Camera Selection

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Bigdennis52

New member
Anyone that has been reading my wip knows I currently do not have a digi camera... I was thinking of picking something like this one up

http://cgi.ebay.com/SILM-12MP-DIGITAL-CAMERA-VIDEO-DC-8X-ZOOM-2-0-LCD-CA_W0QQitemZ320314565515QQcmdZViewItem?hash=item320314565515&_trkparms=72%3A1418%7C39%3A1%7C66%3A2%7C65%3A12%7C240%3A1318&_trksid=p3286.c0.m14

it is a 12 meg one, only 85$ through ebay. Doesnt seem like the worst deal. Of course with ebay you never know what you are going to get... but Let me know what you guys think. Or if you have other options I should check out
 
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KatieG

New member
Absolutely positively DO NOT BUY from that seller. Anyone with less than a 99.2% rating on eBay is already suspect, and coming from China makes it ten times worse.

Also, that\'s not really a name brand camera. You\'d be better off spending the same amount for a name brand camera with lower megapixels.

If all you\'re going to do is post pictures to the web, you don\'t need more than a 2-4 megapixel camera. If you want to take regular pictures, an 8 megapixel camera will get you up to an 8 X 11 picture in true photo quality. Unless you\'re going to be blowing things up to 14 X 9 (and that\'s photo quality, you can go lower than that and still get decent pictures) you don\'t need that many megapixels. You\'re better off getting an 8 Megapixel Nikon or Kodak than a 12 megapixel no name brand.

Also, cameras fall into the category of things I wouldn\'t ever buy on eBay unless it was from a known Brick and Mortar store. The typical scam there is to sell you the camera and try to upsell you the stuff that should come with the camera but doesn\'t in the auction. Not saying that\'s what this guy is doing, but it never hurts to be careful. Still, you\'re better off hitting your local electronics store during a Christmas sale and maybe paying a little extra than losing your money, buying a second rate camera that breaks within a year, or having other problems with the seller.

When I went shopping for my camera, I took a mini with me and tried 3 or 4 different cameras and picked the one that took the best picture of my mini. Can\'t get that from eBay...
 
mickc22

mickc22

Granddad!
Originally posted by KatieG
Absolutely positively DO NOT BUY from that seller. Anyone with less than a 99.2% rating on eBay is already suspect, and coming from China makes it ten times worse.

Also, that\'s not really a name brand camera. You\'d be better off spending the same amount for a name brand camera with lower megapixels.

If all you\'re going to do is post pictures to the web, you don\'t need more than a 2-4 megapixel camera. If you want to take regular pictures, an 8 megapixel camera will get you up to an 8 X 11 picture in true photo quality. Unless you\'re going to be blowing things up to 14 X 9 (and that\'s photo quality, you can go lower than that and still get decent pictures) you don\'t need that many megapixels. You\'re better off getting an 8 Megapixel Nikon or Kodak than a 12 megapixel no name brand.

Also, cameras fall into the category of things I wouldn\'t ever buy on eBay unless it was from a known Brick and Mortar store. The typical scam there is to sell you the camera and try to upsell you the stuff that should come with the camera but doesn\'t in the auction. Not saying that\'s what this guy is doing, but it never hurts to be careful. Still, you\'re better off hitting your local electronics store during a Christmas sale and maybe paying a little extra than losing your money, buying a second rate camera that breaks within a year, or having other problems with the seller.

When I went shopping for my camera, I took a mini with me and tried 3 or 4 different cameras and picked the one that took the best picture of my mini. Can\'t get that from eBay...
Click to expand...

I\'d second this, you really want to have a look at a few together, buy the best you can afford, and yes take a mini with you, I did that too. Tell the store guy you want to be taking pics of this *show mini*

I\'ve got a Fuji S9600, it\'s lovely
 
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rocketandroll

New member
What they said...

Buy a name brand (go to a store, ask to try a few, read some magazines, see some reviews).

And look at the quality of the optics, not the number of megapixels.

