I'm kind of stealing the mo' of this but I had to jump in and say as a consumer, on the verge of "prosumer", I love my Canon A620. It's easy to use and I love the results. When I'm taking nighttime food shots in my kitchen, the results without a flash are even better than I could have imagined. Memory is so cheap now I always use the highest res and this has been good. I just made a big poster of a beanfield and there are no telltale digital signs. The real interesting thing is I'm a mostly point and shoot kind of fellow but this is inspiring me to learn more about photography.
Thanks to Lippy, Tana, Mongo and the rest of you for steering me in this direction and finally giving me the final push!
Now back to your other conversation...

That won't fit in my tiny evening bag either. I have sort of a weird requirement, since I have a DSLR that I use for practically everything else. Basically the most important -only, even- use of my small camera is to take shots of food inside a restaurant, often at dinner time and in US restaurants which seem to believe fanciness = darkness.) So the camera for me has to be as little as possible (to fit in the aforementioned itty bags) while giving me the best shots at the lowest light possible. (And by giving me the best shots I only mean picking up the most details, I can do other stuff in Photoshop to make the shots nice.)

The A6xx series are far too big.

have you considered getting a bigger bag?

I know that, hence my apology for derailing the thread a bit. I also think it would be too basic for you, athough I don't know. But it brings home the trickiness of recommending a camera for someone else. It really depends on what you're going to be using it for. I really love closeups and nightshots of food but I can use a tripod as I'm normally at home. Beachfan says portablility and travel shots are key. You need something for your itty bitty bags that won't smash your Certs and cherry Chapstick.

I will say I've become addicted to the flip out LCD on the a620

and don't know what I'll do without it if I upgrade.

from what i can tell, small size and low-noise high iso photographs are somewhat exclusive. it seems to be the case that small size is coveted by point&shoot'ers who aren't as big on picture quality. that said, cnet seems to suggest that the olympus stylus 810 does well with low light and macro:

That would be too easy

this might also work. you're really looking for a specialty use camera, right? and cropping images etc.? many of the review negatives of ultracompact cameras that do well with low light may not apply as you won't be using it as your primary camera outside of dimly-lit restaurants.

Thank you

Yes, you're right about the specific use thing. Only CNET seems to know the existence of the Olympus Stylus 810, however,.....DP Review doesn't have it, nor does Amazon. Weird. It looks good in the CNET review though.

edit: nevermind, found it on DPreview....nice site but index there sucks..

I love my A620 too.

The A620 is probably a great camera, but if you want a smaller one, take a look at the canon SD models. I have an SD450, which I think is 5 megapixels; there are cheaper and more expensive models with fewer and more pixels. It does a great job with autofocus even with targets that are moving, and does a great job with color even in high and low light situations. I think the main negatives compared to the A620 is that it takes a special battery (I always carry two) and that it is a little more expensive. But it is a true pocket camera. I carry it in my pants pocket and don't even notice it, and I can have it out of the case, turned on, and take a picture in under 3 seconds.

This is my third Canon.

Mrs. Porkwah (who has a Nikon D50 -- not a pocket camera) had a Sony DSCT1 and it had lots of problems. It focused poorly regardless of light, and images were often "bleached out". It's possible that Sony fixed some of these problems but friends of mine who have newer Sony cams have regretted their choices.

It's probably shallow of me, but I truly bought the DSC T1 for the size and the look! It was the smallest and the most stylish camera of its time (still looks better than most today.) I have surprisingly few problems with it, and it was my only camera for a while until I got my fancy DSLR so I gave it a good workout. I'm still relatively happy with it and still uses it for most restaurant shots even today, you can see plenty of sample shots from that camera on my blog.

David has a Canon SD550, which I like even less than my first generation Digital Elf that I had long ago. Frankly I don't see a huge improvement in quality of shots from this one compared to my beauty-before-brain Sony.

And if there is one thing I learned from my experience with the Sony and Zeiss lens, It's that size matters when it comes to lens. The Zeiss lens is great but the tiny size limits the amount of light coming in, and so I want better and bigger lens for my new pocket cam. That's why I'm looking into the Panasonic stuff as it uses great Leica lens.

I have no Canon lenses, so no problemo. I am keeping my Powershot Pro1, which has excellent wide-angle capabilities, and which has no issues in circumstances under which I'd be using it. I don't often have use for wide-angle shots, since food at arm's length is more the focus of my work...especially with a book deal in the making.

