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> it supports all these funky newb modes, including, I kid you not, FOOD MODE
So I clicked on that link out of curiosity, and found that it also has a BABY MODE!

Whee! The gadgets of today! ;>

Amen. A while back I bought a nice 8MP digicam, which kicks ass in most circumstances. Aperture, f-stop and focus are all on their own wheely knob, minimum dicking with menus, etc...it feels comfortably close to the good old Canon 35mm I grew up with. On the other hand, turn the wrong knob and it supports all these funky newb modes, including, I kid you not, FOOD MODE. According to TFM, it dicks with the color balance to specifically make pictures of food look tastier. FOOD MODE.

After reading TFA, consulting with several DSLR-owning friends, I just ordered a 6.3MP Fuji FinePix F30. One of the main selling points: ISO 3200 "at full resolution", and a remarkably low noise even at high ISOs. I considered the Canon SD800 IS, which provides image stabilization, but can't the the low-light tricks that the Fuji F30 can.

Fuji F30 + 1GB xD card = a hair under $300, and there's a $50 rebate, which you can use to buy a lens hood in the springtime when the rebate check arrives.

Anyway, ISO 3200 for under $300 ($250 if you believe in the rebate fairy) seemed like an excellent deal on a pretty good light-catcher.

-Mark

The newer 400d has most of the features of the 30d at a much lower price (and a few of its own, like the anti-dust). If you're a beginner it's a better buy.

However if you're an absolute beginner or don't use your camera often and don't need the features of an SLR, the compacts have never been better value. What you won't get out of a compact is fast shutter speed (if you're shooting anything moving quickly like wildlife or sports, go for the DSLR), light sensititivity. With the DSLR you don't get movie mode, and though beginners can take nice shots on auto mode in good conditions, there's a lot more to master.

One other thing to consider is availability of lenses, servicing and accessories. Nikon make good cameras but I've had awful service experiences from their agents. What's worse good lenses tend to be scarce compared to say Canon. The ergonomics of the Nikon are fantastic though.

Before you buy always check out the review sites (and their forums) for the latest info. Some of the best.

http://www.dpreview.com/
http://www.steves-digicams.com/
http://www.dcresource.com/

DSLRs are still a pricey investment when you consider total cost of ownership, accessories etc. Be aware the shutters don't last forever (a few tens of thousands of shots before you need a service). Also be aware that if you want to go pro, or take razor sharp pictures you're going to have to invest big money in glass , particularly for longer focal lengths (typically a few thousand dollars though you won't have to buy it all at once - I'm still using crappy consumer lenses for this reason). Bottom line is that there's no other kind of camera that is quite so versatile particularly for action/wildlife.

DSLR advantages:
- Very versatile, flexible
- Image quality fantastic with the right lens and once you learn to use the camera
- Must have for sports/action

DSLR disadvantages:
- Only one I'm aware of with a movie mode. Don't buy a DSLR if you want to do video clips
- Price (not just purchase price of camera, but accessories, maintenance)
- Not as light weight as some of the compacts

As some other comments have already touched upon this listing of the top 10 isn't that useful by itself. Its just a measure of what's 'popular' on one photo site, and nothing more. Perhaps if you could use this list to browse shots taken by those cameras it would be useful... which brings me to http://www.pbase.com/. PBase lets you search by camera model and then view all the photos stored on that site taken by the camera model you have chosen. This is incredibly useful in evaluating the quality of the output of cameras you may be considering.

Additionally if one is looking for a 'better' way to narrow down digital cameras during their research process you would be better served relying on a high quality review site. Here are the two best review sites I know of for digital cameras.
http://www.dpreview.com/
http://www.dcresource.com/

Actually not entirely true, the digital rebel is the EOS 300d, not the 350d, the 350d is the digital rebel xt.

There's a fast comparison of those two at dcresource
Basically 350 has a few improvements, it has more internal memory (hence 14 instead of shot bursts), it has usb 2.0 instead of 1.1, its just under 15% lighter and has a better battery, iaacte (i am a camera test engineer (at Phase One))

The Canon PowerShot S2 IS has this feature. It will take three shots at different focus points, and you can adjust how far apart the focus is. I own one, it's fantastic. To see some examples of what it can do, visit my Pacific Northwest picture page.

