[gabriella]

Hi you guys

I am wating to buy my hubby a digital camera for his birthday in August. I don't know what to look for. I don't want to spend fortunes.

Now guys (in simple terms please)

What should I look for, where should I get it from. I guess budget of £200-£300 would be what I can afford?

I am sure people will have ideas and be able to help. My hubby had a dire birthday last year as his dad died on the same day and I would like to make this one a bit better for him.

Waiting in anticipation with the old credit card at the ready!!!

Gabriella xx

[muckshifter]

My first piece of advice is … do not go to a “computer shop”, nay indeed go to a Camera Shop instead. A good shop will allow you to “play” with the camera AND point out how to use it.

What ever make or model you go for, make sure you have ALL the EXTRAS your ever going to need and are included in the price … enough memory, a battery re-charger (thrown in for free is nice), mains adapter, software & cables, David Bailey.

Next I wouldn’t do anything until I run it past Quad first, I made that mistake once and Nettie (my wife) wishes she had her old one back.

good luck

[gabriella]

Thanks Mucks

Dear Quad, please can you share the benefit of your wisdom and knowledge with me?

If there's a specific model/make you think would be good, just say the word. Please let me know what extras/things are a must to go with it. I would hate to make some dire mistake!!

Thanks

Gabriella x

[floppybootstomp]

I’ve had a Canon A40 for almost two years now and I’ve been very happy with it. 2 megapixel and it’s switchable between auto and fully manual. It was about £230.00 then but you can get it’s superior successor, the A70, for around £170.00 now.

I’ve been thinking about upgrading to the Canon A80 a 4 megapixel model.

The A80 is currently around £210.00, here’s a site picked at random from Google giving a price
A80

Here’s a link to site with lots of camera reviews: Steve’s Digicams

As Mucks said, consider the price of media, mine takes compact flash cards, I have 3 x 64Mb cards and haven’t ever needed more, The price is quite reasonable atm, a 256Mb card costing £29.36 from Crucial UK inc. p & p.

If you’re after small, the canon is not for you, but imo it’s well built and I can take in excess of 130 full res pictures using a set of rechargeable Nimh batteries. A charger and four batteries cost me £16.00 from Office World and I’ve since bought a second set of 4 x AA cells.

So, consider cost of batteries/charger; media to store pix and a case. And fyi a 64Mb card holds around 115 full res pictures.

And I liked the Canon software, pix download to computer via USB cable.

I can recommend Canon, purely on my experience with them and the fact that on another Forum I attend, just about the whole membership has bought one and are all happy with them. But there again, I’m no expert, far from it.

Here’s a thread showing a few snaps I took with my A40 last year. All were taken just ‘pointing and shooting’ I was too inebriated most of the time to work the manual mode

Glastonbury 2003 (warning – many large pix & one cuss word).

[Quadophile]

Originally Posted by gabriella

Thanks Mucks

Dear Quad, please can you share the benefit of your wisdom and knowledge with me?

If there's a specific model/make you think would be good, just say the word. Please let me know what extras/things are a must to go with it. I would hate to make some dire mistake!!

Thanks

Gabriella x

Gabriella,

Mucks is very kind but he always mentions about Nettie's camera and I feel bad about it that I was not able to help, in future I am hoping he would ask for my humble advise and he knows I will be more than happy to help him out with a bit of "googling"

After carefully considering your requirements (being a gift and a reasonable budget) I did some research and came up with following proposal for you.

I would start with Nikon 5200 camera and a 256 MB Secure digital card, a case to hold the camera and a spare battery. All you need to do is to find out which outlet gives it to you for £300 or thereabouts.

I did a search and found one place selling it at £257 and about £37 for the card which in total comes to £294. A spare battery would not cost too much I am sure. I will check the price of the battery later and let you know.

