I'm suffering from some serious information overload. I was wondering if anyone out there would give me some advice.

I'm looking for a digital camera with a decent zoom, good resolution, decent speed between pictures, not too complicated x-fer of images to computer, in the $500-$800 range. I've been looking at the Nikon 900s, the Agfa 1680, and been told to look at an Olympus (400?). What do you think of those and are there others I should look at???

What do you think? thanks in advance for any help!

Ross

-- Ross (rossputin@aol.com), December 13, 1998

Answers

All three units you mentioned are excellent, so don't agonize too much over the decision. A few key differences: The Nikon and Agfa have lens threads, so you can add auxiliary lenses and filters to them. The Nikon has (limited) support for external flash units. The Oly comes with a "FlashPath" floppy-disk adapter in the box, which is very handy. The Oly is also a smaller, more-compact package than the other two. The Nikon uses CompactFlash cards, which are available in larger sizes than the SmartMedia the other two use, and which are easy/cheap to interface to a laptop with a PCMCIA card slot on it. (But which can't be interfaced to a floppy drive, as can the SmartMedia.) The Nikon and Oly both have optical viewfinders in addition to the LCD, while the Agfa has only LCD. All take *excellent* pictures. The Oly is probably the fastest between pictures of the group.

There! Are you *totally* confused now? As I said, I wouldn't sweat it too heavily - all are excellent cameras. One or more of the minor differences I pointed out above may swing you in one direction or the other, but I really believe you'd be happy with any of the three.

Anybody else? - Have you gone through this same decision process, and if so, what led you to the choice you made?

-- Dave Etchells (web@imaging-resource.com), December 15, 1998.

I have been reading all the info as well and finally had to write it all down. I got 90% of this info from the Dec issue of Popular Photography. I then made a column for each item I wanted on a digital camera and gave it a range of importance ( like 3-0 ). Then I reviewed all the cameras and gave each one a rank based on the value( like ISO 100 got 3 points and ISO 60 got 1 point ). I only ranked cameras with 1.3 Megs and prices under $800. After I totalled everything it was the Casio 7000 at 33pts and $525 that got the nod. Try making your own ranking system and see what you come up with. Here is mine, the points per catagory are listed at bottom, I hope it comes out OK, it was made on Microsoft Works.

CAMERA PRICE RES. EXP. ISO APER. SPEED VIEW CF/SM W/B FOCUS ZOOM BURST EXTRAS TOTAL PRICE Olympus 600L $725 1280/1024 3EV 100 2.8 10000 OP SM MAN MAN 3X NO Lock 33 $725 Casio 7000 $525 1280/960 MAN ap 100 2.8 1000 LCD CF MAN MAN 2X YES Pan/BW 33 $525 Minolta 1500 $795 1344/1008 2EV 125 3.5 4000 OP CF MAN AUTO 3X YES Lenses 31 $795 Kodak 260 $750 1536/1024 2EV 100 3.0 400 OP CF MAN AUTO 3X YES ex Flash 28 $750 Agfa 1680 $740 1343/972 MAN 60 2.8 500 LCD SM MAN MAN 3X NO ex Flash 27 $740 Olympus 400 $680 1280/960 2EV 60-120 2.8 500 OP SM MAN AUTO 3X YES ?? 27 $680 Nikon 900s $650 1280/960 2EV- 64 2.4 750 OP CF MAN AUTO 3X YES Adobe 25 $650 Ricoh 4200 $420 1280/960 2EV 80-100 2.8 500 LCD SM MAN MAN 3X NO pan/3D 25 $420 Toshiba M1 $375 1280/1024 MAN 100 3.2 1000 OP SM MAN AUTO NO NO man flash 24 $375 Agfa 1280 $485 1280/960 LCD SM 3X NO 22 $485 Fuji 700 $470 1280/1024 1.5EV 100 3.2 1000 OP SM MAN AUTO NO YES Adobe 22 $470 Ricoh 4300 $510 1280/960 2EV 40-80 2.8 500 LCD SM MAN AUTO 3X NO sound 20 $510 Epson 700 $480 1280/960 2EV 60 2.8 500 OP CF AUTO AUTO NO NO Lenses 20 $480 Fuji 500 $400 1280/1024 1.5EV 100 3.2 1000 OP SM MAN AUTO NO NO Adobe 20 $400 Kodak 210+ $395 1152/864 2EV 140 4.0 362 OP CF AUTO AUTO 2X NO Adobe 20 $395 Olympus 340L $409 1280/960 1EV 60 2.8 500 OP SM AUTO AUTO NO YES Adobe 15 $409 9-1 5-1 5-1 5-1 3/0 3/0 3/0 3/0 2-0 2/0 2/0

-- Ken Gray (kengray@televar.com), December 18, 1998.

Well obviously my post lost it's columns, and looks like crap. Sorry. Anyway, get the December issuse of Popular Photography with all the top Digitals reviewed and then list what elements you want in a digital camera and which cameras have them to a greater degree. I choose the Casio 7000 because it had so many manual operations like Aperature priority Exposure. Good Luck, Ken

-- Ken Gray (kengray@televar.com), December 18, 1998.

Small (shirt pocket), light weight, medium zoom, fast exposure, easy on the $$$, Mega-pixel. Fuji MX-700

-- Ted (ted_schwabenbauer@ameron-intl.com), December 30, 1998.

I would definitely take a look at the Agfa 1680. I just purchase d2 for my company based on my experience with my Agfa 1280 and can say that the quality, features, price combination is excellent. In fact I just sold my 1280 over the net, so I could upgrade to a 1680.

Don't let the naysayers talk you out of it because it has no viewfinder. Believe me, after getting used to composing the picture in the LCD as it will really appear, going back to a viewfinder seems so antiquated. Of course in the old days, all cameras worked this way.

We are a product design company and use the cameras for product documentation. We are VERY picky about quality. Many of the studio shots I have taken side by side with a minolta and Nikon SLRs are FAR superior in quality.

-- Tony Reynolds (treynold@gte.net), November 06, 1999.