The same day that Katrina was nearing Louisiana, I got a picture of lightning from a feeder band in Jacksonville, Florida -- over 500 miles away. The picture was shot with a Canon Powershot S2 (albeit in video mode -- I cheated by extracting the single frame that had lightning).

there are quite a few reviews with pictures:
http://www.dcresource.com/reviews/sony/dsc_r1-revi ew/index.shtml
http://www.letsgodigital.org/html/review/sony/cybe rshot/dscr1.html
http://www.steves-digicams.com/2005_reviews/r1.htm l

This is the same idea as the FujiFilm S9000/S9500 i.e. a DSLR/compact hybrid.

About time? Seriously its pretty cool, except that canon cameras take compact.

Last I looked, Canon were not the only manufacturers of digital cameras - though I have no doubt the Canon fanboi's will argue they're the best.

The SD format is used in Palm devices as well as cameras from a variety of manufacturers (including Canon). There are also a few MP3 players which use it.

This is a good move on Sandisks part, and depending on capacity/price could effectively kill the market for "low" end flash drives.

For reviews:

http://imaging-resource.com/

http://steves-digicams.com/

http://dpreview.com/

http://dcresource.com/

All of these places have great and thorough reviews.

For those who don't want to go through the hassle of reviewing that much in depth information, My Product Advisor is a wonderful place to input fields of things you would like in a digital camera and then spits back cameras that match the closest. You can even say I like this camera, show me others like it. It's one of the best tools out there for users who are new to digital cameras and don't want to read a 10 page review.

http://www.myproductadvisor.com/mpa/camera/inputSu mmary.do

hope that helps someone out there.

Thinks he was first in posting a review.

His review is dated: Review posted on October 12 2004 16:38 GMT by Stuart Miles

Digicam Resource's review is dated: Originally posted: August 28, 2003

Steves-Digicams review is dated: Review posted 10/1/2004

It looks like stuart was third at best.

Check the pics in this review.

No matter that it's ceramic, the lens is still crap...

What will it take before we see a smallish digicam with a decent lens???

Are canon using CCD's now? they were using another type of capture sensor and I thought they went towards the better brands of CCDs for the rebel.

Right as far as dynamic range and noise are concerned. Wrong as far as "detail resolved" is concerned. A small 8 Mpixel sensor, given sufficient light, will resolve more detail than even the largest 4 Mpixel sensor. Furthermore, in particular for digital SLR sensors, you are better off taking the higher resolution and smaller pixels and removing noise in software than to limit yourself by an otherwise equivalent lower resolution sensor.

Foveon's images have not lived up to the hype in tests, and there is no reason to believe that they would. The Foveon sensor really does have 1/4 the spatial resolution of a regular CCD sensor. In return, it avoids some color artifacts and requires a bit less post-processing. But that turns out not to be a very good tradeoff.

I definitely disagree. Check out DP Review's review of the Sigma SD10 which uses the Foveon sensor. You'll see images from the Foveon sensor that have been upsampled to match those of a Canon dSLR. The Canon does appear to resolve a bit more detail, but remember that the Sigma's images have been "digitally zoomed" from 3.4 MP to 6.3MP.

As for Fujifilm's new sensors that are designed to improve dynamic range, compare one of the pictures here (try the one with a lot of window reflection) with another picture of the same subject. You'll see that in the shadowed areas you can resolve more light detail by using the Fuji. It's not a huge difference but it is one that some people will appreciate.

Right as far as dynamic range and noise are concerned. Wrong as far as "detail resolved" is concerned. A small 8 Mpixel sensor, given sufficient light, will resolve more detail than even the largest 4 Mpixel sensor. Furthermore, in particular for digital SLR sensors, you are better off taking the higher resolution and smaller pixels and removing noise in software than to limit yourself by an otherwise equivalent lower resolution sensor.

Foveon's images have not lived up to the hype in tests, and there is no reason to believe that they would. The Foveon sensor really does have 1/4 the spatial resolution of a regular CCD sensor. In return, it avoids some color artifacts and requires a bit less post-processing. But that turns out not to be a very good tradeoff.

