I am looking for a digital camera to use at sporting events. This camera should have an excellent zoom ability. What camera is best in zoom without sacrificing quality of the photo. The sony mavica, has 16 x optical zoom, however only l.3 megapixals. What would be my best choice for good zoom and good resolution. I also like the burst mode feature in some of the new cameras.

-- Claudia Lunt (crlunt@cs.com), April 11, 2000

Answers

You're going to have a real problem with some sporting events because of "shutter lag". Which means that on digicams, you press the shutter, and the picture is taken some time later.... So even though you can adjust the shutter priority/aperture priority on many of these cams to reduce blur, it's not going to help because your fast moving subject is off the frame... Digital is not the best way to go for framing fast moving sport shots. Still I got lucky on some of my shots and got some good ones, but I'd hate to count on it. My cheapo 35mm pentax slr would be way better in this situation.

OK it's not very noticible with scenery shots, but try horse racing and basketball as I have... Every single digicam I know of has this problem. The Canon S20 website bragged about mitigating this problem but even they have significant lag even after focusing on this issue.

Sony mavicas have the worst image quality in the digital camera industry. It's plenty good enough for web sites, but printing is not the best. I'm not anti sony, I own a 505 and love it. Maybe their new line will be better, like the 95.

Most of the new cameras have burst feature, having some buffer memory.. it works better with lower res than higher res shots of course.

I guess I'd have an easier time recommending a particular camera if you specified which sport. :) Maybe a nikon 990 with telephoto attachment would be good. The 5x on my 505 is great but it's not easy to frame moving subjects with the LCD (no viewfinder). Good luck, sorry for rambling..

-- benoit (foo@bar.com), April 11, 2000.

For highest image quality, you want optical zoom, not digital zoom. Maybe the Nikon D1?

-- Ron Shaw (shaw9@llnl.gov), April 12, 2000.

All the above is true, but if you can stand to wait a month or two, the new mavica cameras, specifically the FD95 will be out. No idea on performance, but it does have the ability to save to the Memory Stick. Resolution aside, the FD91 is a great camera. With the FD95 coming out with the same features and several improvements, it is sure to be a very nice camera.

-- David Erskine (davide@netquest.com), April 12, 2000.

mavicas currently have the worst image quality in the industry, actually they always have. Maybe things will change with the 95, we'll see.

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

Well, if they do have the worst image quality (i.e. lousy CCD and lens), why would the new 3.3MP digicam (e.g. Olympus 3030Z and Nikon 990) use sony CCD? Besides, their Zeiss lens is a top notch lens. I would say their 'print' quality might be one of the worst if you tried to print images larger than 5x7".

-- Sean (saicheong@hotmail.com), April 20, 2000.

I use a C2500 Olyumpus digial SLR and just took some shots of a auto race and was surprized at the results.You can go to www.bhphotovideo.com which is B&H Photo in NY and compare camers that you may be interested in.

-- Don Thompson (dthom49484@aol.com), April 24, 2000.

The above posts are right in that there is a certain amount of lag time associated with digital cameras, but you may have good luck after all with an Olympus C2000-Z and here's why. This camera has adjustable f-stops and shutter speeds. Assuming you have good lighting, there's no reason why you shouldn't be able to capture the image you want at 1/800th sec shutter speed (or less). There are other cameras out there that let you control both shutter and aperature settings, so I'd look into those if you want action shots. Better yet, ask around your circles and see if you could borrow one for a test before you buy.

-- Sue Bald (destiny3@ix.netcom.com), May 04, 2000.