Christmas Shopping

[efjeld]

I'm thinking about buying my wife a digital P&S for Christmas to replace her old dinosaur film camera. She's resisted the digital age of cameras since I don't print "all" of my pictures. I've got a D70 and she's clueless even afer showing her how to use it. She's a snapshooter and likes to just be able to pick up the camera and take the picture, which I why she says "Your camera sucks! It's so complicated!"

I'm looking for a compact point and shoot. Something under $350. I'm not really loyal to any brands as far as she goes. I'd like something with slow shutter lag, minimal noise at all ISO's and a decent optical zoom. With the above complacated comment, I'd also like something that she can set and forget and also something that has some manual features.

I saw the new Samsung NV series in a magazine add. Anyone have a take on these??

Throw out some ideas.

[Photo-John]

I'm very interested in the Samsung NV cameras. So far we've only had one review for one of them and I haven't been able to get one out of Samsung yet. Here's a link to the one review:

Samsung NV10 Review >>

As for your requirements, I think they're pretty reasonable - except for the "minimal noise at all ISO's." Because of the small pixel sizes, compact cameras really have pretty poor image quality above ISO 200. Shutter-lag is much improved over the past 3-4 years and good 3x optical zooms are standard. Canon is the most popular digital camera brand on this site and across the world. I don't think you can go wrong buying Canon. I tend towards Olympus and Casio compacts because of their design and features. Since image quality matters, I would recommend looking at 7 and 8-megapixel cameras. I don't think 5 and 6-megapixel cameras have very good image quality, and there't no need for more than 8-megapixels of resolution. I'm not sure if you want a pocket-sized camera or something larger. If you're looking for something with a longer lens then Kodak and Panasonic have very popular super-zoom digital cameras.

Hopefully that gives you some direction so you can start looking. If you use the reviews you can narrow your search by using the parameters in the left-hand column. Here's a link to get you started:

Digital Cameras 7-Megapixels and Higher >>

I'm sure you'll have more questions. I'll check back to see if I can help some more.

[efjeld]

Thanks for the input John. Hopefully I'll be able to get out to some stores and play around a little bit.