eSnips Forums

I'm happy to see that this thread keeps moving along, slowly but surely.

There are so many easy to use cameras out there, for beginners and intermediate photographers.

My opinion, is that you don't need to start out with the most expensive camera until you learn all the ins and outs of what's been talked about, above.

I've been using a Kodak Z650, which for a near beginner, is probably more complex than I need, but it still offers the beginner "automatic" features that give results that are very pleasing. You can see many examples in my photo folders. It also has a video mode, but the only drawback with that, is that you cannot adjust the telephoto after start of recording the video. My only other complaint with this camera, is that for super macro [ intimately close up ] , I have a hard time getting the exact closeness I desire. But, to compensate, this cam offers a goodly amount of pixels [ 2832 x 2128 ] , which makes cropping a pic much easier and brings that "macro" effect to the forefront. Cropping too much, however, will always distort and "pixillate" an image, so caution must always be used before saving or changing an image.

I just ran across a new Kodak Z712, that is 7 mega-pixel, 12x Optical Zoom and has more internal features than the Z650. I'm drooling already and ready to sell my current cam so I can buy the newer one.

My dream is for a 10+ mega-pixel camera, with all the same features, including a higher optical zoom. The higher the optical zoom, the better the distant picture! Because, once you are moving out of optical zoom and into digital, your pics become much more "fuzzy" and you cannot enlarge or crop easily, without bring pixels into view.

OK.. enough from this side of the photo gallery for this thread. Looking for more comments. Might even start a "Camera Comparison" thread for everyone to share their views and experience with the cams they are using.

Pass the word around the photo community, to your "friends" and "favorites", that we all wish to encourage participation and input, in good positive ways, that will help even the novice understand what's going on in getting good photos.

Just to add to your comment on zoom I was in my local camera shop being served when I over heard an assistant telling a customer that she didn't want optical zoom what she wanted was digital zoom .

I had to tell is customer he was wrong

Digital zoom is all fine and good for bringing objects much closer. But you can look in my photos and tell which ones I've zoomed to the max.

Optical definitely is best to use for ALL photos, when possible. Until they decide to make a nice 35x optical digital cam, anyway. heh heh.

Digital zoom is useless, it's just blowing the image up without using the lens, which results in visibly pixelated images.

The quality of the lens is still the main issue with pocket cameras, some makes/cameras have much higher quality lenses than others which are important in terms of the sharpness of your photographs. The quality of the sensor is another main issue.

I have a Pentax K10D digital SLR which I'm very happy with.

One other thing: what camera you want depends on what you're going to try and shoot with it. If I had the money, I'd carry around a good quality pocket camera for street photography, big SLR's are just too obvious, and you don't need the quality of image than an SLR gives you so much in that area of photography. If you're shooting landscape/macro/action, it's worth using an SLR - remembering it's the lens quality that's the biggest factor in image quality, apart from the photographer of course!

Speaking of cameras, my Kodak Z560 finally died, after about 2600 or so pictures... and one good drop.

I ended up upgrading to a Canon S5IS and it's absolutely great. A bit more optical than the Kodak and it seems even the digital images at full zoom are much better. It's got a macro and super macro setting, which the kodak didn't really do near as well, with its regular macro feature.

I don't think I've posted any of my new pics here yet, though. Guess I should start uploading again one evening or day when I'm hurting too bad to do anything else.

One thing I've noted of late, is that there seem to be a few more people posting their own works.... which is much more enjoyable than checking out images stolen from all over the web.