Digital cameras: Best Image Quality on a Compact Digital Camera

Done some homework here

I went out one day and decided I was going to buy my first GOOD digital camera... To my surprise, just going to Best Buy or someplace else gave me more questions... I first saw an HP R725 I think was the one... Fell in love with the x24 total zoom and ease of use for the pan-o-rama shots ... Then I went home and GOOGLED it... Didn't like what I read... So I read some more and found that there were a number of things that were important and some that were not... Then I checked out cameras from the companies I would buy from… What I found were:

First You MUST know WHAT features you WANT... and
Second What features do you NEED...

I found that after a lot of research that I wanted a camera that would give me video w/ audio, multiple shooting modes, View finder, AA batteries, image/picture stabilization, 6 to 8 mega pixel, 4x to 6x optical zoom, ease of use (so my mom could use it on her trip to Hawaii), panoramic capability and good or excellent picture quality...

What I wound up with was the Canon Powershot A700 (the 710 IS wasn’t released yet and currently beats the 700 in most reviews)… For the price I found that it had all the features and a bit more than I wanted… I found that image stabilization really is not needed for anything at 6x optical zoom or less… Digital zoom makes things more fuzzy so optical zoom is far more important than digital…

The “A” 600 and 700 Series Powershots have a very nice feature that I am soon to take advantage of… They have a removable ring around the lens that allows you to put other lenses onto the body for different shooting needs…You can get a telephoto, wide angle and close-up lenses… Don’t see that on ANY other camera except the SLR’s…

It has the ability to modify the color characteristics of the shot right on camera… The video has several shooting screen sizes and frame speeds to choose from as well as a speaker for audio during playback…There are manual settings for shutter speed and aperture control (f-stops) as well as a custom setting…The Pan-o-rama shooting is so easy to do and then you just use the software on your PC to STITCH together the shoots you took (up to 26 frames wide)…

The proprietary battery really is a downfall for when the battery is dead, it’s done shooting and you need another $50 to $80 battery… With the AA batteries, get the high-end rechargeables (4 w/ charger @ $25) will last a good long time… And if you use them up you can still use regular AA’s found at any store, gas station or just about anywhere… The viewfinder shows about 85% of what the LCD screen shows and is linked to the optical zoom… What does this mean??? I can save my batteries by using the viewfinder as opposed to the LCD which really is only needed to review your pictures or setup the features you are using…

The A700 has good picture quality at 6 mega-pixel w/ a 6x optical… As with any digital there is some loss of quality on the digital zoom and at areas of high contrast… The A710I IS is also a wonderful choice and it was my first choice… But doing some more research showed me the only difference was 6.0 Vs. 7.1 mega-pixel… For the price difference that 1.1 difference was not worth it because only highly experienced photographers would notice the difference… Unless you are blowing the pictures up to the 4 foot by 6 foot size 90% of the people would be totally oblivious to that difference anyways even at 8”x10”… The only reason I regret not getting the 710 now is that it has an underwater housing and the 700 does not… I can get the A540 for a lot less with the same mega-pixel rating and 4x zoom and it’s the same camera otherwise and it has an available underwater housing…

Bottom line is that to get a good/ excellent quality picture you have to have good lenses first… But do some research into what you need and what you want… The Canon A 600 and 700 series will not disappoint but you still need to know what amount of barreling is acceptable at high zoom ranges and whether you frame to crop later… There are some good sites that you can check out that give great reviews… I checked 3 sites for every camera I looked at and made some deletions from my list based on those and even looked at better ones based on those reviews…

A few sites I tried:

http://www.steves-digicams.com

http://www.imaging-resource.com

http://www.letsgodigital.org/en/index.html

Although wordy, I hope this helps you, if not then someone else…