Digital Cameras recommendations?

Susan,
I have Olympus c-750 which is like the c-740, except it has a hot shoe for external flash. The 10x optical magnification is great. The buttons and the dial are easy to reach. The screen is good for viewing. I am very satisfied with the camera. By the way, one can purchase a screw-on ring for filters; I have a skylight filter and plan to purchase a polarizing filter. Last week end I took some pictures in automatic mode, and here are some samples:
<http://groups.msn.com/KenLiffmannPhoto/shoebox.msnw> Ken

Susan,

I recently upgraded from an Olympus D-550z (3x Optical) to the C-740. I was very satisfied with the quality of the 550 but, like you, I needed more zoom. The quality of pictures from the 740 is even better than the 550.

The biggest improvement in my mind is the complete flexibility available. You have everything from point and shoot to set everything manually and just about everything in between.

One of the best features is called My Mode. It allows you to configure up to 4 different setups for shooting situations, save them and then access them directly through the menu very quickly.

I have had no problem getting sharp full telephoto hand held.

Battery life is outstanding using rechargable AA’s. I don’t know about the other two models you list but a prime consideration for me is replaceable, standard batteries that I can get anywhere

If you haven’t already you might want to download the manual and learn more:

<http://www.olympusamerica.com/files/C740UZ_Ref_English.pdf>

I learned a lot before purchase from this owner:

<http://www.jimsweb.org/c740/>

I don’t have much posted from the 740 yet but here are 3 examples edited with Elements:

<http://www.pbase.com/image/30198192>
<http://www.pbase.com/image/30198199>
<http://www.pbase.com/image/30276714>

Finally, as a source check out:

<http://www.bhphotovideo.com/>

I got excellent service and a good price. They also have very good prices for xD cards.

Good luck whichever you choose.

Bob

Susan, personally I would prefer the Panasonic because of its optics. On the other hand, Olympus seems to have the best noise reduction.

IMHO the best way to make an unbiased choice is to compare these cameras side by side on this site: <http://dpreview.com/>

Leen

Just stay away from Kodak cameras. I had mine for a year and it stopped working. Kodak has a minmum charge of $175.00 to look at it. I wouldn’t buy another one.

One suggestion re buying digital cameras: a 5 or 7 year extended warranty can be purchased for under $40. I haven’t had to use any that I’ve bought to date, but it feels good to have that insurance. It won’t cover damage from abuse, but if something just stops working, I’m confident it’ll be covered.

I’m thrilled with my Kodak DX6490 with 10x optical zoom (and 3x digital that I have no intention of using).

wrote:

Just stay away from Kodak cameras. I had mine for a year and it stopped working. Kodak has a minmum charge of $175.00 to look at it. I wouldn’t buy another one.

And you condemn a whole company’s products on the basis of ONE bad experience. Did you check rec.photo.digital for a response from Ron Baird of Kodak? You might find that some slack can be cut on that price.

I have two Kodak digitals and both work perfectly. One is about 18 months old and the other aroub 4 months old. I expect both to continue to work for years.

Susan.

Those at "What Digital Camera?" mag in the current issue made a comparison of those you mention and the Panasonic was rated first equal with the Oly CZ 7– something.
I would think the stabilised lens can’t be overlooked, I’ve seen some pics on a forum site which showed pics taken at 400 iso and they were remarkably free from noise, taken indoors at a school play.
Regards
Malcolm

Susan, I just bought the Nikon D70 and what a difference! The canon G5 is a nice camera,but I couldn’t use all my nikkor lenses with it. If it fits your budget and your photo needs take a look at the D70.

If you have Nikkor lenses, the choice is the D70 or the Fuji SLR. If you have Canon lenses, the Rebel/300 or the 10D are the best options. If you have neither type of lens, your choices are wide open!

Hi,
I also disagree. I was given a Kodak DC 4800 for a wedding present in October 2000. It is easy to learn how to use, and takes really nice sharp pictures. It works really well. I have taken over 4500 pictures with it. It has suffered some abuse from my daughter and has some cracks on the outside, but it still works perfectly.

I lost the lens cap and when I inquired at Kodak.com about how to purchase a replacement lens cap, they just sent one free of charge in the mail.

