Circa £200, not SLR but SLR like

[Mannginger]

Hi

After the demise of my old point and shoot camera (may still be able to get it fixed, but have thoughts of upgrading now that it's died) I have been looking at the bewildering range of options available.

I would like to get something with optical zoom, with a quick shutter time (my old camera was awful for this!) not too expensive (c.£200) I am still very amateur so I would like to have a camera that will effectively point and shoot but will also give me a few things to learn. (A lot of reading still required around this!)

I suspect that I may need an anti shake too as some of the pics from my old camera were blurred - although a lot of this could be down to the extremely slow focus/pic taking time. (Or too much alcohol Phil!)

These two cameras seem to have kind of what (I think) I am looking for, but I was wondering if any of you have any other ideas or opinions.

Fuji FinePix S5200
Kodak EasyShare P850

Many Thanks for your thoughts

Phil

[beano500]

Hmm - anything in the Panasonic Lumix range for your budget? Good points would include level of control, excellent lens including zoom range and generally excellent optics.......

[GetCarter]

Canon powershot S80 - very slightly over your budget, but wins all the reviews and has a very decent video function. Can also be st to semi and total manual, so you can use it in the same way as an SLR

[imperialism2024]

beano500 said:

Hmm - anything in the Panasonic Lumix range for your budget? Good points would include level of control, excellent lens including zoom range and generally excellent optics.......

I'll second that. For a high zoom, the DMC-FZ7 and DMC-FZ30 are amazing. I don't know what the UK prices for those cameras are, though. Here, the FZ7 retails for about $300-$350, the FZ30 for about $500.

I would stay away from Fujifilm cameras, as the lenses generally aren't nearly as good as Olympus and other brands, and they use the proprietary xD memory, which is also expensive and fragile.

The Kodak P850, if you can still find it, is a very nice camera that is also quite inexpensive. It's not quite as compact as most others... but the controls are well designed, image quality is above par, and overall it's in a very nice package.

[Furyous]

Ive got a Fuji S5500, and its not toob bad.Shutter lag for motorsport is probabaly its biggest fault, even shooting in burst mode its not that good.

Day to day stuff is fine, the 10x zoom is usefull.

Personally, I think that next year I will probably go for a Nikon d50/70, they are getting cheaper by the day.

[LongQ]

If you can push he budget to nearer 300 you could look at the Canon S3 IS which is worth every penny of the £287 that Purely Gadgets asks for it. The (35mm Equivalent) 37-432mm optical zoom is quite awesome to behold.

www.purelygadgets.co.uk/prodinfo2.php?prodid=1893&start=0&keyword=canon S3 IS&catsel=all

[imperialism2024]

A nice camera that you may or may not be able to find is the Canon Powershot A620; it has a 1/1.8" sensor (larger than most others), a swivel screen (1.8"-2" IIRC), and while only having a 4x optical zoom built in, it has the Canon adapter ring for teleconverters, etc. Was running about $250 last time I checked...

[GravelBen]

I've got a Fuji S5500 which is a good all-round camera, big zoom and less lag than some others I've used, but still enough to be annoying when shooting fast-moving targets. My biggest complaint with it is the fire-up time, by the time you switch it on and wait for it to wake up the opportunity has often passed by. I think the Panasonic range use Leica lenses which should be a good deal better optically than the Fuji stuff.

Nexy upgrade will be to a DSLR though rather than a regular digi, never realised how much better they are until I had a play with a mates D50 last weekend.

[robdickinson]

I went from a minolta A2 which is a pretty heftt decent prosumer digicam, 28-200mm fixed lens, reasonably quick, no lag for a digicam, to a 350d, serious improvement, not sure if the final results are much better (more my fault than its) but a lot nicer to use.

but you should be able to find an A2 or A200 used for that budget, decent cam.