However, I have noted that the newer digital camera's are very energy efficeient and can take many pictures with a single charge. This camera takes 150 frames with the supplied battery on each full charge (as per maker's claim), so I suppose the additional battery is not as important as it used to be a couple of years ago when the camera's were power hungry. I also checked real world battery life and and according to one reviewer the max shots he was able to take in an afternoon were 80 with flash being used 25% of the time and LCD being used 100% of the time. I guess this works out to be similar to the claim of the manufacturer. Nonetheless, the battery can always be added later at a small price if needed and when one is on a trip abroad. It would be your own decision, I have provided you here enough information to help you make up your mind.

In case you decide to buy the camera and a memory card you are well within your budget. The memory card to go with this should be ideally "Sandisk" or "Lexar" of a capacity equal to 256 MB. These two brands are very reliable in my opinion.

Here is the link I found:

Nikon Coolpix 5200

Let me know what you think about this particular model. Your initial comments about it would really be nice.

I am not sure if you will prefer to buy online or from an outlet. It really depends on the price you can get from the outlet. If more than Amazon, you are better off buying online.

[gabriella]

Dear Quad

The camera looks lovely, I have found loads of sites with the camera for sale - which one to go for I wonder? Do I order the memory card separately?

Thank you so much for your help Quad.

Gabriella x

[muckshifter]

You'll find any camera will come with a memory card that will allow you to take pictures, however, you will need a bigger extra card, as the one supplied will be "just enough" to take a few pics.

I see the Nikon only seems to come with 12Mb built-in memory so you really are going to need at least one decent size card, 256 would be my recommendation, two if they're cheap enough.

[Quadophile]

Originally Posted by gabriella

Dear Quad

The camera looks lovely, I have found loads of sites with the camera for sale - which one to go for I wonder? Do I order the memory card separately?

Thank you so much for your help Quad.

Gabriella x

Yes you will need to order the card for it separately as already mentioned in my post. You also will need to decide on a soft case which according to my checking you can buy one for as little as £10 and some at slightly higher prices. If you go for the original case from Nikon they are a bit drearer at around £20-30.

You will need to decide on a reliable site not necessarily the cheapest. Amazon may be slightly expensive comepared to some but I find them to be very reliable as I do a lot of shopping there for my needs.

Is it not possible to check the outlets in your area if you have time? Sometimes the outlets have good deals also. You need to get them to bundle with the camera a 256 MB card and a pouch.

Can you tell me when is the birthday? This way we know if we have time to search a bit before finally deciding.

Anis

[Quadophile]

Gabriella,

I did a price scan within UK and the lowest price quoted on the web is £252.99, therefore if I were you I would be more than happy placing my order to Amazon since I know that they are very reliable source and promt in delivery as well. I doubt you will get any lower price in the stores. Stores generally are a bit more dearer compared to online shopping. But there are exceptions.

Anyway, this is a really good camera to go for, I personally was very impressed because it has a very high quality lens, Its crisp a a crackerand having very low distortion. I always consider this aspect of the camera when confronted with a buying decision. Quality is always in on top of my agenda. The other thing different in Nikon camera's is that they have the best close focusing capability compared to all other brands, Nikon have a terrific reputation when it comes to Macro Photography and they never disappoint in this area.

I probably sound as if I work for Nikon but you know I don't, I just hope that you spend your money well.

[gabriella]

Dear Quad

It's sold to me mate!!! It looks luvverly as well - the birthday is 23 August but we are on hols so need to buy b4 11 August to hide in the suitcase and hopefully make a special day for hubby. Last year was just so dreadful. He came home on the train to be with his dad who was taken quite ill and then died on hubby's birthday, I stayed in Cornwall (450 miles from home) with the children and had a very long and lonely and tearful drive through the night with the children when we got the news. It was just awful. It was also bad because we had just bought a 7 seater people carrier that I have never liked driving and I had no-one to share the driving with. Anyhow, we got home and the res is history.

Thank you so very much for your kind help.

Gabriella x