I'm looking to buy my first digital camera for personal use. Features important to me are: USB, >3x zoom, strong macro functionality, panorama, manual aperture/shutter speed/white balance, <$700.

After doing research, much of which was performed at this site, I made the decision to buy the Casio QV8000SX. Since this is my first digicam, I would like to see one of these cameras up close and personal. I've called literally scores of retailers in my area (central New Jersey) that Casio claims to distribute the model to with no luck. It seems many of the stores don't carry Casio cameras at all!

I'm wondering if anyone knows of a retailer/superstore in the central Jersey area that carries the QV8000SX. If noone carries this, is there a reason? I've only seen positive reviews, and the price seems reasonable. Casio support personel suggested that the problem could be that it is an old model.

Is there a new model with a comparable feature set for the same price?

-- Michael (dotmike@juno.com), July 05, 2000

Answers

I bought mine mailorder from www.provantage.com - I live in Australia, so I saved about $1000 by importing it myself. Yes, it is hard to find one, the stores here could only get it on special order and I wanted to hold it in my hand like you, but I finally had to bite the bullet and buy it.

If you can find a Coolpix or similar with the rotating lens, it's alot like that, but slightly larger, much more solid, and the 43mm lens is _HUGE_ compared to most other digicams. Same goes for the LCD.

I've been extremely happy with it, the CCD could have more resolution, but it does what I want, and the other features more than make up for being only 1.1Mpixel. After all, I view my pictures on scrren, not print them out.

glen.

-- Glen Harris (glen@gbrmpa.gov.au), July 31, 2000.