New camera's

[x.l.r.8]

So I know some of you got digital camera's for Christmas, what did you get and how are you getting on with it, I have my eye on the fuji f30 or f31fd just because of the high ISO and good white balance and some manual controls, the higher ISO means it will take in lots of light and be great for point and shoot action shots, the other 2 I have on the back burner are Canon SD800 IS and the Panasonic FX50. I want to keep to my $500 budget and the Fuji fits that best. But I'm open to recommendations. P.S. it HAS to be Mac friendly.

[Prin]

the higher ISO means it will take in lots of light and be great for point and shoot action shots

It also means that your pics will be grainy.. Ideally, you want the ISO to be adjustable, so you can have it low for quality shots, and high for situations where you have low light and can't do anything about it.

What really does help with light is the aperture maximum. An f2.8 camera will let in more light than an f4.5, because the largest "hole" in the lens is bigger in the 2.8 than in the 4.5, but it will also cost more.

[jiorji]

aren't all cameras mac friendly??I thought they all have both systems available when you install the driver.


I never had a fuji. I prefer Canon Umm I have no advice without sounding "stuck up" hehe. I used to work in a photo place and I wouldn't recommend a camera anything below 5 mpixels...and nothing that isn't point-and-shoot You just get more options that way. Or get a point and shoot with a Manual setting and a movie setting. My SLR wont' do movies :sad:

good luck on your camera hunt. And i'd stay away from any camera that takes AA batteries. Those drain out WAY too fast

[jiorji]

Originally Posted by Prin

An f2.8 camera will let in more light than an f4.5, because the largest "hole" in the lens is bigger in the 2.8 than in the 4.5, but it will also cost more.

when it's point and shoot you don't get much choice. I think most are pre set with apperture, unless there's a MAnual setting, but even then very limitted

[Prin]

Yeah, but you can still choose the biggest you can... Like if you have to choose between a max 5.6 and a 4.0... I just wanted to show that it was more important than the ISO (because upping the ISO lowers the photo quality...).

[jiorji]

oh and NO DIGITAL ZOOM!! Digital zoom is the crappiest thing you can ever get with your camera. I finally got through to my dad explaining what that does and why those digital zoom shots come out so darn grainy hehe

[Prin]

What does it do and why are they grainy?

[jiorji]

digital zoom(for those who don't know) is just a built in cropping device your camera does. So you have bad low res pictures cropped to a small dot and that enlarged to a regular picture size, which means the pixels get stretched even more and they get pixelated.

And then you go to print your photos at the photo place and yell at the poor lab person(that was me) for printing horrible grainy pictures of some small bird you saw in a tree. ANd then the lab guy/girl tries to explain for 3 hours that it's not his fault for printing crappy pics, it's the way the camera took the shot that's at fault.

[BEDPhoto]

<-- slave to Nikon

I bought myself a d80 for the holidays... pricey but I figured I've resisted going digital for so long if i was going to do it I was going all the way.

10.2 mpix .. I have to learn photoshop better to get things resized because they end up way too big to post

[Prin]

www.photobucket.com works well too.

[technodoll]

I've yet to do a d*mn thing with the nikon d80 i got for christmas :sad: too lazy to learn it and it's too cold to take it outside and get going... inside photos always require the flash (i live in a dark place LOL) so that's just useless. so i have no idea if it's a good camera or not.

frankly... point and shoot rocks for people like me

[Prin]

I keep telling you to come visit me and we can have a shoot fest. Go outside for some target practice.

[technodoll]

waaaaaaaah it's too coooold!! but yeah you're right... maybe i can bribe you to come downtown someday for multi-purposes... meet the beanies, show me what all those buttons on the camera are for, take pics of the beanies, let me make you some bean soup.... poor thing... been sitting in its case for weeks now :sad:

ps: i have a huge chocolate mousse cake in the freezer right now... my chef friend went nuts again! (bribe... bribe....)

[Prin]

Oooo mousse? Does it come with a recipe?

[technodoll]

i could ask for the recipe he makes it so often that "il le fait par coeur". soooo goood... 3 layers of chocolatey goodness...

OH i'm so sorry for the threadjack. back to cameras!

[Prin]

I told my man yesterday that I really need to learn to make mousse... It's my fave. It's probably the only thing that kept me alive when I was an anorexic over-trained snowboarder.

[BEDPhoto]

You wont have that much trouble getting started with the d80. The auto-settings for 'portrait' 'landscape' 'fast speed' are really good to get going with.

I have a 1gig card and it holds almost 300 pictures so you can kinda go nuts and shoot and shoot and shoot and youll get good shots!

Its a phenominal piece of equipment, and the ability to take shots then just pop the sd card into the computer and see / manipulate / post within minutes is a godsend to an oldschool n50 user.

My only complaint is that the pictures are TOO big. Thats an odd complaint I know but it means I have to resize to post to my website.

I wont self-promote here but will put my site on my profile if you want to see examples. (if this is considered self-promotion, I apologize and welcome a retraction from the board administrators /bow)