My 50mm f/1.8 arrived yesterday, and I am gobsmacked by the D200. I will never buy (or recommend) another Canon: their customer service is of the "Thank you sir, may I have another?" variety. They forever lost a loyal customer who helped sell hundreds of their cameras. You would bail, gratefully, as I am, if you'd been lied to and abused as I was by Canon. Seriously. I posted on my site about it yesterday: I'm so glad I'm out from under their thumb!

I've been taking the D200 through its paces, using only the manual mode (instead of shutter or aperture priority) and am loving the learning curve and the results.

If I don't like my 18-200mm lens, I can sell it on eBay. But having tried my ex's 80-400mm, I think I will love this lens just fine.

The first four rows of this album are with the D200 and the 50mm lens.



I'm not suffering yet.

RG, I not recommending it, but be aware that they do make a camera a step above yours, and it has the added advantage of Image Stabilization, which gives you a few f-stops lower down the spectrum. That means better shots of food in low lighting. That particular camera sports the flip-out lens that you like. It would likely take excellent photos, assuming it's not a lemon like both of the Powershot Pro1's I purchased (the original and its refurbished replacement that they sent me).

Lippy's advice to use DPReview is always worth echoing: also check out the chatter in the forums there.

The brand new D80 seems to compare very favorably with the D200, the major difference for me being the plastic, as opposed to metal, body.

So the plastic body would be off-putting for you?

It'a a factor. I am hard on things. My old Nikons are indestructible. I'd be concerned that a plastic body, together with all those sensitive electronic parts would add up to easier breakage for a clutz like me. Otoh, the technology packed into this new camera at an attractive price point, would be a counterbalance.

On the face of it, I feel the same about camera bodies, but when I dropped my mostly plastic-bodied A610 to the sidewalk, the only dents were in the metal.

pim: for low light situations in restaurants, i'd go with a very(i repeat..VERY) fast prime lens. 50mm, f/1.00? fast primes are *very* expensive. also a ring flash? high iso/noisy images are not worth it, imo. small and handy p&s digicams should do just fine, actually...

tana: holy fuck!

as i like to repeat what i heard eons ago..."nikon makes the best lenses, minolta makes the best bodies and canon makes the best compromise."

i think it will be difficult for me to move away from canon tho'...i still have the the canon proshot g1(what is it now? g7?) because of it's metal body. i also blanch..visibly..when i see nikon price tags..if i shift to nikon, it means that i have to rebuild the entire set..range of lenses to filters etc. i also find nikon a tad heavy.

i did some research on the d200 and it's very impressive indeed. improvements by leaps and bounds. probably also means that i am hopelessly out of date.

My ex convinced me that the lens is probably more important than the camera, so I overcame my unreasonable prejudice against Nikon when he sold me on the 18-200mm lens as being pretty all-purpose for my work. The prejudice I had included the ridiculous notion that Canon's proportions (600x450, e.g.) were superior to Nikon's (600x400). That is just silly.


Now you're starting to see things my way!

I'm very encouraged by the camera, and learned that there is a DVD training coming out in a couple of weeks. The manual that comes with the camera is flawed and pretty useless.

I am very new to the deep-end of this swimming pool, but hey, the water's fine!

you know what they say about the size of lenses and..err..hmm....people's ego.

on the other hand..

why i love canon



canon g1..my first digicam. only 3.3 mp. i printed this poster at 20x30 inches.

I still have my G1. It was a fine workhorse for me: I had mind-melded with it, getting shots with no idea what the hell I was doing.

And to bracket your "why I love Canon," here is why I love my new Nikon. This is practically unretouched: I tilted the color balance in the highlights to make the green a little greener, because the berries were reflecting a little too much of a blue awning.

Heh heh heh heh heh, he's got an 18-400mm lens that he loaned me, but it not correspondent to the size of his ego or anything else. Not that any of that is why we're no longer married.

FWIW, basically, I bought that camera for looks too.

then let us rejoice in our mutual frivolity

I think Canon and Nikon people are like Mac and PC people, there are two camps both think they are better off and you get the ocaassional convert. Like Mac and PC I think it really comes downt o what you like and what you're used to. Personally I'm a Canon person, always have been. The other thing is lately the Nikon reps around here are becoming just like drug reps and it freaks me out.

Rocky

So which one is which? Just so I know who to hate.

I have never met anyone who "converted" to a PC and loved it. I have known legions who were forced to use them at work, and who couldn't wait to get home to their virus-free Macs.

I know plenty of PC users who will never convert, but of the ones who have, I do not know a single one who is unhappy at being free of the Gatesian nightmare.

