I was wondering if there are any digital camera users out there who could give me some advice. With the little one due in less than six seeks, and our family spread all over the place, I thought it would be handy to have a digital camera. I'd mainly use it to send photos by email to the family, but it would be nice if I could print out a good quality photo if I took one. Does anyone know how many megapixels the camera needs to be able to take before the photo is good enough to print.

Cheers

KT

-- Anonymous, April 29, 2002

Answers

Any help appreciated.

-- Anonymous, April 29, 2002

I, like a few others on here went for the Kodak-fuck-up offer, getting the DX3700 for £100. The prob with this is that the battery shuts down after one or two photos - and looking at comments on the net I'm not the only one with this prob, so I'd avoid that particular model. Anyroad, it's 3.1 mpx, which is relatively high, but the quality is very good. You should certainly be able to get away with less, but how much less I'm afraid I don't know.

-- Anonymous, April 29, 2002

KT - I have a Fujifilm MX-1200 (couple of years old now) which has 1.3 megapixels. I don't tend to print out too often, but those that I have come out OK, even without a photo cartridge in my printer. I've found that printing on bog standard photocopier paper with a colour cartridge looks OK, especially when you mount the picture behind glass/perspex. My lad bought his gran a fancy phot frame for her birthday and I printed one of my piccies out and he put it in the frame. To be honest, unless you are very close, it's difficult to realise it wasn't a "normal" photo. The bigger problem I find is that my camera doesn't have optical zoom so getting a close-up is not so good. But for "family snaps" I'd say it was adequate. Wanna make me an offer for it? ;-)

-- Anonymous, April 29, 2002

£20.00 cash ;-)

-- Anonymous, April 29, 2002

Gibbo - it's gonna cost you more than that for those 2 piccies (each) that you're after.

-- Anonymous, April 29, 2002

Offering my humble opinion; buy the best you can afford.Cheaper cameras usually relate to web production quality, dearer ones (very high megapixels) will reproduce much better in print but dont forget you are always at the mercy of your printer (most will print impressively at 300 p.p.i.)

The higher the performance the greater it sucks the battery;so avoid using the image viewer when on batteries and get a one that downloads to your pooter via either usb or by detachable memory card. Zoomsare perfect but for really crisp sharp shots go wide lens but go in very close (TAKE INTO CONSIDERATION THE MINIMUM FOCUS LENGTH-YOUR MANUAL WOULD ADVISE)Other than that, well Olympus and fiji do some cool models...hope this is helpful

-- Anonymous, April 29, 2002

Just done a bit of research on this for school and plumped for the Nikon Coolpix 775. It costs around 250 quid. My nephew has a digital camera and says it is well worth investing an extra 25 quid or so in a card reader. This allows you to take the card out of the camera and slot it into the card reader which is already plugged into one of your USB ports. Saves messing about linking the camera to the computer each time.

-- Anonymous, April 29, 2002

That Nikon Coolpix 775 looks canny Jacko.

Just looked it up at:

http://www.internetcamerasdirect.co.uk/nikon-coolpix-775-deals.htm

which does the camera plus card plus VAT plus next working day delivery for £275 - and a whole range of other deals.

Scuse my complete ignorance...but presume the bigger the memory card, the more pics you can take on your hols?

-- Anonymous, April 29, 2002

Dan, are you sure the camera isn't faulty? Mine goes for ages without losing power.

I filled a full 32MB card from scratch without recharging, which is about 40 pictures I think.

-- Anonymous, April 29, 2002

dan, are you using rechargeable NiMH batteries?

I've just gone mad and bought a Minolta s404. Rather good :-))
It cost £410 mind plus £45 for 128MB flash. Check out http://dpreview.com which will tell you all you need to know in the reviews and you can browse the fora for users comments/problems

-- Anonymous, May 02, 2002

The base station's continually flashing red now. I don't think I ever sent of any guarantee thing either.

-- Anonymous, May 02, 2002

The base thing should only go red (not flashing) when the batteries are being charged - maybe there is a fault.

Kiwi, I took this picture of my cousin with his rabbit on my Kodak which is just over 3MP if you want a rough guide what the quality will be like:

RABBIT!

-- Anonymous, May 02, 2002

By the way it's about 800k which might take a while to load.

-- Anonymous, May 02, 2002

Benton, you are of course correct, but the cards can be very expensive. I have a Canon digital ixus, which is small and therefore okay to carry around in my pocket. Can't fault it really, although the zoom could be better (whoops, I just faulted it). It came with an 8mb card, which is all but useless. I got two 64 mb cards so that I can take lots of pics, and a couple of spare batteries, always charged up, 'cos the batteries will run out before the card fills up. But then, I'm totally analy retentive. I believe it is possible to get a 1 gb card now, but it's about £400, ie more than the camera. I also use an adaptor for the pci slot on my laptop for the compact flash cards, much easier/neater than usb cables, and works okay on pc (work) and mac (home). Plus, if you use a mac, use system X. and run iphoto. It's the dog's bollocks, much better than any of the software which comes with the cameras. But I guess most of the guys on here are using pc's. Or buy What Digital camera, or some such. Always a good starting point for £4, and you can do a comparison before you shell out.

-- Anonymous, May 02, 2002

If you need new memory cards or batteries, 7 Day Shop is a good place to start.

-- Anonymous, May 02, 2002

Good site Paul... just ordered a few goodies ;-)

-- Anonymous, May 02, 2002

I've got a Canon S20 - 2M pixies and it takes perfectly adequate 6x4s which is the main stuff. (When printed on photo paper)

-- Anonymous, May 02, 2002

Thanks for all the advice. I've just ordered a Canon S30 3Megapixel.

Cheers

KT

-- Anonymous, May 03, 2002