I am looking to buy a new digital camera less than $300. One of the main things that i am looking for is for it to be fast. Right now I have an old Nikon Coolpix 2100 and it takes way too long between the time when you click the button to when it takes the picture. We have a 3 month old at home and we would like to be able to actually catch some of his spontaneous moments. Can anyone give me any suggestions of a camera that would be good for me.
Thanks

 

Canon A610

Great price, manual settings, and quality. I bought it a few weeks ago and love taking pictures with it. It's the same thing as the A620 except it's 5megapixels instead of 7. Just get it with a fairly high speed SD card (I got a 80x 1gb SD card for $42), and it'll be instantaneous. It's also pretty cheap.

http://www2.buydig.com/shop/product....r&sku=CNPSA610

or

http://accessories.us.dell.com/sna/P...056&brandid=31

with 20% coupon.... SC?NG3MDV77447

= $200

 

Hello Sherman,

In addition to Canon A610, I also suggest Canon A620 and Canon S2 IS.
All three are excellent cameras with flip out LCD. All three will take pictures much faster than your current camera, but all three are physically bigger and heavier than Coolpix 2100. You can get both A610 and A620 under $300, but S2 will cost you over $300. (and a good 1GB SD card will cost you about $40/50) They all use 4 AA batteries and you might like them since your Coolpix also uses AA batteries. As mentioned by another member, major difference between 610 and 620 is addition of 2 more megapixels in 620. Major differences between 610 and 620 vs S2 IS are longer zoom and image stablization on S2. Many parents with young children prefer S2 for its long zoom factor. Parents also like S2, because they can take pictures of their infants/children without flash. Which means, longer exposure time and the image stabilization compensates hand shake.

With your criteria of price and fast operation, these 3 cameras are very good choices. If you are concerned about camera size and want to go compact, then canon SD series are good choices.

Also, if you are one of those people with need for the lastest gadget, all 3 mentioned cameras came out last year and updated models are coming in months. Actually, you can preorder them now online.

Nevertheless, I do agree with infants and children, you should just buy the camera now and take advantage of every moment instead of waiting for the latest model and later regretting about all those wonderful, especial moments you've missed.

Here's a link comparing your current camera to 3 mentioned above.
http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/comp..._s2is&show=all
If you have time, go to forums on http://www.dpreview.com so you can make the right choice. I know there are lot of parents in that forum with infants and children.

Anyhow happy SHOOTING with your new camera!

Alex

 

You can get the S2 IS from dell for $300 with coupons...

 

great advide. Thanks !!!! I do have one more questions. When looking at the specs for a camera, what am looking for when trying to figure out how fast it will take a picture? is it capture time? In the link that you provided, where would I find that stat?

 

Good place to read reviews and test results.

http://www.anandtech.com/digitalcameras/

 

or also www.dpreview.com they have good reviews, including start up time and how long it takes to snap a picture.

 

I have the Canon sd450, I can get it less than $300 for sure. great little camera, and has big screen. It also takes great indoor pictures..with flash.

 

canon's got great quality pics, but the build quality is total crap. I have canon camcorder that died after a little over a year, gone through 2 printers in 2 years and the s30 with dead pixels and fading picture quality (I guess after awhile, picture quality becomes less focused and color becomes bland - am I imagining this?

 

Hey Sherman,
If you want to know how fast those cameras can take a picture (not continuous shooting) then here are 2 links for A620 & S2 timing specs:
A620 timing specs
S2 timing specs
This site does not have a review for A610 so no timing specs for that.
Looking at those tables from the links, for shooting time you look at what they call a "Full-press Lag."
Assuming you have these two cameras turned on, for A620 it takes about 0.6 seconds to take a picture and for S2 it takes about 0.7 seconds to take a picture. (correct me if I'm wrong). I guess A610 time will be similar to A620 if not faster.

As mentioned by another member, dpreview site has a lot of these in-depth reviews on digital cameras so take a look at them. Here are some good sites for digital camera reviews. But more or less, most of these sites will concur with what's been said at dpreview.
- dcresource
- imaging-resource
- steves-digicams

Apexi350z talked about SD450. It is a very compact camera with fast operation specs: here's timing info.
This camera takes less than half a second for a picture. Although this is just my opinion, SD cameras are very fast and takes pretty good pictures. Some of the drawbacks of SD series, compared to A610/A620 and S2, are that you don't get manual controls and flash is weaker.

Again, this is my opinion but unlike what the previous poster said I believe Canon's build quality is good. However, it is true that now many other competitors are coming out with very innovative and quality cameras making hard for consumers to make brand decisions.

Since we're on the subject of quality, if you care A610 and A620 are made in China and S2 is made in Japan. My opinion on this is that it really doesn't matter.

Whichever camera you choose have fun!

Alex

 

Mannn! You had your camera for long time. I know many S30 owners switched to S70 and S80. But most S series owners, especially S30 owners love their camera, because it still takes great pictures after all these years.
Anyhow, you're not imagining about the out of focus pictures on S30. I heard about S series camera not focusing although I don't recall exact model. If i remember correctly, you might be able to solve that problem with firmware update.

Alex

 

I used to be an electronics sales assistant at office max for about 2 years and these guys are definately right about canon, it's the way to go for quality.

Another thing to take into account is how many megapixels you REALLY need. A lot of people have the misconception that more megapixels = better camera, but in many many cases more pixels arent necessary. If you aren't going to print anything more than a full 8.5x11 sheet of paper you don't need to go any higher than say a 5megapixel camera without losing quality. The average photographer prints 4x6s and for these you really only need 4 megapixels max.

 

Thanks for all the info, it is really helpful. You guys have sold me on a canon, now I just have to figure out which one. I am going to do some shopping around to check prices. I'll let you know what I end up with.

 

Basically, if you aren't going to use manual settings or really get into photography, it'd probably be better for you to go with the SD. It's faster and more compact. In your price range, I'd say go with the SD450. You should be able to get it for around $240 at Dell with coupons....i'll let you know if I find some

 

I have the Canon S2 and I love it. You can check out some pics I took.

https://my350z.com/forum/media-share/177595-after-claybar-photoshoot.html
https://my350z.com/forum/media-share/175295-new-pics-more-night-shots.html

I think I have the fastest speed card for SD but it takes picture really fast (w/o the flash of course) and the zoom on it is awesome. Video mode is also great, records 640x480 at 30fps.

 

The SD450 is one of the finalist for me right now. The other is A620. The S2 IS seems like a great camera, but would be more than I need. With the SD450 I like that fact that it is small, simple, and fast, but it doesn't seem to be much cheaper than the A620 which seems to have more features.

 

The SD450 has less features with similar price because it is smaller, thinner, and faster. If you're looking at the A620, just get the A610 instead. Like stated before, it's the same camera except 7MP instead of 5. I seriously doubt you'll ever need 7 megapixels, or even 5.

 

The higher megapixels do come in handy sometimes when you want to be able to zoom into a particular part of the picture.

 

Well I have made my choice. Slickdeals.net had a coupon to use on the A610 from Dell.com for $186. So that made my descision a little easier. I just placed my order. I apreciate all of the help from you guys.

 

Nice, I was about to post that. Also the SD500 for $244