Last month I purchased the first replacement battery for it. The original battery worked well for 3.5 years. Replacement batteries are available very inexpensively on eBay. I also purchased an inexpensive 256MB Memory Cards, and it works flawlessly.

This camera has been on summer and winter camping trips, on ATV trips, spends most of its time in the car in summer heat and winter cold, has been dropped and bumped and just keeps on working.

I don’t have any complaints about my Kodak Digital Camera. Jon
"Ron Hunter" wrote in message

wrote:

Just stay away from Kodak cameras. I had mine for a year and it stopped

working. Kodak has a minmum charge of $175.00 to look at it. I wouldn’t buy another one.

And you condemn a whole company’s products on the basis of ONE bad experience. Did you check rec.photo.digital for a response from Ron Baird of Kodak? You might find that some slack can be cut on that price.
I have two Kodak digitals and both work perfectly. One is about 18 months old and the other aroub 4 months old. I expect both to continue to work for years.

Thanks everyone. I am still trying to decide. The Panasonic has no TIFF format just JPG. The Olmypus has TIFF.

I have an old Minolta Maxxum 7000 but I bet the lenses from that would not fit any of the digital SLR’s so I have no lenses.

No stores nearby carried the models so I have not been able to put hand on one to see how it feeled.

Minolta has promised a dSLR real soon now, so you may want to wait until that is rleased.

Probably this Minolta will be released in Cologne at Photokina. It is based on the Minolta Dynax/Maxxum 7, one of the most sophisticated cameras I know.

Leen

ASAP with any camera, take many types of shots & critically evaluate, while you can return it. They are making many post processing decisions for us, some stupid. I tried to go digital but so far am unhappy. I returned a $300 Olympus (forgot which) as even normal outdoor images had far too much contrast (too much white/black clipping) & colors were a bit off. It had no way to adjust.

I’m still evaluating Kodak DX7630. It has superb user interface & lots of settings, but still does things I dislike. Its daylight white balance setting is far superior to default auto, which grossly distorts colors of full shade images that have no white. I suspect it is applying Auto-Levels in auto mode, and Auto-Contrast in daylight mode, both with too strong clipping especially white.

The resulting washed out bright areas are typical with digital camera images I’ve seen from friends, with many other camera models. Its hard to adjust large areas of pixels with value 255,255,255 !!

Kodak’s answer: they want most images good for most people without needing adjustments. Fair enough, but with all the settings on this camera (not for "most people"), they should provide one more to turn off auto-contrast or set its clip point to 0.05%.

Each company is making some decisions like this for us, and it does not show up in brochures – have to test to discover!

A grey concrete wall in shade, and other flat low contrast images with no white or black (colorful flowers in full shade late in day) are good to try. See what the camera does with those!

Carl

Carl —

The answer to your dilemma may be to shoot RAW with a camera that gives you a "real" RAW file, i.e. one without any in-camera "improvements." The Minolta A1 and A2 are in this category, and others may be too. The Canons, I am told, are NOT.

The Minoltas also let you turn off almost all in-camera manipulations even in JPEG mode. They have been criticized for producing flat, soft out-of-the camera images for this reason – though their images can be sharpened and pepped up in-camera, if that is one’s preference.

If you use Canon’s conversion software the parameters chosen by the photographer are used as the starting point for the file. I don’t believe anyone who has used Canon’s software would continue to do so given a choice. I use Phase One/C1 conversion software and it starts with the true raw data as I understand it.

—
Have A Nice Day, 🙂
James Hutchinson
http://www.pbase.com/myeyesview
http://www.myeyesviewstudio.com/
wrote in message

Carl —

Minolta A1 and A2 are in this category, and others may be too. The Canons, I am told, are NOT.

Canon’s RAW aren’t processed the least. You get what the sensor saw, as far as I can tell.

Ray

My understanding is that, because of the proprietary nature of each camera’s RAW format there is some "processing" done to the raw image data, just to make it usable in the conversion software. Canon’s RAW data (out of my G3) when examined with sharpening, saturation, contrast etc turned off or right down in a RAW conversion program looks very flat and lifeless compared with the jazzy effect that you get with an in camera jpeg – I imagine the difference is more pronounced than for a DSLR where the jpegs undergo less processing.

