By John Kruger on Tuesday, August 07, 2001 - 07:41 am: Edit

What kind of digital camera do you have?

I am looking for a nice digital around $500. Any suggestions?

By RVR OVR (Tom) on Tuesday, August 07, 2001 - 08:02 am: Edit

John,

I purchased an HP Photosmart 618xi. I have been really pleased with it. It is only 363 at buy.com, but I am sure you can find it plenty of places for $500! It got good reviews on the epinions.com and other sites.

Link to buy.com: http://www.us.buy.com/retail/computers/product.asp?sku=10260176&loc=225

Link to Steve's Digicams with product reviews: http://steves-digicams.com/

One thing I recommend is at least a 2 camera. With this you can get up to 8x10's at photo quality. Also, an optical zoom is key. Digital zooms are pretty much useless as you can always enlarge using graphics tools on your computer instead.

Tom

By Dean Brown (Deanbrown3d) on Tuesday, August 07, 2001 - 08:19 am: Edit

John,

I have used FujiFilm MX2700 for 2+ years now. Its wonderful, and tough. 1800x1200. I recommed this brand.

Dean

By mike w on Tuesday, August 07, 2001 - 08:29 am: Edit

sony mavica 75, use a 3.5 floppy makes the downloads a snap and takes really good pics.

By MA on Tuesday, August 07, 2001 - 08:31 am: Edit

I use a camcorder(Sony DCRTRV-900) that has a digital camera built into it. It's good because you can video tape something and take pictures off your tape later. The film goes into a Sony Memory Stick, each stick can hold over 100 digital pictures. The quality is pretty good too.
It's a little pricy, but you get a camcorder and a digital camera in one unit.

By Blue Gill (Bluegill) on Tuesday, August 07, 2001 - 08:47 am: Edit

Kodak DC240 until it suddenly stopped working. This afternoon I'll find out how good the warranty is.

this looks cool:
http://www.cnn.com/2001/TECH/ptech/08/06/panasonic.camcorder.idg/index.html

By Brian on Tuesday, August 07, 2001 - 09:37 am: Edit

I like the Nikon coolpix line of cameras because of the available lenses and program features like A and S priority and macro mode. I have both the wide angle and fish eye(180deg+ FOV) lenses and they're awesome. They also have telephoto lenses as well. The 950 has been "obsoleted" by two models, i believe the 990 and 995, so you could probably get one around your price range. Check out ritzcamera.com and some of the new york "camera stores". I've dropped my 950 a couple times and it still performs great. I highly recommend it.

Here are some pics i took with both lenses. The fish eyes ones should be obvious. (pics by Brian Hong)

http://www.expeditionexchange.com/area51/

Brian

By Eric N (Grnrvr) on Tuesday, August 07, 2001 - 10:23 am: Edit

The issue that I have always had with these are that you can't get one that uses normal camera lenses unless you pay big bucks. I like being able to use my 400 telephoto lense. I like the Nikon D1X but, for almost $6,000 bucks there is no way I would buy it. I have a normal 35mm Minolta that I take the pictures with and then just scan them. Cost was around $400 for the camera and $200 for the scanner. I have bought a few extra lenses for it. If the prices would come down I would think about getting a digital one.

By gil on Tuesday, August 07, 2001 - 12:00 pm: Edit

i to shoot wit da DC240. what is it they say about great minds...

By Michel on Tuesday, August 07, 2001 - 12:22 pm: Edit

A friend bought a kodad add on for his palm pilot, just snaps in. < $200.

Michel

By Blue Gill (Bluegill) on Tuesday, August 07, 2001 - 12:33 pm: Edit

"great minds are named alike"

I ran about 1300 pictures through the Kodak until it went berzerk on me and then up & died. It could have something to do with dropping it on the ground several times and running it over with my 3.5 ton jack (those dazzling undercarriage photos - see what sacrifices I make for all of you?)...

It was purchased last Sept, so I'm assuming one year warranty should get me a knew one or free fix. If Office Max doesn't hook me up, you'll hear about it on CNN. Insane man drives Range Rover Discovery through store window. Hundreds killed. Police puzzled as to why someone would abuse such an expensive japanese luxury vehicle.

By Andy Nix (Andy) on Tuesday, August 07, 2001 - 12:54 pm: Edit

sony mavica. awesome, can record 1 minute movie onto floppy when my camcorder isn't around..

By Jon E. Yermo (Jon) on Tuesday, August 07, 2001 - 06:34 pm: Edit

I shoot with the Olympus Camedia. I'm an early adopter, so it's only 1.3 MP. The Hollister 3 and Erik Olson galleries were taken with this camera (middle resolution). My one complaint is the little door that protects the lens has to be shut to review picture you just took, and I've always had to correct a little green color out of the images in Photoshop.

If I could do it again...

• Some Sony Mavica cameras come with Carl Zeiss glass lens', just about the best optics you'll find. Now you can get them with Sony's Memory Stick in addition to the 3.5 floppy.

