Digital camera advice please

Go to: Forums > Skills, Talents & Leisure: Photography

There are 18 postings to this topic on our Member website and this page runs 7 days behind our Member website. For the full topic click to sign up to OUTeverywhere.

Topic started by Morning Glory Dave (daven8)

I normally go through life with my feet in the clouds, and head firmly on the ground. It's more fun that way (although I like to swap ends occasionally). When I've got my feet and head on the ground at the same time, my arse sticks in the air. That can be fun too.

A topic from Skills, Talents & Leisure: Photography

daven8Wed 23/01/08 21:48

I'm about to get a new digital camera. It's about time too: my current one was bought about eight years ago for £250...and it's only 1.3M pixels. That was quite high-spec back then! In those days, I'd have had to pay around £600 to get something even approaching the quality of the average mobile phone's camera today.

Anyway, I think I've found a camera I like, at a price I like, with the features that are important to me. But I thought I'd ask you lovely people (and even the nutters) for comments first, in case you know of better cameras for the price, or have techie info about the sensor in my choice not being good, or whatever...

First of all, I should explain what I want from the camera (which is not quite the norm) so that you can understand why I'm prioritising some features over others.

I don't need a compact point-and-shoot camera for taking photos of mates getting drunk (my mobile covers that): so size, weight, and style are of no real interest. Of course, if I had a choice between two cameras with a similar spec and price tag, weight etc might be the deciding factor...but for now, let's discount that.

I don't want a D-SLR, because I don't want the expense of buying new lenses, and don't want to run the risk of damaging lenses and sensors since I'll mostly us the camera in the open, often with a bit of mud on my hands.

I don't need to be able to enlarge my photos to huge sizes, and I want optical zoom rather than digital zoom, so I don't need top-of-the range resolution. 5-6M pixels would probably be fine, but 8M seems more than enough for what I want.

I do want a camera for taking good photos of plants & gardens (I'm a nutty gardener); nature, architecture...blah blah. They're all situations where I might want to point-and-shoot, but would often want to have as much control as possible. Photos (often close-ups) of plants will be the main use.

So, my main priorities are:

Must have a manual focus option
Must have a close macro mode
Must have a good optical zoom

Good performance under low light without flash (using manual ISO settings) would be an advantage...my option below doesn't seem to be well-rated on this, but is bound to be better than what I have!

Anyway, what I've found is:
Fujifilm Finepix S5800 @ £129.98
8M pixels
10 x optical zoom (equates to a 38-380mm lens on an old SLR)
1 cm ultra macro focus

It has all the usual flash modes, USB connections; focus, exposure, shutter and ISO overrides... seems to have all I want.

So, does anyone know of any better offers, or better cameras in a similar price bracket (up to £200). Or horror stories about Fujifilm?

informer_ukWed 23/01/08 21:54

Sounds perfectly good to me.

There are 16 more postings on this topic on our Member website. For the full topic click to sign up to OUTeverywhere right now.

Enjoy chatting with our members

Imagine joining a social network of people from all around the country and see how you'll feel a year from today. You're increasing your circle of friends. You're doing more of the stuff you enjoy. You're having a great time meeting new people in your area. You're seeing all the benefits of becoming a member of OUTeverywhere. It still feels great making new friends and every day you're hearing more and more about the stuff that everyone's doing. You're joining in. Now, that was easy, wasn't it?

We make meeting people easy. Click to sign up to OUTeverywhere and get up and do something different!

PLEASE NOTE: Events are listed on this website on behalf of organisers in accordance with the Terms of Membership of OUTeverywhere and only if they have chosen broad publicity when adding their event to the Member Events calendar. As such, events are not necessarily affiliated to or endorsed by OUTeverywhere and may not be organised by the person who has listed the event: the person listing this event may simply be attending an event organised by another person or organisation and may wish to meet other people sharing their interest in the event. The mention or appearance of any person or organisation featured on these pages is not to be taken as any indication of sexual, social or political orientation of such persons or organisations. We cannot guarantee that the information is accurate and recommend that you always seek to contact the organiser directly to confirm full details of any event. Under no circumstances will we be responsible for any loss or damage resulting from reliance on, use or misuse of, the information on this website.

Our Vision | Our Team | Privacy Policy | Identity Theft Protection | Terms of Membership

Chat and Meet People

Enter one or two words to tell us something you enjoy:

Or enter a postcode or the name of a place:

Latest Shout OUT

Broadcast to the gay world with our public Shout OUTs service! Post on our member website or from your mobile phone and raise your profile.

James Come-Play-With-Me (yogaguy) from the Surbiton area in United Kingdom shouts OUT: "there is nothing better than to be without everything-no theories or practices, when you are without all, you will be with all.""

Events Calendar

< July 2008 >
S	M	T	W	T	F	S
		1	2	3	4	5
6	7	8	9	10	11	12
13	14	15	16	17	18	19
20	21	22	23	24	25	26
27	28	29	30	31

This Topic's Tags

Members tag topics with key words to help us find similar topics.

Discover GMEET

Add all your web profiles to the new GMEET.com website profiles directory service. Supports Facebook, YouTube, MySpace, Bebo, LinkedIn and dozens more. For social and business networking, web personals and online dating.