Having said that a lot of the things that Carl is noticing with the digital cameras that he has tried are a function of the digital technology, which has much less exposure latitude than negative film – it’s more like slide film in that regard. For brightly lit scenes, if you correctly expose the shadows then you will get washed out bright areas. If you have correctly exposed bright areas then shadow detail will be lost. The general rule with digital is to expose so that the bright areas are as bright as possible without blowing out the highlights (a camera with a histogram display is necessary for this – and even then they tend not show when only one colour channel is blown out) and then bring up the shadow detail in post processing. Shooting RAW tends to allow this to be done more easily. For landscape shots taing two shots at different exposures (from a fixed tripod – and hope it isn’t windy!) and blending the two together can expand the available contrast range.
You have to decide whether you can live with that lack of exposure latitude or not. And the cameras that are more aimed at the advanced market – they allow shooting RAW and give more control, would be more satisfactory.

Canon’s RAW aren’t processed the least. You get what the sensor saw, as far as I can tell.

Not according to Michael Reichmann

" Minolta is trying to provide you with as virgin a file as possible, and it’s then up to you to make the most of this. I much prefer this approach to the one taken by Canon, which has admitted that it even sharpens RAW files in-camera. "

< http://www.luminous-landscape.com/reviews/cameras/minolta-a2 -location.shtml>

Susan,

Thank you for the bracketing idea! I’ve been shooting Kodachrome & Nikon metering with perfect results for so long I forgot tricks when taking. DX7630 has auto bracketing & exposure compensation settings. I can live with dark shadows, but truly hate washed out brights as obvious & distracting. In limited tests, exposure compensation of -0.7 makes up for Kodak’s silly overbrightening, & gives very pleasing results. For images that are a bit too dark a bit of PSE fill flash will do the trick without clipping brights. The camera remembers my custom settings so some more tests under other conditions & I just might keep it…

Carl

p.s. I’ve seen such stated about slide vs. negative film but don’t much believe it. My Polaroid 4000 scanned Kodachromes, including dynamic range & color, totally blow away anything I’ve seen from digital cameras (admittedly "cheap" ones). And I’ve never seen a print that compares to projected Kodachrome. Too bad its on its last legs.

I probably didn’t notice it because all settings in my camera are usually set to defaults.

I don’t know who this guy is, but I stand corrected!

Ray

Ray, if sharpening is the only adjustment made in-camera for Canon RAW, I can certainly live with that!!

🙂

Chuck

It must be minimal because every RAW image is very soft looking and must have some usm unless you are going for a soft focus look.

—
Have A Nice Day, 🙂
James Hutchinson
http://www.pbase.com/myeyesview
http://www.myeyesviewstudio.com/
wrote in message

Ray, if sharpening is the only adjustment made in-camera for Canon

RAW, I

can certainly live with that!!

🙂

Chuck

James, I agree. If they were any softer, I’d be chasing the focus problem that plagued some early 10D models!

Chuck

"Jon Rodman" …

Hi,
I also disagree. I was given a Kodak DC 4800 for a wedding present in October 2000. It is easy to learn how to use, and takes really nice sharp pictures. It works really well. I have taken over 4500 pictures with it. It has suffered some abuse from my daughter and has some cracks on the outside, but it still works perfectly.

I lost the lens cap and when I inquired at Kodak.com about how to purchase a replacement lens cap, they just sent one free of charge in the mail.
Last month I purchased the first replacement battery for it. The original battery worked well for 3.5 years. Replacement batteries are available very inexpensively on eBay. I also purchased an inexpensive 256MB Memory Cards, and it works flawlessly.

This camera has been on summer and winter camping trips, on ATV trips, spends most of its time in the car in summer heat and winter cold, has been dropped and bumped and just keeps on working.

I don’t have any complaints about my Kodak Digital Camera. Jon
"Ron Hunter" wrote in message

wrote:

Just stay away from Kodak cameras. I had mine for a year and it stopped

working. Kodak has a minmum charge of $175.00 to look at it. I wouldn’t buy another one.

