Agreed. The SD card can be treated as an extra drive and things work quite well. It's when you try to hook up the camera directly to the computer that the camera maker's software comes into play.
Plus, HP (for one) tries to bundle in all sorts of crapware to crop/adjust/color/copy/print/hose down with turtle repellant that the uninitiated may be encouraged to load on the computer (to his detriment).
The consensus is that Canon's software isn't bad at all.
Agreed. The SD card can be treated as an extra drive and things work quite well. It's when you try to hook up the camera directly to the computer that the camera maker's software comes into play.
Plus, HP (for one) tries to bundle in all sorts of crapware to crop/adjust/color/copy/print/hose down with turtle repellant that the uninitiated may be encouraged to load on the computer (to his detriment).
The consensus is that Canon's software isn't bad at all.
B&H is an excellent source. Their prices are not always the lowest but they're usually pretty close. Their service is pretty much unbeatable. They're totally dependable which is why many (if not most) professional photographers buy gear there.
They also stock a HUGE range of gear including exotic and hard to find stuff.
Just don't get all worked about buying something on a major Jewish holiday. When they say "closed", they mean it. They actually shut down the web site as well as their retail store.
My Canon software has become quite a bit more intrusive with each subsequent update :-(
HP and Fuji are dreadful. Nikon not too bad.
Just attaching the camera as a USB drive is definitely the preferable route to follow to avoid all of the crapola. It wasn't always an option with the older digital cameras but it's pretty much universal today, thank goodness.
Or Friday evening to Saturday evening!
OTOH, I placed an order with B&H this morning after this thread started, and my UPS tracking # was received two hours later. Really!
No... I'm saying you can hook the camera itself up with the card installed in it, and XP will have no trouble dealing with it. The camera comes with a USB cable, and that is ALL you need. Just plug it in and turn on the camera. XP will take care of everything. The camera maker's software doesn't ever get taken out of the shrink wrap.
Same here. I've never used a camera manufacturer's software to move/copy pics from camera to computer.
I don't either but there are some advantages. Some products incorporate some nifty features including the ability to easily/quickly tag the images as they're transferred.
No offence, but "The Internet" is a scam rich source.
No reputable business will ask for sensitive personal info in Email. Delete anthing that does ask.
Ebay is , from some great deals to some
100% blatant rip-offs. Caveat emptor. Ebay and Craigslist are the only practical sources I know for used/outdated stuff.Peetie
I bought a Panasonic Lumix. Two or three weeks ago. A couple thoughts.
Megapixels. More means sharper pictures. Memory space. Mine came with 1 GB, though I can buy 1 GB or 2GB cards with it. GB is giga bytes, which is a thousand megabytes. Or, a million kilobytes.
My new camera will shoot small (about 150 KB) medium, large, or huge pictures. The huge ones about 3.5 mb of storage space on the disk. I shoot low resolution small pictures nearly all the time.
The local stores will make prints for me, from my digital memory card. Just plug it into their machine, touch the screen, and pick up the prints in a couple days. Or, one hour service for more money.
They provided a cable, I can use Windows Explorer to move my pictures onto my hard drive, and then burn them to CD for backup.
In the two week or so I've had the camera, I've taken over a thousand pictures. The camera also takes silent movie clips. It also does closeup, and telephoto. Flash can be turned on or off. I can review the pictures in the small TV screen in the back. I'm thrilled beyond all expectation.
And it was on sale for a hudred bucks. Best C-note I've ever spent in my entire life.
B&H is selling it for $128.
You would be hard-pressed to find anything substantially better than that camera for the same money.
Advantage: Uses Canon's newest DiG!C III image processor. That promises the best performance regarding "shutter lag" - the bane of virtually all point-n-shoot cameras to date.
Advantage: Uses two, common 'AA'-size batteries. Disadvantage: Uses two, common 'AA'-size batteries.
(Huh?)
The real advantage is that you can purchase batteries for this model virtually anywhere. The downside is that it uses only TWO of them. That means you'll be changing batteries frequently, particularly if the built-in flash is used much.
