I believe I'm choosing between the 2 cameras listed. I want a good all-a-round camera that also will take movies. I want it to be pocket size, good clear picture, of high quality, be able to print out pictures in an 8x10 format size and try to stay under $800. I am unhappy about the zoom capability, the DSC50 has a 38mm thread on lens and the DSC50 has a 52mm thread on lens. Knowing the thread sizes, is there one that will accept a 2x telephoto adapter to increase zoom? Suggestions, ideas, comments?

-- Ed Orner (Kingfish1@gci.net), May 31, 2000

Answers

Ed:
For all of your stated requirements the S70 is a superior choice - the only reason one would consider the S50 is to save $. The S50 is a lower resolution - defeatured version of the S70, but costs less.

Des

-- Dan Desjardins (dan.desjardins@avstarnews.com), May 31, 2000.

Have you checked out the Toshiba PDR-M70 (3.3Mgpxl) Pocketsize with 3x Optical and 2x Digital Zoom, 1hr Audio or 5min video/audio (15fps) on a 16Mb SmartMedia Card?? see link below

http://www.toshiba.com/taisisd/dsc/products/cameras/pdrm70/index.htm

I am looking at buying a digicam myself capable of good quality stills and am very interested in the mini-movie feature of some cameras. I'm not sure how useful the movie feature is but it appeals to me as a good way to capture short travel/holiday footage that I can then stick on the web for friends to view. Nothing like actually saying "Hi" to friends from somewhere spectacular ;-)

I am no expert and still trying to fight my way through all the jargon and whizzo functions to find a camera that does what I need without shelling out buckets of $$$$.

If anyone has bought the Tosh model above or something comparable I'm keen to hear what you think of it.

Let me know if you find what you're after ;-)

-- Malcolm Klose (malcolm.klose@ericsson.co.nz), July 13, 2000.

The Toshiba PDR-M70 would seem to fit your needs well, including pricing. I have one. If either of you have any specific questions beyond the normal info you can find in the reviews, I'd be happy to try to answer them.

As far as lenses go, there's a link from Toshiba's site under accessories that takes you to a partner or distributor that shows a Tiffen 43mm adapter tube and lenses due out mid August. They also have a 1.8X teleconverter available now or soon and a 2.0X scheduled for late fall. I think adapting longer zooms like monoculars or the Eagle Eye Zoom to it would be pretty simple. I've already whipped up a custom lens adapter tube for mine from a PVC male coupling to allow me to mount a large 2.0X teleconverter I bought some months ago. I've spoken to the folks at Tiffen and they assure me that the new add-on lenses will blow people away in terms of quality. Beyond about 2X on the 3X zoom in-camera lens there is no vignetting and the image looks great. My back of the napkin engineered adapter tube is a bit long, so that range might be much improved with the tube & teleconverters designed for the camera.

I really have nothing bad to say about the M70, it seems they've even dispensed with the infamous plastic tripod sockets used in former models... :-) The aluminum alloy body is really nice, a definite step up from the previous plastic bodies. I don't have any other 3.3MP equipment so I have nothing here to compare against, but the image quality and camera operation are very impressive to me. The automatic, shutter priority, and aperture priority modes are great. There isn't a full manual mode with manual focus yet, but the autofocus is very good, quite fast, and focus and zooming are both VERY quiet. The continuous autofocus is so quiet I didn't even realize it had it when I first started playing with the camera. About the only complaint anyone has voiced so far is that there's no uncompressed Tif mode, but that seems a minor gripe considering that the 5:1 Fine mode jpegs look so good. I don't even use Fine mode, Normal mode (7.5:1) seems great to me. About the only improvements I could think of would be to provide a true manual mode with manual focusing, to allow you to turn the continuous autofocus mode off without switching to infinity focus and to add a remote control for shutter release or a time lapse shutter device. The first two are VERY minor points and both are seemingly addressable with a downloadable firmware upgrade the others are just wishlist items...

Any questions, fire away.

-- Gerald M. Payne (gmp@surferz.net), July 14, 2000.