And you condemn a whole company’s products on the basis of ONE bad experience. Did you check rec.photo.digital for a response from Ron Baird of Kodak? You might find that some slack can be cut on that price.
I have two Kodak digitals and both work perfectly. One is about 18 months old and the other aroub 4 months old. I expect both to continue to work for years.

Sorry to jump in here – but I was looking for a solution for my DC 4800 problem and stumbled across this thread. My cam just stopped working after (!) I took perfect pictures today. I did not treat the camera any different as usual, but now the camera simply shuts down after about five seconds. The battery is (supposed to be) full, so that should not be the prob. Even with A/C connected, the display stays dark (yes, in SETUP mode, too).

The interactive support system at Kodak is no big help. They recommend to remove the battery (and put it back in). Wow. I was looking for a "hardware reset" button somewhere, but apparently there is none.

I think this was an expensive adventure. I purchased the camera new in summer 2001 for about $600, and I shot 1,900 pix using the cam. Now it’s dead. I am using two Canon AE-1 Program bodies, about 20 years old, and the still return fantastic slides year after year, so I guess that the new digicams are simply not as sturdy any more.

Don’t get me wrong: I was perfectly satisfied with the cam until today, but I would refrain from buying another Kodak now…

— Mark, with a smile from Munich, Germany
http://www.zanzig.com

Mark Zanzig wrote:

"Jon Rodman" …

Hi,
I also disagree. I was given a Kodak DC 4800 for a wedding present in October 2000. It is easy to learn how to use, and takes really nice sharp pictures. It works really well. I have taken over 4500 pictures with it. It has suffered some abuse from my daughter and has some cracks on the outside, but it still works perfectly.

I lost the lens cap and when I inquired at Kodak.com about how to purchase a replacement lens cap, they just sent one free of charge in the mail.
Last month I purchased the first replacement battery for it. The original battery worked well for 3.5 years. Replacement batteries are available very inexpensively on eBay. I also purchased an inexpensive 256MB Memory Cards, and it works flawlessly.

This camera has been on summer and winter camping trips, on ATV trips, spends most of its time in the car in summer heat and winter cold, has been dropped and bumped and just keeps on working.

I don’t have any complaints about my Kodak Digital Camera. Jon
"Ron Hunter" wrote in message

wrote:

Just stay away from Kodak cameras. I had mine for a year and it stopped

working. Kodak has a minmum charge of $175.00 to look at it. I wouldn’t buy another one.

And you condemn a whole company’s products on the basis of ONE bad experience. Did you check rec.photo.digital for a response from Ron Baird of Kodak? You might find that some slack can be cut on that price.
I have two Kodak digitals and both work perfectly. One is about 18 months old and the other aroub 4 months old. I expect both to continue to work for years.

Sorry to jump in here – but I was looking for a solution for my DC 4800 problem and stumbled across this thread. My cam just stopped working after (!) I took perfect pictures today. I did not treat the camera any different as usual, but now the camera simply shuts down after about five seconds. The battery is (supposed to be) full, so that should not be the prob. Even with A/C connected, the display stays dark (yes, in SETUP mode, too).

The interactive support system at Kodak is no big help. They recommend to remove the battery (and put it back in). Wow. I was looking for a "hardware reset" button somewhere, but apparently there is none.

I think this was an expensive adventure. I purchased the camera new in summer 2001 for about $600, and I shot 1,900 pix using the cam. Now it’s dead. I am using two Canon AE-1 Program bodies, about 20 years old, and the still return fantastic slides year after year, so I guess that the new digicams are simply not as sturdy any more.
Don’t get me wrong: I was perfectly satisfied with the cam until today, but I would refrain from buying another Kodak now…
— Mark, with a smile from Munich, Germany
http://www.zanzig.com

How can you make such a general statement from such a limited (1 case) database?

Allow the camera to sit without a battery while you do a complete recharge of the batteries, then reinstall them. If that doesn’t work, you might call Kodak. Help can also be found in the rec.photo.digital newsgroup where Kodak reps. check in once or twice a week. One of them is the head of the customer service operation.