I thought I was a Canon person, but they aren't dissimilar enough to Nikons for me to make a fuss about. I'm just relieved to be out of the Seventh Circle of Hell with the two lemon cameras I bought and their wretched customer abuse. Nikon could easily mistreat me, too, I'm too new to know.

I find from your posts that you have a lot of issues with corporations and tend to personalize them. I think their job is to get you off the phone as soon as possible and your job is to get what you need out of them. These two things are at odds with each other so you're going to have to be your own advocate in this new economy. I find if I'm not getting the answer I need, I can often make an espresso, call back, get a more reasonable person and get what I want. A lot of times it depends on the individual you are talking with.

But really, Canon (and your bank, your cell phone, your computer maker, etc) is a corporation who most likely outsourced their customer service and you got a lemon of a person. The idea of corporate culture at the level you're talking is mostly a thing of the past.

For the record, I know 2 people who went Mac>PC. And I once had to deal Mac customer service for a friend and it didn't make me all warm and fuzzy like the commercials. But there are much better things to get upset about or form an allegiance over.

While your initial point is good—I am emotional about this issue—you have no idea how many people I spoke to, or how many actual phone calls I made. The first go-round was at least two phone calls a day for over a week. With a person who was bending over backwards to help me, but whose superiors would not allow him to do the right thing: replace the camera that they knew then was a lemon. (Firmware issues that, once upgraded, still did not improve the camera's performance.)

First of all, every single person I spoke to was employed at a Canon facility. (I ask these kinds of questions because I want to know, in just about every situation with any kind of customer service, from my telephone service to the cable, or what have you.)

I made at least fifty phone calls over the course of a year, and asked each time to be put in touch with someone with the power to be helpful, not someone who merely expressed (useless) sympathy at my plight. I wound up with the head of Customer Service, a woman with ice water in her veins named Elizabeth Wood(s). I was in tears more than once because I'd spent $1000 on a camera that did not work, they knew it did not work (it was in the shop three times in seven months), and which they PROMISED to replace with a brand-new camera.

When I opened the replacement to find "REFURBISHED" on the box, I went ballistic. I never had a working, brand-new camera, and the second one was a lemon, as well.

In this instance, the notion that I couldn't find a reasonable person is not true. The truth is that, at the head of Customer Service, a stupid woman made the very bad mistake of not doing the right thing, and my intense frustration with this kind of idiotic mindset (which included a letter to the CEO telling him that I was going to stop recommending their cameras) only served to deepen the feeling that they had abused me.

Sorry, my sore feelings are 100% appropriate, and have nothing to do with failing to connect with a reasonable person. I know how to get good customer service: I go straight to the top, or at least to a manager with the power to take right actions. I begin each conversation with something like, "I am not upset with you, but I am upset because my camera is malfunctioning, and you keep telling me to send it in for service. You know it's a lemon and you need to replace it, please. If you can't do that, please put me on the phone with someone who has the power to make decisions and make things right."

I am effective complainer and praiser, equally, and would far rather crow joyfully from the rooftops than sit and bitch. But by golly, $1000 wasted is plenty to bitch about, and my ire is exactly with the cold-hearted corporation who thinks in the short term of their bottom line, without realizing that they are alienating a loyal customer who sold LOTS of cameras for them.

I'm not moving into the Nikon camp in the same way one changes one's party affiliation. It's not political. I simply have a Nikon because I won't buy another Canon again as long as I live. I'm glad if yours works, and that you're having a great time with it, and I'm also glad you haven't had to endure the hell I did, trying to get them to send me a working $1000 camera.

Fini.

Second bad review of Sony. I like the look of the Canon SDs, I was hoping for a little more than 5mp, but it seems like the price hits $450pretty quick above that point.

Decision time is very soon, off to China in 2 weeks.

I have been very happy with my new Pentax Optio W10 (6 megapixels). It was pretty intuitive to learn for a duffer like me, has more complex settings for fine colour adjustments that my DH uses to take photos of his artwork and, most important given that our favourite pastime is fishing, it's waterproof

Fly

while i agree with you in general, i have found that there are companies whose telephone customer service is consistently terrible (best buy, for example) and others whose customer service is consistently conscientous (dell, for example, and also my new bank). there are companies who make an investment in strong customer service (outsourced or not) and others that don't--if you read reviews on amazon for routers, for example, you'll find there are companies that are renowned for non-existent support. i'm not sure where canon and nikon fall. i haven't yet needed to call canon for anything.

tana..just curious. where did you buy your lemon canon? and did you buy service along with it? why did you have to go to canon corp directly? i ask because i'd like to avoid those folks in the future.

i only buy from bhphotovideo, sometimes directly from nyc..sometimes through their website. they have a reputation to protect and cannot afford to piss off customers.

why i love Alaska

Nikon user since the early sixties. We are very brand-loyal.

