Help picking out a new digital camera

[Claymonkey]

I've been going through a bunch of the reviews on dpreview.com and would love your opinion on the camera I should get. I've been leaning towards Olympus cameras for one reason.. they have good optical zoom. Back in '99 I bought the Mavica MVC-91 and it's 14x optical is still drool worthy. The problem is the compression necessary to make those 1024x768 fit on floppies was a tad high.

As for recommendations what I REALLY need is a camera that can handle taking good clean photos in a concert hall without low light pixelization and the flash turned off (I'd rather not be thrown out of the concert). Back when I got the Mavica low light photography was laughable at best though the Mavica did a passable job even with the high compression. Generally this isn't something that gets talked about in reviews heavily and is more of a practical use situation. Most of the results are going to be used as a stock image archive for my artwork. If you head over to my website you'll see the holder page that has an example of what I intend to do with the photos (if that helps any): http://www.claymonkey.net

As for what I'd like in the camera besides good low light photography (if it exists) is:
- 4-5 megapixel minimum
- 4x optical zoom (8-10x if possible)
- $400-600

of course the Mavica was $900 back in the day and lasted me years so if I need to go higher to be happy I will. My thanks in advance fo any advice.

[agallag]

I've heard that Sonys are really good in low light. Find one of them that has the laser based autofocus system, they can't be beat for low light stuff. I've had two Canons (S30 and S50), and both are great in in good light, but they have a lot of trouble focusing in dim light.

[az]

The Sonys have "NightShot", which is just IR photography and lighting the scene with IR diodes - won't do you much good in a concert. You need short exposure times, which means cranking the ISO up really high, which means noise. The only cameras whith which you can do this without to much noise are DSLRs, unfrotunately. There is one Fuji compact camera, the F10, that shows almost as little noise as DSLRs - unfortunately, it's more of a point-and-shoot and only has 3x zoom.

For doing real low light photography, my advice would be to wait and either save up for a DSLR like the Digital Rebel or the Konica-Minolta Dynax/Maxxum 7D (even better for low light photography due to its built-in image stabilization, though not necessarily better for low-light action photos, big, expensive, but an excellent photographic tool), or to wait a little longer until cameras with better low light ability are becoming more common - Fujifilm obviously have the technology, I have no doubt that they'll be introducing it to more interesting models than the F10.

AZ

[Claymonkey]

thanks az. Of course I'd LOVE a DSLR camera so that might be the way to go. Bulky doesn't bother me TO much, you'd understand if you ever held the MVC-91. Heck I might just get something like the Fuji F10 until I can afford a DSLR. That's my only real gripe with big cameras, you're carrying around a brick, and you only do that when you know you're going to take pictures. A nice point and shoot that I can stick in my pocket would be nice to have too.

agallag - I might have to look at the new sony's, I know I've been generally happy with my mavica.. well as happy as you can be these days with a camera that is less than 1 megapixel.

[az]

At the moment, the Fuji F10 is the only cam outside of DSLRs that comes anywhere near them in terms of noise (they're still quite a bit better though, but the F10 is way ahead of all other compact, semi-compact and prosumer cams in terms of noise). Of course, in concert photos, noise can actually look good (take, for instance, the grainy b/w look of some Depeche Mode videos, made by Anton Corbijn) - go see shots made by the camera you choose beforehand to see if its noise pattern appeals to you. Also, there is software out there that can reduce noise with an acceptable loss of detail. And of course, at 100% on your monitor, noise is much more apparent than on an ordinary-size printout, or on a poster-sized printout viewed from 1m distance.

AZ

[Nappe1]

Anyone has tried Olympus C-8080??
it seems to have quite good optics what comes to low light situations. Maximum aperture goes from 2.4 to 3.5 (with Zoom going to 5x (24-144mm at 35mm film scale))

review at Dpreview:

http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/olympusc8080wz/page20.asp

[az]

Many cams have this as their widest aperture. Image quality of the Oly is good enough, the rest is lacking, though. I'd rather get a Dimage A2 (although we have a few owners of it here, I think they're not feeling as well about the cam).

AZ

[mmp121]

You might like this one...

Canon PowerShot S2 IS
-Canon Digic II chip
-12x Optical Zoom
-5MP
-$499

http://www.dcresource.com/reviews/canon/powershot_s2-review/index.shtml

[Claymonkey]

I definetly appreciate the help from everyone. I think my next step is going to a Best Buy with an SD card and taking pics from as many of these models as I can just to get a feel from them and take away a couple test shots.

[Fred H]

Maybe a DSLR camera?
I am using a Nikon D70 and am very satisfied. The kit lens has ~4X zoom (18-70 mm) and the CCD is 24 mm compared with 8mm in the most of the digital compact cameras.
/Fred