• Kodak Digital Science Cameras consistently get the best value marks from every mag I've read.

• Nikon Coolpix are supposed to be good, but I can't afford Nikon.

4 megapixel cameras come out this year, that'll leave 2 and 3MP (way more than adequate) for between $150 - $250 for best point and shoots by the holidays.

Most folks' browser / ISP / mail app. won't tolerate huge images anyway, so unless you're opening your own photo lab - what's the point of 20 billion pixels anyhow?

Cheers,

-Erik

By gp (Garrett) on Wednesday, August 08, 2001 - 02:29 am: Edit

Olympus D-600L

For personal and work use. I like that I don't have to run wires to my pc. Just pull out the card from the camera and insert into special floppy and your there.

Nice big screen and a kick ass zoom. A little big......but you know what they say.

Paid about $900 a few years back, but am assuming that they price is way down on these. Then again I assumed Scott Nicols would send me the Hella's too. When will it stop.........

By Bill Bettridge (Billb) on Wednesday, August 08, 2001 - 05:35 am: Edit

Nikon Coolpix 990 - great features/size/weight/screeen size - image quality is very good. The only thing I regret is not waiting longer - like any other electronics, they'll go up in quality and features and down in price

The new Olympus Camedia - 4.0 MP with a huge optical zoom is supposed to be the cat's ass.

Also coming way down in price is the professional level Canon - takes all Canon lenses. Last year about $3000 - this year $1050!

By Ho Chung (Ho) on Wednesday, August 08, 2001 - 05:45 am: Edit

hi john,
i get a lot of digital images from discoweb visitors, and among the many different pics, i prefer the ones from brian... he uses one of the nikon cameras.

another thing i look into is the memrory media...
floppies might be easy to manage and more universal, but the size is really limited.
i personally use the kodak DC280 and one of the things i liek about it is the flash memory card. it stores hundreds of pics on the 64 MB card and the transfer rate is real high.
good luck, and send us some pics for discoweb. cant' get enouhg of your yellow disco.

By Blue Gill (Bluegill) on Wednesday, August 08, 2001 - 07:22 am: Edit

I also have a Kodak DC280 (bought for work). The resolution choices are pretty funky with the DC280, though - my most recent pics were taken with the DC280 at best quality and standard resolution - ended up being 896x592 resolution. What the hell is that? I re-sized for upload to dweb, and quality suffers. Same quality/resolution choices on the DC240 yield the desired 640x480. Why don't they make one simple resolution choice menu with pixel categories? Guess that would make too much sense.

By Leslie N. Bright (Leslie) on Wednesday, August 08, 2001 - 08:18 am: Edit

We have a lot of different digital cameras here at work - Kodak, Sony, Nikon... My favorite is the Nikon 990; the only downside to it is that it devours batteries. I've been told by a few others that by switching to rechargables, I'll almost double the amount of pics taken per battery change. Really need to get the office to order some rechargables to try that for myself.

I have to admit, though, I'm partial to my Nikon at home, so I may pe prejudiced that way here at work. But, if the rechargables really do work out, I'll probably get one for home use, too.

-L

By Brian on Wednesday, August 08, 2001 - 10:43 am: Edit

For the most part, all digital cameras eat up batteries because of the LCD. If you have the option of turning it off like the coolpix cameras, it saves a considerable amount of power. Personally, i like to frame my pics with the LCD and opt to carry lots of extra batteries.

Brian

By Ho Chung (Ho) on Wednesday, August 08, 2001 - 08:07 pm: Edit

now, you all posting.. claiming you got digital camera.
put some new batteries in there and go snap me some disco pics for discoweb.

By Leslie N. Bright (Leslie) on Thursday, August 09, 2001 - 06:40 pm: Edit

Ho,

I've got some pics.... but they're just a plain-jane Disco sitting in a parking lot.... I've yet to figure out how to take pictures of me driving yet... but I DO take pictures WHILE driving (Hmmmm..... I need to dig out and scan those pics I took while driving around at the Uwharrie Safari... even reloaded the camera as I rolled along).

I reckon I'll snag it, bring it home, and take pictures of the Series and Disco together, at least make it more interesting.........

-L

By Ho Chung (Ho) on Thursday, August 09, 2001 - 07:58 pm: Edit

leslie, what we usually try to do is have a camera in each vehicle. this way, we end up with pics of each other and swap.

By Leslie N. Bright (Leslie) on Friday, August 10, 2001 - 09:13 am: Edit

Half my wheeling is at work w/ I'm out on a mine site by myself... it's kept me cautious on what I do, but it's also taught me how to get out of things by myself that I didn't realize that I shouldn't have gotten into until it was too late.

I'll snap bunches come MAR, tho'.....

-L

PS: I'll email ya one or two, anyway....

By lynden on Friday, August 10, 2001 - 12:55 pm: Edit

Blue gil, that's great... I'm sure the media would show a profound case of URS in such a situation.
lynden