The wife has been asking for a new digital camera for a while so we can get some decent shots of the kids etc. I brushed it off at first, but then my ears pricked up as I thought I might be able to put a good camera to use in the workshop too! The outcome of this was that we went out to look for a new one on Sun and actually came back with one that we hadn't even considered. Not sure if it's the right decision really, it does seem good, but maybe not what I was expecting for the money?
As Tim suggested we went into Jessops to have a look / try. Very helpful and let us have a play with both DSLR and bridging cameras and compared the two. I finally decided (takes me ages to decide anything) on a bridging camera as it would do everything we needed out of the box but with a DSLR, they were circa £150 more and we'd probably need other lenses etc. Had a go with a Fuji S2000HD, it was a picture of some keys on a desk that the woman took that made up my mind, it also had this feature where you could get it to take 2 pics 1 quickly after the other but 1 with flash 1 without! :
http://www.currys.co.uk/martprd/store/cur_page.jsp?BV_SessionID=@@@@2011993395.1252944668@@@@&BV_EngineID=ccdladeiflmgjedcflgceggdhhmdgmk.0&page=Product&fm=9&sm=0&tm=0&sku=209067&category_oid=-33706 only to be told they had none in stock and would be 28 days or so on back order ... great! So we went back to curry's and they didn't have one either. So we almost took this Nikon
http://www.currys.co.uk/martprd/store/cur_page.jsp?BV_SessionID=@@@@2011993395.1252944668@@@@&BV_EngineID=ccdladeiflmgjedcflgceggdhhmdgmk.0&page=Product&fm=9&sm=0&tm=0&sku=418572&category_oid=-33706 which was similar. BUt then I had a thought, what were all these more compact ones, the guy said the top of the range compacts were just as good as the bridging ones, if not better with added functionality. So we decided on this:
http://www.currys.co.uk/martprd/store/cur_page.jsp?BV_SessionID=@@@@2011993395.1252944668@@@@&BV_EngineID=ccdladeiflmgjedcflgceggdhhmdgmk.0&page=Product&fm=9&sm=0&tm=0&sku=286266&category_oid=-33706 Bloomin' lot of money for a little camera, and I didn't dare leave the 5 year warranty! Never usually take warranties but we did on our last digi camera and used it twice! It's anything happens for 5 years for £89.99 so it's a bit of piece of mind even if don't need to use it. They are so easy to damage (esp with kids!) and expensive to repair. Other bonuses were that I already had a 1gb SD card, it fits in existing camera case and it has a mobile phone style battery which should by all accounts last a while. The jury is still out, not really had much time to try it properly but did take some snaps last night which you will see in my latest installment of my rocking engine later. It's got this intelligent auto mode that recognises what you're taking, how far you are away etc, whether it needs macro mode, how much flash intensity, exposure, shutter speed etc etc.
I just wondered if anyone in the know had any thoughts on it, or is there something obviously better I could have got for the same dosh?!
One of the main concerns was getting something which reacted quickly when you press the button. Trying to get pics of the kids they are usually gone by the time our old camera takes the picture! This one seems very good, but was still missing shots last night ... maybe dslr is the only way for that.
The other thing I thought was at least this has a decent video mode, something which only top spec dslrs have at the moment.
Nick
