Recommend a solid consumer-grade camera?

[fleurya]

I would highly recommend the Canon S90, which you can get for around $200, or for a little more, the S95 that has a little better low light performance. They are widely considered the best P&S camera on the market with excellent image quality and full manual controls if you move up in expertise.

Regardless of what you get, a couple of basic photography books could really help a lot. I would recommend Bryan Peterson's "Understanding Exposure" and "Learning to See Creatively". He does a good job of explaining how to use a camera properly and composing a good-looking photograph.

 

[BrianLachoreVPI]

I have no additional expertise to offer here - that's already well covered - but I'll just add one feature that I was reminded of the other day reading SkyMall - of all things. There's a few P&S's out now that offer Geo-Tagging. I'll be looking for that to be on the feature set for my next P&S. Something to consider if you use any of the location/mapping features of iPhoto or Aperture etc.

 

[codda]

+1 on Razormac's ZS7 recommendation...for a point & shoot...I've got a two year old ZS3 that takes a great picture....nice 720p video...and very pocketable...solid build.

 

[Doug b]

CWA... I would really like to see some images taken by your wife. The one's that make her so dead set against Canon. I'm absolutely sure that the advice given here by various people whom are saying that it's likely her technique.. is true. While most PnS cameras can be blamed for having long bouts of shutter lag.. you'll get that with most any PnS.

Some cameras have burst frame modes, and that's all well and good but usually they wind up being a bit gimmicky and you also have to be shooting as such in really good light or else the camera will either compensate with lots of grain and color noise.

I second the recommendation for picking up Peterson's book "Understanding Exposure". This is a staple for any photographer.. pro and amateur alike.

But if you could post some samples from your wife's camera, of shots she has taken, it could help us gain some insight about what she could do to improve her technique.

I do have one tip that has come in handy for my wife, and even myself when using a PnS. Get some cord or rope... and a screw that will fit into her camera's tripod thread. Attach the cord/rope to the screw and attach the screw to the camera. Now, with the rope attached, make sure it is long enough that it extends from when the camera is at her face, to her feet. On the bottom of the rope, make a loop big enough to fit one of her feet in it.

She now has a make-shift monopod! While the camera is at her face, her foot will be putting pressure on the rope causing the camera to be a lot more free from jitter. She will be able to turn her body and pan the camera while holding it steady, and I guarantee that her shots will have a lot less motion blur.

I have had my wife do this for shots near dusk/dawn, when a high ISO setting would only mess up an otherwise nice shot. It also works great for situations when flash or a tripod/monopod isn't allowed.

BTW, just want to post some test images I took the other night (for you) showing the "image quality" of my wife's cruddy little Canon A590IS. I bought this for her a couple of years back for about $200 or so. These are all hand held (I.S. engaged) and in VERY poor light. I also chose to use the camera's manual focus feature. It's not really manual focus in the sense that you use a focus ring or the lens, but rather an digital way of manipulating the focal distance in very small increments with the push of a plus or minus button. Auto focus achieves just as good focus btw.. I just wanted to mess around at this point.


1/5th of a second f2.6 ISO 800

0.5 seconds f2.6 ISO 800

1/4th of a second at f2.6 ISO 200 (which is why I didn't need to do much noise reduction)

Do note, I cheated a LITTLE BIT. I used a TINY bit of noise reduction.. but not nearly enough to get rid of any of the fine detail, as you can see looking at the lens cap's textures. Otherwise, all shot out of camera and no further processing. This is obviously because Jpg's are processed in camera so any further processing would only make them look worse.

Also note that these shutter speeds are mighty slow... and without proper hand holding technique, along with the I.S. these would have been blurred to heck.

Doug

 

[cwa107]

Some cameras you may want to consider

Panasonic tends to put pretty good glass on their P&S cameras. This one has the ability to customize settings which may help, though toward the top of your budget
Amazon.com: Panasonic Lumix DMC-ZS7 12.1 MP Digital Camera with 12x Optical Image Stabilized Zoom and 3.0-Inch LCD (Silver): Electronics
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I have been looking pretty closely at the ZS7, but the price is a little higher than where I want to be. Since it uses a proprietary battery (and I'll want two of them in that case), I'm probably looking at another $30 on top of the cost of the camera and a 16-32GB SD card.

So, poking around Amazon, I found the ZS8, which looks pretty similar, although it doesn't have the GPS tagging feature (which I'm not particularly interested in). It also shoots video in lower 720P resolutions, and that's not a big deal for me.

Amazon.com: Panasonic Lumix DMC-ZS8 14.1 MP Digital Camera with 16x Wide Angle Optical Image Stabilized Zoom and 3.0-Inch LCD (Black): Camera & Photo

Any thoughts on this one?

 

[RavingMac]

I'm not familiar with it and wasn't able to find any comprehensive reviews, but it looks like it should be a pretty good choice.
Again, though it would be a big plus even with a new camera if your wife became more aware of shutter speed and how to keep it at a reasonable speed to avoid blur.

 

[Doug b]

You might find this silly of me to say CWA, but I'd personally purchase the older DMC-ZS5 over the newer ZS8. Why? The only significant differences between the two is that the Z8 is 16x vs the Z5's 12 x (which is more than adequate for a zoom with a sensor that small) and that the Z8's focal range is 1mm wider.. Whooptee doo!

Setting that aside, the processing engine is the same yet they've decided to cram more MP on to the newer camera. This does not equate to better image quality. In fact... check out this excerpt from the review on the S5:

Sensor trick. Panasonic uses a neat trick in their pocket long-zoom digital cameras, that leads to better optical quality than would otherwise be the case. We've known about this for some time, but thought we'd take the time to make a graphic to showcase it with their most recent models. The essence of the "trick" is to deliberately give up a bit of the sensor area in exchange for better image quality and the ability to maintain a constant angle of view when changing apect ratios.