I definitely disagree. Check out DP Review's review of the Sigma SD10 which uses the Foveon sensor. You'll see images from the Foveon sensor that have been upsampled to match those of a Canon dSLR. The Canon does appear to resolve a bit more detail, but remember that the Sigma's images have been "digitally zoomed" from 3.4 MP to 6.3MP.

As for Fujifilm's new sensors that are designed to improve dynamic range, compare one of the pictures here (try the one with a lot of window reflection) with another picture of the same subject. You'll see that in the shadowed areas you can resolve more light detail by using the Fuji. It's not a huge difference but it is one that some people will appreciate.

I'll vouch for the Sony Digital-8 cameras too. I picked up a DCR-TRV120 at the end of '01 from a fellow who'd barely used it. Included manual, cables, additional higher-capacity battery, camera bag, UV filter, and even a couple of tapes: US$436. eBay is a goodThing.

Good camera. Nowhere near as small as the lovely little MiniDV cameras out today, but for the price, hey -- the picture is brilliant over S-Video. It's got FireWire, and I've got iMovie. It's wonderful. Plenty of features, can do wide-format, yadda yadda. And the tapes aren't hard to find.

NightShot doesn't turn the dark into day, but it afforded me some good clear footage one night after a couple of cars collided on my streetcorner. And even without NightShot, having used it for iChat AV with a friend, I can say it's got better low-light performance than the iSight.

One thing that sold me on this one was the video pass-through conversion, so I can take analog video-in and stream it as DV to my computer. It's purportedly not as high-quality as a dedicated video converter, but again, for the price, I'm not complaining.

I have heard good reports about the Canon DV cameras as well.

As for web resources: My first stop for video-camera info is DVSpot, from the same fellow (Jeff Keller) who runs the Digital Camera Resource Page.

DCRP Review: Canon Digital Rebel

Steve's Digicams

Epinions

Digital Camera Resource Page

Digital Photography Review

CNet User Reviews

Google Search

I have a Toshiba PDR-M70 3 megapixel digicam. It allows one to manually control both the shutter speed and F-stop. It can leave the shutter open for up to a minute. It works pretty well, but the longer exposures do suffer from a bit of CCD noise.

Most other decent "prosumer" digicams can do the same thing. There are also digital SLR's like this 11 megapixel Canon EOS-1 DS that are simply incredible. Check out the sample photos (3.5MB JPEGs) to see what I'm taking about. It's better than (most) film!

I hope this is relevant to the current discussion.

Last year, I went to visit my grandmother and she shared with me many of the photographs that my grandfather took of my mom when she was growing up. My grandfather was a prosumer-level photographer, and pretty good at it. I really enjoyed the photographs, and I realized at that moment that I would like to be able to provide photographs like that for my grandchildren some day (I'm in my mid-20s at the moment).

I currently have a point-n-shoot camera, but it's so old and low-end that almost I'm embarrassed to use it. So, I plan on buying a digital camera within the next couple months (so far, so good). Digital cameras interest me as there's no cost to developing the "film", and the photographs can be easily distributed to friends and relative through my blog or even through e-mail.

However, my primary concern is in the longevity of the data. Sure, the bits themselves may last, but would CDRs be readable by computers 50 years from now? I mean, even disks from 20 years ago (such as an 8-inch floppy) may still have good data, but you'd have a hard time getting the data off it today (who has an 8-inch drive anymore?).

So, I see two options: I could either buy an analog camera in addition to the digital camera, or I could get prints made from my digital photographs. (Or, is there maybe a third option that I'm not seeing?)

Through some Google research, it looks like I can get digital prints made for about 30 to 40 cents each. And, that works out to about the same price-per-print as getting regular film developed. One downside to digital prints (from a longevity perspective), is that there's still no physical negative from which other prints could be made.

The other option, as I see it, would be to buy both a digital camera and an analog camera. The advantage, of course, is that I would have the negatives and physical prints from the analog camera (along with the convenience of a digital camera). However, by having two cameras, I'd have to either (1) take both cameras to an occasion or get-together or (2) take only one camera. Taking two seems a bit unwieldy, but taking only one would seem to defeat the purpose of having both (as I would get only digital or only analog photographs that way).