I do love the German and Swiss optics, thought, which is why I have kept my Hasselblad gear. Someone told me that Zeiss will release lenses for the high end Nikon digitals. Now that's a heavenly marriage.

if i were to pick another name, it would be leica for their rangefinders. some of the older contax rangefinders arent bad either...

*envy*... re your hasselblad.

eta: jaymes, aleyska, "god's own land"?

For Japanese optics, I think Olympus' Zuiko are the best. I reluctantly gave up my Nikon F2S because it weighed too much to schlep around all day. But I kept all the lenses. I've decided to buy the Nikon DSLR. I also sold my Rollie and the Linhof Technica with all the Schneder lenses. My "Ansel Adams" large format days are over. I did keep the classic twin lens Roliflex, but never use it. It's beome a desk ornament.

Did you make your own Zone System prints from the large format negatives?

Which dslr? I am following the d80 right now.

My late father inlaw was my tutor/mentor for printing and using the large format camera. He had a complete development set up/darkroom for color prints. In the last years he got into microphotograpy. He had a super microscope and took incredible pictures using polarized lenses. Abrahms published a book of his photographs called Micro-Art: Art Images in a Hidden World. I never became as skilled as he was, but it was fun.
The D80 is my preference. But I haven't yet gotten the hand feel for it. I think it is due in September. The DPReview is quite detailed. D80 review

There is a new 35-300 MM lens they are introducing in October for this camera.

It wasn't the company, whose return policy was "10 days." It might have even been B & H: I don't shop with strangers. I use well-known companies like BuyDig, etc.

The problem was that I didn't detect the camera's lack of ability to focus until outside that 10-day window. Then I had to start dealing directly with the unhelpful people at Canon, who knew I had a lemon, but who stringed me along for months.

I agree: people with reputations to protect should treat their customers right*. Canon apparently doesn't know how to do business the good way, the win-win way. Their refusal to replace my $1000 lemon is, I hope, costing them multi-thousand dollars in loss of sales.

Signed,
Ashley Axgrinder

* That's why I went for my Nikon on eBay: J&K Camera has a 100% customer approval rating. There were a couple of minor gaffs in service, but they bent over backwards to work with me to make me happy. I recommend them to anyone. I experienced their customer service in action. I think Canon's idea of "service" is the same as when a stallion "services" a mare.

Hey, Pim, I thought of you when I was reading this review of the Fuji Finepix F30 in Popular Photography magazine. The print magazine specifically highlights its high performance in low lighting, especially in restaurants. (I don't know why that isn't highlighted online, but I'll try to get the quote from the magazine today, when I go back to the gym.) The ISO range goes up to 3200:

mrs. jones' new nikon l4 just arrived. it won't be checked out till she returns (she is in texas with my camera) but this is a very cute little point and shoot, about half the size of my hand. and it was packaged with a carrying case, an av cord, a usb cable, and batteries. an incredible deal for a little over $100.

Ran out of time, bought something more expensive than I had planned, but got a 1gig card thrown in. Canon sd700, for $475 plus tax, at Woodland Hills Camera.

Going through all the reviews on dpreview was informative but ultimately well overkill as none of hte prior models in that series (the elph one) or any the S series were available. The Canons seem to have a 6 months shelf life and then they are gone.

The Nikon pocket cameras didn't get top recommendatons from dp review, this one did, so I went with it.

I'm hoping the pictures will look better on the computer than on the lcd as the colors look a little muted.

Will you post some samples after you've played around a bit? Thanks.

Just bought a new Leica D-Lux3. It's been out of stock in the US since not long after launch and only came back in after I left for europe. So I bought mine at RG Lewis, the most darling little old fashioned camera shop in London.

It's the only compact camera that lets me set things like aperture or shutter speed and also shoot in RAW. Having shots in uncompressed format will come in handy later, I'm sure.

A little pricey, it's a Leica after all, but great lens and great features.



and a lot handsomer in person.

I'm going to take it around shooting a bunch of stuff today, but just from a few shots I've tried around the flat I like it already.

I'm looking forward to your impressions, Pim. I got myself the nearly-identical-but-cheaper Lumix version of the Leica (which, as you said, was completely unavailabale in the States) a few weeks ago, but haven't had much chance to play with it. Love what it's done so far, especially the 16:9 mode.

Blondie, which model of the Lumix is equivalent? I was looking at some the other day and was very tempted to buy.

The LX2