I may buy one of these as a spare camera. That's a helluva price for this little gem.
You would do well to ask your question in a more appropriate newsgroup:
Good luck!
-snip-
4 of the last 5 cameras in this household have been Canon Powershots. [they can't fly or swim- so don't throw them down stairs or drop them in bathtubs] Shutter lag is the only thing I can say bad about them. We just ordered the A560 for my daughter. [Walmart had a Blackfriday sale- $148 - with a free all-in-one printer] If the shutter lag is improved I'll replace my wife's 520 with a 560.We haven't fired up my daughter's A560- but man what an LCD on that puppy!
Agree 100% with both premises- If you use a lot of flash get a few sets of top of the line NIMH batteries and a charger.
second that-
Jim
I respectfully disagree. Or, at least, that is a misleading simplification of how megapixels work.
Assuming that no cropping of the image is done, and you print the photo no larger than 8x10, 3-4 megapixels is sufficient.
One would have to enlarge a photo to WALL POSTER-size to notice the difference between 4 MP and 7 MP.
There ARE, however, advantages to more megapixels. Viewed on all but the HUGEST computer display or printed to 4x6, there is NO visible difference between the same shot taken by a 4 MP vs 7 MP camera.
More megapixels can also be considered "digital zoom". That is, you can zoom-in to just a portion of the frame and save the photo there. This process is accomplished by "shedding" pixels from outside the crop area.
7.1 megpixels is MORE than enough for the casual snapshooter.The Canon model queried by the OP comes with a 16 MB (megabyte) card. That is barely large enough to have fun the moment the box is opened before the shutterbug is looking for a bigger card. A 1gb card is plenty. A 2gb might be a little better. They have gotten so cheap lately that buying either one shouldn't "hurt" too badly.
That is probably not a good idea. If the original photo is of a "small" size, both in JPEG compression and "fine-ness", it can never be improved. This is particularly important when one captures The Photo of a Lifetime or some, other special occasion where enlarged prints are a possibility.
Using a computer and basic software, a large-size photo can be easily downsized for emailing or other purposes where a high-resolution photo is not required. If it starts out low-res, there's no making it better.
Disk space has become almost cheap, too. Shoot your photos at the highest resolution and, if the disk fills-up, off-load the files to a spare drive and start over.
The OP's queried camera takes movies up to 60 fps (frames-per-second) with sound (probably monaural).
For B&H's $128 it sounds like a great camera.
Ya, my wife wanted one that she could put in her pocket.
s
Hi, Can't go wrong with any Canon. A-series uses ordinary batteries which could be a plus when traveling.
I bought a Panasonic 6mp online last year for $150 (BestBuy). 6X optical and image stabilization. (keep in-mind 6X sticks-out further) Had a Vivitar before-that ate batteries for breakfast.
I would suggest checking at rec.photo.digital newsgroup and or Consumers Reports. You can usually find them at your local library.
I don't have any experience with cameras of that type. While I have one it is too old to be much of a reference. My primary cameras today are digital SLR's.
I do have a few suggestions however. There are some things that no one can test for you. You need to do it yourself.
First, be sure to get the camera into your hands. Work all the controls as you would taking photos. Since it is digital you should actually take photos. Your hands and mine are likely different sizes and that difference can make a large difference in how well you will like the camera. In general older folk and young kids need fewer larger controls.
Look through the view finder or at the screen that you will use to compose the photos. Some are really bad an others are very good. Take it into sun light if it is a screen to see if you can see it then.
Next I suggest that you should tell us, and anyone else a little more about the photography you do now and what you might want to do that you have not, maybe due to the limitations of the camera.
If any one camera was the best for everyone, then that would soon be the ONLY camera being sold.
...
Very helpful.
Thanks, Peetie
"Peetie Wheatstraw" wrote
Hey Peetie, did you get my note? I seem the only one who actually has one of them and sent you a rundown on them. Just wondering as you repied to many others but i didnt see any questions to the only one who owns one.
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