So, any ideas or suggestions? If I were to buy an analog camera (in addition to the digital), the Nikon N90 (or maybe F100, if I can find it used) looks like it would suit me well (that's the level of quality I'm aiming for). On the digital side, the one I've had my eye on is the Nikon Coolpix 5700. My guess is that its quality-level may not (?) match that of the aforementioned SLR, but digital SLRs are just too expensive for me at the moment (about $2000, and that's without a lens).

I'd be interested in hearing how other Slashdotters have coped with digital's "posterity problem". I'd also be interested as to what digicams may be equivalent to something like Nikon's N90 or F100 (I'm not as concerned with the megapixel or resolution comparison between digital and analog, but straight photographic accuracy and quality of the two).

I hope this is relevant to the current discussion.

Last year, I went to visit my grandmother and she shared with me many of the photographs that my grandfather took of my mom when she was growing up. My grandfather was a prosumer-level photographer, and pretty good at it. I really enjoyed the photographs, and I realized at that moment that I would like to be able to provide photographs like that for my grandchildren some day (I'm in my mid-20s at the moment).

I currently have a point-n-shoot camera, but it's so old and low-end that almost I'm embarrassed to use it. So, I plan on buying a digital camera within the next couple months (so far, so good). Digital cameras interest me as there's no cost to developing the "film", and the photographs can be easily distributed to friends and relative through my blog or even through e-mail.

However, my primary concern is in the longevity of the data. Sure, the bits themselves may last, but would CDRs be readable by computers 50 years from now? I mean, even disks from 20 years ago (such as an 8-inch floppy) may still have good data, but you'd have a hard time getting the data off it today (who has an 8-inch drive anymore?).

So, I see two options: I could either buy an analog camera in addition to the digital camera, or I could get prints made from my digital photographs. (Or, is there maybe a third option that I'm not seeing?)

Through some Google research, it looks like I can get digital prints made for about 30 to 40 cents each. And, that works out to about the same price-per-print as getting regular film developed. One downside to digital prints (from a longevity perspective), is that there's still no physical negative from which other prints could be made.

The other option, as I see it, would be to buy both a digital camera and an analog camera. The advantage, of course, is that I would have the negatives and physical prints from the analog camera (along with the convenience of a digital camera). However, by having two cameras, I'd have to either (1) take both cameras to an occasion or get-together or (2) take only one camera. Taking two seems a bit unwieldy, but taking only one would seem to defeat the purpose of having both (as I would get only digital or only analog photographs that way).

So, any ideas or suggestions? If I were to buy an analog camera (in addition to the digital), the Nikon N90 (or maybe F100, if I can find it used) looks like it would suit me well (that's the level of quality I'm aiming for). On the digital side, the one I've had my eye on is the Nikon Coolpix 5700. My guess is that its quality-level may not (?) match that of the aforementioned SLR, but digital SLRs are just too expensive for me at the moment (about $2000, and that's without a lens).

I'd be interested in hearing how other Slashdotters have coped with digital's "posterity problem". I'd also be interested as to what digicams may be equivalent to something like Nikon's N90 or F100 (I'm not as concerned with the megapixel or resolution comparison between digital and analog, but straight photographic accuracy and quality of the two).

i usually read digital camera reviews at dc resource

but looks like he didnt put it up yet, but this link may be useful too... ::aky

p.s. just curious, how do i put up a link on /. so that it opens in another new windows, tried that bfore(target didnt work)..couldnt make it work, it would be so cool if i could.

Ditigal Camera Resource isn't too bad, either.

If you're interested, there are a few reviews here, here and here which influenced my decision.

I love my 602 and certainly wouldn't have gone for anything else - if you've got any questions feel free to give me a shout.

• Low noise, higher quality
  
• Lower light sensitivity due to bigger amount of sensors per pixel (no big ugly photodiodes)
  
• Much lower power consumption (around 1% of a CCD sensor)
  
• Easy fabrication process, since it's all about transistors
  

Take a look at this site. It has an interactive buyers' guide of sorts that lets you pick the features you find important and spits back the camera(s) that do what you want.