We first saw this in the TZ3, which we reviewed way back in July of 2007, albeit with a different, much lower-resolution sensor. This year they're using a 14.5-megapixel sensor in both the Panasonic ZS5 and ZS7, and cropping the raw sensor image to select just those portions of the frame that give the best corner quality and highest resolution for each aspect ratio.

The illustration at left shows how the camera's three aspect ratios are arranged on a nominally 4:3 aspect ratio sensor. While the ZS5's 4:3 ratio frame yields a 12-megapixel image that's 4,000 pixels wide, 3:2 is 4,176 pixels wide, and 16:9 is 4,320 pixels wide. As the width increases, the height decreases, so the distance from the center of the sensor to the corner of the frame remains the same.

When using a 4:3 sensor, most companies use the full width of the sensor for maximum resolution at 4:3, then just chop off the top and bottom of the image to get the other two sizes. (The illustration above assumes a 4:3 aspect ratio for the sensor itself, but the concept remains the same, regardless of sensor shape.)



Some might wonder why Panasonic doesn't just use the whole 14.5-megapixel sensor, as do their competitors: After all, it'd let them advertise a bigger megapixel number on their spec sheets. The answer is that geometric distortion, corner softness, and chromtic aberration all get worse, the further from the center of the lens you get.

At the edges of a lens' image circle, distortion and optical artifacts are often much worse than they are just a short distance closer to the center of the frame. As you can see above, a modest concession in megapixels lets images at all aspect ratios stay within the area of the lens' best performance.

Also, all three aspect ratios capture the same diagonal angle of view, meaning that you always get a 25mm equivalent image, regardless of which aspect ratio you're shooting with. In fact, in its Multi-aspect Mode, the Panasonic ZS5 captures all three aspect ratios at once, and you can choose which you like after the shot; another neat trick.

IMHO, the little gain you get with a longer optical zoom isn't worth degraded image quality. I think maybe your wife is ready to step it up though.. maybe next year you should surprise her with a nice entry level DSLR?

Doug

 

[Doug b]

Also, don't forget to do a search for some of the camera's you're considering on Flickr. And here's a site which is very useful in general.. though I've never looked at their digicam PnS section:

Pixel-Peeper.com
Full-size sample photos from fixed-lens digicams

Looking at their top rated PnS... It would be really hard to argue against that Panasonic LX3. I've used one and love it. Excellent image quality.. blows away the Canon s95 by far. It's really in a league of its own I think. Way surpasses the other Pani Lumix models you've been looking at. The zoom is really non existent, ( 2.5x optical) but unless that's a top priority, the extra money spent on the LX3 would be way worth it. There's an open box model at Compuplus.com for $299 (they've been around forever and have very good scores on resellerratings.com)

Heck.. Amazon even has the newer model, the LX5 used (from their own warehouse, no 3rd party) in very good condition for $412! I've dealt with Amazon a lot and trust them fully with their used items. The LX3 is selling for $299 used via 6th Ave Electronics, whom has also been around for a while. I know they have a few brick and mortar stores as well.

Doug

 

[TattooedMac]

My ex is a Professional Photographer and she is a Nikon all the way. From her old 35mm film to her Nikon D700. I ended up inheriting her Nikon D300s and when i asked her to recommend a P&S i was thinking ill have another Nikon in my stable.

NOOOOOOO she said. As with Doug, she steered me away from them. Where she did send me though was towards the Canon PowerShot A3200 IS and coundnt be Happier. This was also confirmed with the local Photography store where i bought it from.
Its 14Mega Pixels and that is way over the top for a point and shoot but it serves me well . .

Just my 2c

Cheers

 

[cwa107]

You might find this silly of me to say CWA, but I'd personally purchase the older DMC-ZS5 over the newer ZS8. Why? The only significant differences between the two is that the Z8 is 16x vs the Z5's 12 x (which is more than adequate for a zoom with a sensor that small) and that the Z8's focal range is 1mm wider.. Whooptee doo!

g

I like that price a lot better out on Amazon. I may do just that! Thanks for the tip, Doug.

 

[cwa107]

Well folks, the deed is done.

I was clicking around a bit this morning, and lo and behold, Best Buy (of all places) had a killer deal on the ZS8 - $224.99 on-sale. That's a full $40 cheaper than Amazon, and free shipping too (although I did have to pay tax).

Now, the wife and I did have a discussion on how to use the camera and why it might produce the kinds of undesirable effects she's been complaining about. Not sure how much of that sank in, but I think she may be coming around. Let's see how the new camera impacts those things as well.

We're going to Disney at the end of June, so we should be able to give it a thorough workout then.

Thanks for all of the input folks, much appreciated.

 

[Aptmunich]

I like that price a lot better out on Amazon. I may do just that! Thanks for the tip, Doug.

I had the Lumix TZ-3 (one of the ZSx predecessors) for years and loved it. It's a really nice camera…

It's not quite as pocketable as some other P&S models, but the zoom is so useful...

 

[RavingMac]

Congrats CWA. Hope the wife enjoys the new camera.

 

[Doug b]

If you don't post any sample images (the kind that your wife was having problems with before) I'm gonna be disappointed ! ! Congrats on the purchase. Seems a decent price.

Doug

 

[cwa107]

If you don't post any sample images (the kind that your wife was having problems with before) I'm gonna be disappointed ! ! Congrats on the purchase. Seems a decent price.

Doug

I would have already, but all of my wife's images are in Picassa on her machine, so its kind of a pain.

 

[Doug b]

If I'm not mistaken, it's fairly easy (even a wife can do it!) to upload photos from Picasa to Picasa Web albums. Excuses excuses...

Doug