[imperialism2024]

robdickinson said:

I went from a minolta A2 which is a pretty heftt decent prosumer digicam, 28-200mm fixed lens, reasonably quick, no lag for a digicam, to a 350d, serious improvement, not sure if the final results are much better (more my fault than its) but a lot nicer to use.

but you should be able to find an A2 or A200 used for that budget, decent cam.

I've found Minolta cameras to have great lenses, and overall decent cameras for great prices.

[colinjm]

We've recently bought a Panasonic Lumix FZ30 from Purelygadgets.co.uk.

To say i'm impressed is an understatement, it's absolutly fantastic. Unfortunatly, it's a bit over budget at £340+

As mentioned earlier though, I too have read very good things about the Lumix FZ7 in my research before buying the FZ30.

Now, i just need to learn how to use it.

[therossatron]

I'd recommend the Sony V1 or the newer V3 both excellent cameras with lots of SLR like features, manual Apature, shutter speed etc..

[te51cle]

imperialism2024 said:

I would stay away from Fujifilm cameras, as the lenses generally aren't nearly as good as Olympus and other brands, and they use the proprietary xD memory, which is also expensive and fragile.

Sorry, I'm going to have to disagree with that statement. No problem with lens quality on my E550 nor on the F10, their successors (E900 and F30) will be on par. I've won competitions against top quality SLR users including our club's annual print league with the E550 so no problems with quality. xD memory is more expensive but it is also smaller and lighter than the opposition and I've had no reliability problems with the memory.

[Imperialism2024]

therossatron said:

I'd recommend the Sony V1 or the newer V3 both excellent cameras with lots of SLR like features, manual Apature, shutter speed etc..

I had the V3 for about a month... great image quality and rather easy to use.

[andybuk99]

i use studio cameras all the time and i have been pressurised into buying the same sort of thing by SWMBO. i eventually went for a lumix fz7 for £242, superb camera and very nice images. people go on about noise at higher iso but i havent seen anything that cant be removed in software.

[imperialism2024]

andybuk99 said:

i use studio cameras all the time and i have been pressurised into buying the same sort of thing by SWMBO. i eventually went for a lumix fz7 for £242, superb camera and very nice images. people go on about noise at higher iso but i havent seen anything that cant be removed in software.

And you could just shoot at lower ISOs

[Mannginger]

Thanks for your thoughts folks.

Having tried out a few I have finally ordered this little lot:

Fuji Finepix S5600

Bundle deal including:

1GB XD Memory Card
Fast Battery Charger
4 * 2500Ah NimH Batteries
In Car Charger
Official Fuji Carry Case
USB Pocket Card Reader/Writer
Cleaning Kit
Mini Tripod

And a free pair of Optisan (who?) 8*21 Binoculars.

The total damage for this lot?

£243.99 (inlcuding £8 p&p)

From www.fotosense.co.uk

I'm very happy with the deal as I played with the camera in Currys and the camera alone was £200 in there (although recognise that there are a few free bits in the deal that will likely be fairly poor - the mini tripod and cleaning kit in particular)

I'm not an expert so I do think that this will represent a good step up in tools for me. I'll just have to see if I can get the results now!

For a pretty thorough review I found this site to be very helpful (www.cameras.co.uk/details/fuji-finepix-s5600.cfm), combined with many shorter, user reviews from countless other sites.

As my girlfriend chipped in £100 for my birthday I think I've managed to do fairly well to only fork out £150 for all of that. Especially when my old PoS Sony was more than that in the first place!

Thanks again for your comments

Phil

[GravelBen]

enjoy.

[JonRB]

I bought a Fuji S9500 recently but simply couldn't get on with the digital viewfinder and it's poor AF.

Took it back to the shop, got a full refund, and bought the Canon EOS 350D. However it was a lot more expensive, of course. Oops.

Incidentally, I have two 1Gb xD H-type cards that I bought for the Fuji and are now surpluss to requirements. Does anyone want to buy them off me?

[CarMac]

I've just bought the S9500 and I'm enjoying it so far. As posted in the other thread, I've also got the S5000 which I love to bits.

PM'd you about the cards.