Digital camera's....help?

[thegeckoteam]

Hi-

Up till now I've been borrowing my friends digital camera and I've gotten great pictures with it. Now, I'm looking into buying my own, but I'm confused. For my purposes of taking pictures of my leopard geckos (and my children also), what are the minimum requirements I should be looking for in a camera? There are so many & I really don't know what I need. I don't want to spend a fortune yet I don't want to waste money on something less expensive that I can't use. Any help would be appreciated. Thanks!!

[BrianB]

Your most important concern should be the camera's ability to render accurate color and a decent macro mode. There are a lot of reasonably priced cameras (150-300 dollar range or so) out there which will do just fine.

Some help reading those spec cards that they put on the cameras at the store:

Megapixels: The most important thing the megapixel rating tells you is how large of a high quality print you will be able to make out of the pictures you take. A 3.2 megapixel is going to make great pix up to letter size, a 2.x megapixel camera is going to be good up to about 5x7 size. You can go up to five, six, or even eight megapixels, but for most average applications, it's not really necessary.

When you look at zoom on a digital camera, ignore anything but the optical zoom number. Most snap shot type cameras are either the sort of compact type with 3x optical, which is fine for herps or kids, but not so good for stuff further away like sporting events or trips to the zoo. If you want to do more pics at longer range, you should look at an Optical zoom of at least 8x to 10x. The cameras with the larger optical zoom start about four hundred and up.

Be prepared to get some rechargeable batteries if the camera doesn't include them. Be sure to get a larger capacity memory card, b/c higher megapixel cameras will make much larger files.

Some decent brands are:

Kodak: Ease of use, good (IMO) color-rendering, some models have excellent macro.

Canon: Fairly easy to use, most models provide a good number of manual options, and the Powershot series (smaller cameras with 3x or so optical zoom) has a ring to put on attachable lenses and filters (a higher optical zoom lense is about a hundred bucks retail.) Better picture quality by most accounts than Kodak.

Olympus: Great optics, very nice picture quality.

Nikon: Coolpix line always good quality.

I'd suggest you head out to your local store (office supply stores are good) and play around with some, then take the little tickets they have on them home, or jot down the model numbers and prices, and do a search for reviews on the models you're interested in.

Ask about your retailer's return policy. Where I work, you get fourteen days, no restocking fee, and no questions asked on tech returns. So, you could buy one, take a bunch of pics with it, and if it doesn't perform as desired, you can simply swap it for another one of your choices.

A good site to look for user reviews and to buy from (good on returns but if you just don't like the product, you'll get hit with a restock fee) is www.newegg.com. The user base is pretty knowledgeable, and many of the reviews posted on the product listings are decent.

Hope that helps.

[thegeckoteam]

Hi Brian-

I thought this got buried and would never get answered. LOL I wanted to thank you for your post. I haven't purchased one yet, but you've given me more ideas! Thank you so much for taking the time to outline the different camera's for me.

[jenn_jeffery]

Another thing to keep in mind is if you live a good ways from your family, you may want a camera that can take short video clips. My family loves this, so they can watch my son in action. I don't like that my camera doesn't have sound to it though (Olympus c-4000) My sister has a Kodak Easyshare that has sound, but the sound is kinda crappy.

I agree with Brian though, go play with several cameras at a local store, or if you have Ritz Camera or Wolf Camera nearby, go there, as the staff will be much more knowledgeable than an office supply store. I would recommend buying from newegg.com or a similar place, as the camera will be a lot cheaper.

Good luck!

[Pug]

I'm looking to get a Nikon Coolpix 4100 as soon as I come up with some more money. I had wanted the cheapest one, but after I used the 4100 at a local store, it seems to have what I want. It is a good $100 over the 2XXX model, but with the extra features I don't really know how to use, it could be a better buy - probably only if I learn to use those "features". ;)

[MR_Jungle_Mist]

Laura-

Brian has given some great advice on digicams. Having gone through the whole digicam buying process and having had taken a lot of things into consideration, I actually based what I wanted to buy on my needs and what I wanted, period. I didn't care about megapixels, and e-mail-based picture taking, and all the special effects like b&w, negative, blah blah blah. What it came down to (and this was several year ago, keep in mind) was that I wanted to be able to have nice pictures to post on the internet, I wanted to be able to take close-ups, and wanted to be able to see the pictures I take so I had to have an LCD window.

I got exactly what I wanted and have been taking pictures that have come out exactly as I wanted since then. It was (is) a 1.3 megapixels which, today, is almost impossible to get, really and still the pictures come out very well. I think that Brian is right on the mark with Megapixels. 2 - 3 should serve you perfectly. If you want to print posters, then by all means get something with more megapixels!

As for the zoom....well, if you have to take a picture of an airplane flying at a high altitude, get a camera with a good zoom. If you are just taking pictures around the house, don't worry too much about it. If the item is too far away I have a simple solution: take a few steps closer. :D

Now....for your leopard gecko pictures. All you need is an inexpensive lens or two. We picked a pack of two lens up at....Circuit City, I think? It was less than $20 for both. One is a x7, the other is a x10. You can put them both together and get x17. They are made by Tiffen. Luckily enough for us the lens also fit our video camera!

I'm attaching two photos below. One is of a Juvie boa we have, the other is of her eye! I apologize for the general haziness, but the picture was taken through the side of her glass enclosure just now.

I just wanted to show how 'close up' you can get with two inexpensive lens.

Good luck with your purchase!

[MR_Jungle_Mist]

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