Digital camera buying advise?

[power]

I finally found it in my budget to start shopping for a digital camera!
I know, I'm about ten years behind the "cutting edge" but I am seldom up to date in tech advances of consumer goods, unless it's for work.

My other problem is I do not research stuff until I am ready to buy, which is now. I have about 3-5 hundred dollars for the camera, so I am not looking for the top end cameras. I do not use cameras very much, just looking for fair quality and rugged frame, as I do take a camera on outdoor trips, camping canoeing ect.... I am running a Windows-XP OS on a PC.

So....does anyone have camera digital camera equipment recommendations or sources for info to pass along?

What are the main features I should be looking for?

Anything to stay away from?

[TSNAPCRACKLEPOP]

i bought the kodak from walmart, compact flash card, universal card reader, get rechargeable batteries. when it breaks, back to wallyfor replacement or credit on upgrade. auto focus telephoto is nice. GOOD CHOICE FOR MY FIRST ONE.

[motion]

Best site on the net for these things:

http://www.dcresource.com

Then use froogle.com to locate the best prices.

[vash]

i got a tiny one, a minolta. i actually think i bigger one would be easier to use in the garage situation. my lens doesnt let me get close enough to take pics of small car parts.

[Decolliber]

My wife recently did a lot of research on this and we bought a Canon A80 in the low $300s. Great camera, and takes short movies too. Epinions.com can find you the best price.

[Doug Zielke]

Ditto on the Canon A80...I really like mine.
Check out the reviews on various websites. The Canon A80 gets high marks from just about everyone.

You're in Vancouver, so Future Shop, London Drugs and sometimes, Kerrisdale Cameras are in the ballpark price-wise.

[id10t]

Don't forget the digital SLRs... that one from Cannon is supposed to be quite good and the prices are dropping...

[tchanson]

A third vote for the Canon A80. Some more good detailed review information is available here

It also has such an extensive range of manual features (and allows interchangeable lenses) that it will allow most amateur/prosumer users to grow into the camera for years to come. Its a great little camera, and we've been very happy with ours.

Tim

[motion]

Here's another great site for camera prices:

http://dealcam.com

[trj911]

I went with the Cannon S50. Great digital pictures and it will so viedo also. I like the felxability.

[Jim Richards]

I curse our digi everytime I want to take pics at the track. Any of the digital cameras suitable for action photography?

[VaSteve]

If you want the most detailed information on digital cameras, try www.imaging-resource.com. There's so mush info there you will get bored before you finish!

[derek murray]

our office owns a couple of canons, a 'g1' and an 'sd 100' .

the sd 100 is very compact and has an all stainless steel case which makes it exceptionally durable... and it takes very good pictures too.

here is a good web site for digital camera reviews.

http://www.dpreview.com

[BlueSkyJaunte]

Originally posted by VaSteve
If you want the most detailed information on digital cameras, try www.imaging-resource.com. There's so mush info there you will get bored before you finish!

This is a great site. There's a section in every review called the "Picky Details" that talks about things like shutter lag, start-up time, etc. Invaluable information to know if you do action photography--my old Canon S10 is useless for photographing things other than still-lifes, because the shutter lag is so horrendous.

[Owain]

Good recommendations here. I did a bit of research and found the Canons to be good cameras (lots of manual features not available on similar cameras from other manufacturers etc.) and eventually decided to buy an A70 as a good copromise between cost and features.

Then I found an interesting website that other Canadians might be interseted in:

Red Flag Deals

Lots of people finding some quite incredible deals (on just about everything) and posting them for all to take advantage of (while they last). Anyway, I found a good deal on an A70 from Future Shop, refurbished for CDN$299 with the help of that site. Can't beat that in Canada as far as I've seen. I'm still waiting for it to arrive so I'm not sure how good a deal it was (refurbished, not new) but it comes with a 1 year warranty so at least I'm safe for that time.

I think this deal is no longer available (I ordered mine last week) but similar deals pop up there quite frequently.

In Canada we're at a bit of a disavantage compared to our friends in the US. We don't have a multitude of on-line dealers selling these things for almost cost. By the time these same deals get up here with duty, taxes and shipping charges they're not such good deals anymore. But, with the above website, we can at least help each other to take advantage of the great deals when they pop up.

Anyway, if you're looking to save some money this is a good way to do it. If not then get out and support your local camera dealers. Quite often the service you get at these places far outweighs the money you save from on-line retailers.

Just my CDN$0.02

[RickM]

A slow memory card can be mistaken for "shutter lag". It's not always obvious what speed the card or stick is. Sometimes an inquiry to the MFR has to be made. As always the faster the memory the more expensive it will be. This is not to say there aren't other factors that contribute to the lag. Even if you don't do "action" photography you will want as little in the lag or refresh department as possible.

Other things to look for are standard battery and memory format. I chose AA batteries and SD memory.

[SteveStromberg]

I have a HP 318 thats a point and shoot, I also have a Minolta Dimage 7. Steve

Here a site that has some good deals

http://www.bhphotovideo.com/bnh/controller/home;jsessionid=A6bd3GoMFu!1211583139?O=NavBar&A=FetchChildren&Q=&ci=989

[Sarah]

Our 1st digital was a Nikon coolpix (only about 1.2 mp I think). it emailed out pics ok but did not take really good outdoor pics especially of people.

My new digital is the Olympus Stylus 400 w/ 4mp. I love it. I did a lot of research before I got it. So I would just check all the digital references people have mentioned and see which brand and model fits your needs.

Good luck.

[power]

WOW!

Great advice! I have been very busy at work but I have been able to research all your links and recommendations. You have all narrowed my research dramatically, thank you for all your great advice. I should be making a buy this week if I can stop working for a day. I'll post my first pic with new camera and give my impressions next week!

[fireant911]

I recently came to the conclusion that it was indeed time to purchase my first digital camera. I spoke with several of my co-workers and the majority of these individuals were highly recommending Olympus digital cameras.

I visited Epionions as well as the Olympus website and found that Olympus sells on Ebay under the name of 'olympusameria'. I then (with the help of Epionions) selected three camera styles that I was interested in and set my budget to a maximum of $250. I then revisited the 'olympusamerica' Ebay site and downloaded the previous two weeks sales activity to an Excel spreadsheet. The quickly wrote some formulas the segregate out the three camera styles that attracted my interest and recorded the minimum winning bid, maximum winning bid, and average winning bid. I then calculated my maximum bid as so I did not get caught up in any bidding wars. When these three cameras appeared for bidding, the first two cameras from my list quickly went out of my budget but the third was very attractive. I watched this until less than a minute remained and finally placed my bid. My bid went through with 3 seconds remaining (which I won) for a final price of $206.50 (the same camera at Office Max at the same moment was available for $499).

The 'olympusamerica' cameras are refurbished cameras that carry a very good warranty. I have been very pleased with this purchase and amazed at the quality of the pictures. The model I purchased was the Olympus C-720 Ultra Zoom (3.0 MP / 8X optical zoom / 3X digital zoom). I would highly recommend this camera to others.