digital cameras

hi

I bought a cheap digital camera about 18 months ago for I think £50 from currys and it was absolute crap - the batteries died within 10 minutes!!

I took it back, and never got another digital camera.

I now really do need a cheap digi camera. Its only for selling things on e-bay (so I guess close-ups in not very good light are what Im after?), but I might like something thats going to give good resolution for holiday snaps too.

I've been browsing e-bay, and have been just blown away by what you can get for less than £50. Trouble is, its not my hobby (photography) and I cant spot a lemon from a bargain. Here's a few links - what do the photographers amongst you think would be a good bet (if any).

Budget - as little as I can possibly get away with

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/3-1MP-16MB-1-...545390788QQcategoryZ31388QQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/Goodmans-G-Sh...544133581QQcategoryZ30005QQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/DIGITAL-CAMER...545813466QQcategoryZ97007QQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/FUJI-FUJIFILM...545401731QQcategoryZ30005QQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

what do people think would make a good second hand/new buy?

cheers
chris

 

No contest you have to thave the Fuji, I've owned 2 Fuji cameras and have never had a problem with them, other than maybe they're a bit easy to break, but that's me being clumbsy. I've bought 2 other camera's in my time a Kodak 3MP digial camera (dx3700), the biggest pile of # I've ever brought took about 2 minutes to take a photo and you'd only get 2 shots out of the batteries before they died, the 2nd was the next biggest pile of # I've had the miss fortune to own, the Nikon Coolpix 4100, small, light, but again takes AGES to take a photo, honestly I could draw it faster, utterly terrible. so goes to show that even paying good money for a digital doesn't mean its any good.

 

Of the ones in your list it's the Fuji - no contest. The rest look like a bunch of cr@p. OTOH, since you're in the mobile phone business, the SonyEricsson K750i has a 2mp camera that will rival lower end "proper" digicams...I have one and think it's absolutlely the dogs danglies (bloody excellent as a phone as well).

Obviously a lot more than £50 but if you were going to upgrade your phone...

Michael.

 

Yep another vote for Fuji here, this what £90 in 2004 could get you (Fuji) the zoom lens are also handy.



This image is much smaller than the original as well.

Mine is the A210 which is the same but 3 megapixels. Also that image is heavily compressed the original is sharper but is more than 1mb in size.

 

Make sure you note the p+p costs! Some of them seem quite high.

The fuji's the one I'd be tempted MOst by. It's the only one with optical zoom.

 

Interesting comment there Michael. I've just recently acquired myself a K750i and whilst I'm really impressed with all the functional upgrades over the K700i I had previously, I'm rather disappointed with the camera overall! I get a lot of grain and picture noise, I wonder if I have a defective example.

Sorry about the hi-jack of your thread Chris.

I'm looking to replace the ancient Canon Powershot S20 that I currently have. It's built like a tank but is a bit bulkier than I'd like and doesn't last very long on a fully charge battery either. Was thinking of treating myself to one of the lastest Canon Ixus cameras, but the photo AT posted up looks very impressive and does beg the question why spend more. I only need a point and shoot jobby probably much like what Chris is after.

 

thanks

nb if anyone's got an old one kicking about in a drawer that they want less than £30 for, let me know.. maybe something that was £80-£100 a few years ago, but is still ok?

chris

 

i have a fuji finepix s7000 and am thrilled with it. it is fantastic.

 

I've got a Fuji FinePix S5500 (now discontinued) and am very impressed. £200 got me 4 megapixels, 10x optiocal zoom and also the ability to play with film/shutter speeds if the mood takes me. A pity you can't get them anymore.

 

Got a Fuji 2MP 2400 Zoom, its about 3 years old, takes 4x AA batteries, has 3 x Optical zoom, take smartmedia cards, I'll chuck a 32mb card in, heck think I even has a reader somewhere, if you cover the postage cost, its yours!

The only problem is the lens cover is supposed to click open and close, it doesn't, but that's its only flaw.

Was going to punt it on ebay, but can't really be bothered!

Got an old 1.3 Megapixel job kicking around somewhere too, what are we supposed to do with this old technology feels wrong just chucking it in the bin.

 

Thanks Lee! Very kind of you sir!!

I'll take either of them off your hands (but not both, thats just greedy!)

I'll PM you my details.

Tell you what, if you tell me a couple of CD's you were thinking about buying, I'll order them for you on Amazon as a trade

Howzat?



Chris

 

No worries Chris, PM received, I'd rather someone got some use out of it, rather than me chucking it in the bin, seems a waste.
I'll collect all the bits together and find soemthing to ship it in, can't see if being more than £8 postage, never sure these days, anyway I'll get it sent and let you know.

As for CD's ya great idea thanks, though there is a great deal of good music around at the moment, if you'd asked me last year I could have rolled 10 cd's off the top of my head, lots of new bands around then, but don't see a lot happening this year, don't know what happaned. So I'm going to struggle to think of 2 but I'm sure my mates will help me out!

(See I'm not always a grumpy old sod! hehe :lol: )

 

My mums got an nice old fashioned Fuji 1300 (1.3 megapixel) it eats battery life and needs 4 of them damn things, the files are also very large compared to my A210.

Still its probably better than a lot of the cheap new cameras from Korean companies.

 

yeah, I had an old fujufilm finepix a201 - was my first digi camera - it was great too...but you have to use rechargable batterys, even new duracell ones only last about 10 minutes...

 

That's odd. It's not brilliant in low light conditions where you'll get a lot of noise but when the light is good it's very good indeed. In low light conditions you can try using "night mode" which just reduces the shutter speed - often to levels that make camera shake inevitable unfortunately - but I've used it to good effect before.

Check out the K750i shots on pbase.com (refresh the page to generate new random selection) for what it can do.

Michael.

 

OK, maybe I'll take back what I said about the camera on the K750i!

Still very hard to get decent indoor shots unless there's plenty of extremely bright lighting around (as is the case with any digital camera I've yet used), even with night node turned on.

I've just been suitably impressed with some of the pics I took whilst away over the last bank holiday weekend, these all come from my own phone so yeah, great with outdoor/very good lighting situations (size reduced by 50%):

 

I've lost my digital camera I lost it when I went camping So I will be in the market for a new sub £100 once I have managed to save up enough, should only take me 3-4 weeks.