~Philly

Let me guess, you're trying to use alkalines in your digital camera, right? If so, then don't blame the batteries for your mistake. With decent (1400-1600mAH) NiMH batteries you can usually get at least an hour or two of continuous use out of most digital cameras. When they run down, you just swap them out and recharge them. Two sets of batteries and a good charger (like the Maha C204F) can easily meet your power needs with a digital camera for about 500 charges each. In my experience, the Microdrive has had very little impact on battery life - I can still get between 50 and 100 pictures with the LCD on continuously and normal flash, zoom, and autofocus use. For batteries and chargers, go to Thomas Distributing. You may also want to look at the Batteries message board at the Digital Camera Resource Page or Andy Baird's batteries page.

The Nikon Coolpix has a viewfinder that rotates independent of the lens/body. And the Coolpix (now up to the 990, 3MegaPix) is pretty consistently rated one of the best by digicam users. See DCResource for more info.

I have to second the motion for the Digital Camera Resource!

I knew very little about cameras and especially digital cameras. Every camera seemed to boast about a different feature, until I didn't know what was important for me to consider. This site asked me questions, explained the pros and cons of various features, narrowed it down through comparisons and finally gave me a list of cameras. I read the consumer reviews and looked at the professional image comparisions that were linked to from the site.

In the end, I picked the Casio QV2000 with the IBM microdrive and I'm very happy with it, as is my friend who went through a similar process at dcresource.com and chose the Casio. It certainly made me feel better about spending that much money - I was confident that I'd chosen a camera that would meet my needs (and surpassed them in a couple areas - it can go completely manual, if I want and does mpegs).

I think it is clear that your choice in cameras depends on several quantifiable aspects, like price and storage medium, and harder-to-quantify aspects like battery life (this varies widely between users) and image quality.

The two best review sites I've seen are the Digital Camera Resource and the Imaging Resource. The former has shorter reviews and better reader comments, while the latter has very comprehensive reviews and image comparisons.

I typically use the Digital Camera resource to narrow down the search, and then use the Imaging Resource to compare image quality. Imaging Resrouce also measures how long between pressing the shutter release and when the picture is taken, something I think is important to consider if you photograph moving subjects.

I've bought/helped buy 4 cameras in the last couple years. For myself I have a Kodak DC-260, and I've suggested one Nikon Coolpix 950, a Kodak DC-215, and a Kodak DC-280. The Kodak cameras I've mentioned here all have amazing image quality, and the DC-215 is rather inexpensive as it is old and produces 1152x864 images. The Nikon also takes great pictures, and has a lot of features. I think all of these cameras work fine with linux, my DC-260 certainly does. These cameras were bought at different times with different people's needs in mind. A friend has an Olympus D-340L, which takes good pictures (though it's color saturation isn't as good as the Kodaks') and is fabulous indoors without a flash (something the Kodaks aren't very good at). Note that the Kodak's aren't known for rapid picture-taking ability.

The Casio 2000UX lost to the DC-280 on image quality, but it had an interesting feature set. The Coolpix 950 beat the Kodak DC-265 in features, and had comparable image quality. The DC-215 beat the comparable Olympus cameras on price, and especially beat the Olympus D-400, which has complaints about lack of lavender hues. I've never liked the image quality on Sony's older cameras, and I think the floppy disks are too small or else the lossy image compression is too aggressive (don't know which).

Memory format isn't that big of an issue, and neither is USB capability, because of dedicated card readers. Time between shutter release and the picture being taken will affect every picture you take. Low-light ability may be important to you. Image quality reigns supreme for me, and is an area where Kodak does well (except perhaps the DC-240). Point-and-click versus configurable f-stops, etc, will make a difference for some people. And if you've got $5000 to blow, check out the high end 6 megapixel SLR digital cameras from Kodak!

One last bit of advice--try to get a 'satisfaction guaranteed' return policy. If the camera's pictures come out a little to red, is that a defect? Better safe than sorry.