Hi gang, I'm looking for a satisfactory digital camera for street photography. I've been using the Mavica quite happily, but no longer have access to it. I bought a Ricoh, but gave up after a weekend of shooting. The latency between pressing the shutter and the actual grab was so long (perhaps a second) I actually ended up with a bunch of photos of the ground, sky, someones elbow...

What I need: 640X480 (for web), quality lens, 3X zoom, good low-light performance, fast refresh between shots, smart card, good color and little compression artifact, around $500 US.

Thoughts about the Ricoh: I like the design of the camera with flip-up LCD that allows me to hold it away from my face and be less conspicious. The color resolution was also quite good, but a lot of compression artifacts, even at highest quality. Well designed, both hardware and software. If it wasn't for the latency I would have kept it.

Thanks in advance,

Hugh Bridgeford Art Director Moebius Media

-- hugh bridgeford (hughb@well.com), September 10, 1998

Answers

Fast shutter response would push you toward a fixed-focus camera, since a lot of the delay with many cameras is the time required for autofocus. None of them have the 3x zoom you're looking for, but many of the other characteristics (swivel lens, 640x480, great low light capability, very fast cycle times) can be found in the little Casio cameras. Color is a bit muddy, but just about every other characteristic would be great for street photography. Check out the reviews for the QV-700 and QV-770 elsewhere on this site. (The QV-5000 has higher resolution, but no swivel lens.) The QV-700/770 have some of the fastest cycle times I've seen, down to nearly 1 second between shots!

It'll go toward autofocus, but Casio's also just announced the QV-7000, which will have both a swivel lens and a 2x optical zoom. The auto-focus may slow down the shot-taking, we'll have to see.

Finally, I haven't played with one extensively, but the Minolta Dimage V has a completely *removable* lens that can extend on a 3 foot tether. Seems this could be great for candid shots, but I know nothing about its other characteristics (cycle time, low-light).

Hope this helps!

-- Dave Etchells (web@imaging-resource.com), September 10, 1998.