Recommend a camera for a friend - 400€

[UtwigMU]

A friend is going on a trip to Cuba on Friday and he'd like to buy digital camera.

The budget is 400 euros, he can buy camera here or along the trip to airport in Munich Germany. According to experience, German prices are better than local.

He also needs some memory - what do you recommend here.

He seeks something between point and shoot to semi professional.

I'm not yet buying a camera, so I'm not following the scene, so I'm turning to MURC collective for advice.

Thanks.

[VJ]

Well, the references to check out are:
the buing guide on dpreview:

http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/compare.asp

and on imaging-resource:

http://www.imaging-resource.com/cgi-bin/m/pl.cgi?cajs

I assume it is used for simple travel use, in which case a bit of zoom is interesting. Something to be aware of (but I'm not sure if you can give it lots of thought in that price range) is shutterlag - the delay between you pressing the shutterbutton and the camera making the picture.

Memory will depend on the camera, price per MB is cheapest for CompactFlash, SD is coming in close second. But if you have no other devices that use cards, I wouldn't let this direct me towards/from a given camera.

In general, I would recommend to stick with known camera-manufacturers: Nikon, Canon, Minolta, ... and leave HP for what it is...


Jörg

[Nappe1]

Canon, Nikon, Minolta, Olympus, Fuji...

every company has a Compact Digitals in that price range. As a user of Olympus, I can recomend Olympus Digital Mju-III 410 or also Camedia C3x0-Zoom -series cameras. both have been solid, good cameras.

Some ppl might say that Smart Media cards could be a bit problematic because they are so old, but I don't think so... 128MB (the biggest one available.) original Olympus branded SM card costs around 30-50 Euros right now and it takes around 100 HQ pictures, which should be enough for Compact Camera. (and of course, you can always buy more than a one card.)










and if it's makes any difference, all my pictures showed here (or linked here) have been taken with 3 years old Olympus compact digital camera (C990-Zoom)

[GuchiGuh]

Leica....go the old SLR way for true quality shooting. Except that they cost about 4 grand just for the body and another 6 grand for the lense.....and thats exluding aditional film, development and and and....

[GuchiGuh]

The sony cybershot ones are quite nice for beginners, other than that i highly (really) recomment any camera by Fujifilm/Minolta/Canon.

Please stay away from Kodak.

[Fluff]

http://h10010.www1.hp.com/wwpc/uk/en/sm/WF25a/5043-5683-5887-5887-5751003-1891945.html

My dad got this HP R707 camera. It's 5.1MP

Got the holiday photo's back and they seem quite good. It is really simple to use too.

[az]

Check out the Konica Minolta Dimage Z2 (not the Z1!). The Canon S1 IS's image stabilizer will be VERY helpful, just as the stabilizer in the Panasonic DMC-FZ 10.

All three cams offer full auto to full manual and a large zoom range and good image quality. They're not small, though.

AZ

[EDIT: Can't spell Konica... but if I'd have written Komica or Konolta or Monika you wouldn't have known which brand I meant ]