I am planning to purchase my first digital camera and have narrowed it down to OLY2020 or Nikon CP950. I love to take pictures of my family,especially my new granddaughter.I am into scrapbooking and memory albums.Which of these cameras is best,or do you have other suggestions.

-- JeanSword (wls@train.missouri.org), January 14, 2000

Answers

The answer to your question is neither. The King of consumer digital, the Nikon CoolPix 950 has been dethrowned by the Casio QV-3000EX, a 3.34 megapixel beauty boasting a Canon f2.0 lens of exceptional clarity. There are some things the Nikon does that the Casio does not, such as the pivoting lens, but on balance for picture quality and many other features, you'll want to look at the Casio as soon as it becomes available in March. I work in an office of professional news photographers who generally use the Kodak DCS 520, a $9000 digital camera. They were impressed by the Nikon Coolpix 950, but stunned by the Casio. Never before had they dared to suggest pitting a consumer camera against a DCS520, but several are wondering how the two would compare on image quality. We'll probably try some tests on Monday. If you go to the www.casio.com site, you can see news releases announcing the camera and get the full specs. There's at least one other 3.34 megapixel camera coming. Its the Canon S20, I think. I don't know much about it, but it seems to share some similarities to the Casio. The suggested retail price is $999. Don't know what that will work out to on the street.

-Bob

-- Bob Covington (bobcov@aol.com), January 14, 2000.

I used the 3megapixel casio at CES vegas last weekend. The large printouts we saw were impressive, but overall my friends and I weren't very impressed with the camera. It sure is big and clunky compared to the S20, which we also saw. Neither take external flash. Basically, all the manufacturers are going to come out with 3 megapixel cameras at about the same time I suspect, the only difference is the timing of announcements. I know sony is coming out with a 3megapixel 505 that i'll look at. Anyway these cameras won't be out for two or three months. To the original poster, the oly 2020 is a little easier to use, both are really good cameras. Both have good manual control. If you don't care about manual control, consider a

-- benoit (foo@bar.com), January 15, 2000.

I have been struggling with the same decision for several months. The 950 has more features and gets great reviews. I decided on the C-2000 about a month ago UNTIL I discovered the C-2020.

I opted for the 2020 which I just received a few days ago. I'm still in the learning curve as this is my first digital camera. It's more complicated than my Nikon F5, with menus, and sub-menus, and sub-sub-menus.

Head-to-head I think the 950 wins, but what prompted me to buy the Oly was (small) SIZE, and SIZE only...

-- MikeB (airnikon@aol.com), January 15, 2000.

I love my Nikon 950. I've never used other digital cameras, but as a web pro I get lots of digital photos moving across my system, and the Nikon images look best to me. One flaw of the Nikon though, and I don't know how the other camera might compare on this front, is that the anti red eye feature is not very effective. On the other hand my experience, mostly on the victim end, is that when anti red eye flash is bright and long enough to be truly effective, the resulting photos usually show someone who is visibly upset from being flashed at. The subjects of my cp 950 photos may have red eyes more often than I'd like (which I can retouch), but they at least don't usually look grumpy (harder to retouch).

-- John Lehet (justme@well.com), January 16, 2000.