes plus it has a bunch of manual controls for semi-pros so you can really start to dig deep with it. Only problem with it is that it takes like 3-4 seconds to reload the flash after it was used but to me thats not a biggie as I take most of the pictures outside where flash isn't usually needed anyway.

And just like abstract said, don't look at the megapixels, they don't tell you about the actual quality/color reproduction of the taken photos, for home use you'll be fine with a 3-4MP. Just make sure whatever you pick has a glass lens as some of the cameras at that price range have plastic lenses which produce lesser quality of images.

 

[ljump12]

Well if you can get the SD550 for that price, then go for it. Otherwise, any of the SD cameras are quite good, so if you have to go with an older model, that's fine. I still use an SD300 that has had beer spilt on it and bits of sand lodged in cracks all over the place, and it works perfectly.

You could probably get a Casio or something that's thinner than the Canon SD series, though. They're thin, but thinner cameras exist. Otherwise, fantastic camera, except the lack of a decent battery warning. Once it runs out of juice, it gives you a warning, you take 1 photo, then shuts off. They don't give you much warning.

Oh, and just get whatever camera, and forget about the megapixels. Lots of the small cameras are around the same in terms of photo quality, and they all have AUTO mode. You're likely using the camera in the same sort of situations I sometimes get into, and frankly, you're likely going to be happy with any of the small cameras as long as it doesn't break or malfunction.

So forget the megapixels? -- My question is will cannons sd550 give me Significantly better imagequality (being 7.1 megapixels) then the cannon sd200 becuase it is 3 megapixeks.... I mean theyre bascially the same camera right?

 

[blitzkrieg79]

So forget the megapixels? -- My question is will cannons sd550 give me Significantly better imagequality (being 7.1 megapixels) then the cannon sd200 becuase it is 3 megapixeks.... I mean theyre bascially the same camera right?

If they are both using the same type of lens then the actual image quality will be the same, the industry wants the customer to believe that the larger the Megapixel count the better the image quality but that is not the case, Megapixels stand for the maximum image resolution of a picture you can take (which basically translates into a physical size of a picture), for example 5MP translates into a maximum resolution of 2592 x 1944 which is good for poster printouts. 3MP camera translates into a max resolution of 2,048 x 1,536 which translates into a 8x10 photoprint, so unless you wanna make posters then a 3-4MP camera will surely be more then enough for an average home user. Most of my prints are 4x6 so even then a 4MP is an overkill.

However you have to remember that if you actually want to edit the taken images, for example with Photoshop, it always is better to work with large images.

 

[ljump12]

If they are both using the same type of lens then the actual image quality will be the same, the industry wants the customer to believe that the larger the Megapixel count the better the image quality but that is not the case, Megapixels stand for the maximum image resolution of a picture you can take (which basically translates into a physical size of a picture), for example 5MP translates into a maximum resolution of 2592 x 1944 which is good for poster printouts. 3MP camera translates into a max resolution of 2,048 x 1,536 which translates into a 8x10 photoprint, so unless you wanna make posters then a 3-4MP camera will surely be more then enough for an average home user. Most of my prints are 4x6 so even then a 4MP is an overkill.

However you have to remember that if you actually want to edit the taken images, for example with Photoshop, it always is better to work with large images.

its all about the cropping though