It really winds me up that they keep whacking ever more megapixels into camera phones whilst the lenses remain plastic and about 3mm diameter... Without the optics improving the extra mega pixels just allow you to blow up your soft, fuzzy images to ever larger sizes and make them look even worse.

And for photographing minis... get a camera which has a macro function if it\'s a point and shoot, try and get as much manual control as you can... and if you can posibly afford it... get a digital SLR.

Ben
 
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Sauce Devil

New member
Use Goofbay to check up on a seller\'s negative history. 98.5% is dubious but sometimes there are sellers who have had bad customers (\"these sea monkeys don\'t even look like monkeys!\") or people have given neutral feedback on items not received or returned as unsatisfactory.

I would always be careful of anyone who has a rating of less than 99% but some are okay.
 
PegaZus

PegaZus

Stealth Freak
I\'ll agree with the above. If you browse through my gallery, those were all taken with a 1.5 Mp camera. Head over to Target, Wal-Mart, or Best Buy and get your hands on them. Our new 8 Mp camera was picked up last year for less than $150, and it\'s overkill really. But the wife wanted a smaller camera to run with.
 
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Bigdennis52

New member
Thank you everyone for your feedback

I was really saying the same thing to the girlfriend today, we were talking and I was ranting... how i didnt really trust the item from ebay i would rather wait until chrstmas if i had to and get something on sale from best buy, wal mart or target

I never thought of taking a mini with me for examples. That is a great idea...

Also my mother was going to get me somethng for my birthday (dont you love mom\'s) and... well I threw the idea out there and she said that isnt a bad idea I just had to go with her and pick out what I want.

I feel like the baby boy all over again lol
 
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eastman

New member
Besides, that isn\'t really a 12MP camera. Looking at the auction listing, it is a 5MP camera which can do software interpolation to resize the picture to make it larger (which makes images look really bad when the image size is increased by a large amount).

Avoid this camera. You can do much better buying locally.

If you go into either a camera store or a big box retailer, bring a mini (unpainted might be easier to transport) and see if you can do a test photo. When I bought the macro lens for my dSLR, I brought the camera body and a mini into the store to test before laying out the $$$.
 
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Bigdennis52

New member
Ya i decided to not go with that ebay auction or anything on there to be honest. I am going to sucker someone into getting me the camera I want... Or i will just shell out the cash myself but ... do you know how many more lizardmen I can get for the price of a camera... lol
 
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bullfrog

New member
If it is anything like my old Kodak which has since died valiantly you shouldn\'t have any problems.
It was only 5Mp which today you can pick up relatively cheaply and I was forever getting comments that I must be a professional photographer of have an expensive DSLR. The poor old thing surprisingly outperformed many more advanced and expensive cameras both point and shoot as well as SLR.

Admittedly it wasn\'t the best for the sole purpose of macro minis but you couldn\'t beat the picture quality.

The comment about trying the camera out is a valid one. When I had to buy another I decided to get something that would be suitable for good macro photography but the results I was getting in the store certainly didn\'t translate into decent pics when used with a mini.
In fact it was so bad I put it down to a very expensive lesson and went out and bought another camera a few months later.

Moral of the story is you don\'t need to spend a fortune on bells, whistles and megapixels to get a decent camera ... you just have to do your homework and not buy the first thing offered to you or buckle under sales pressure.
 
Dragon Forge Design

Dragon Forge Design

New member
Keep in mind, with the economic situation right now in the US your about 2 weeks away form the \"Sale of the Century\" as every retail outlet is about to put everything on sale with deep cuts to try and move all the product they ordered back in Febuary..wait a couple weeks and you will get twice the camera for the same price.

I know I want a new 32 in plasma HDTV and I expect prices to drop like crazy before Christmas and after the New Year. Its going to be a buyers market here soon.

Save your $$ and wait for the prices to drop.
 
COG

COG

New member
if you havent already bought the camera a great website (i didnt see it mentioned ) is

DPREVIEW

might still be cool to check out
they are usually pretty good about whats the pros and cons of cameras.
 
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Bigdennis52

New member
I got the camera .. well it is really suppose to be a birthday gift my mother bought me but I am already screwing around with it

I am a spoiled brat lol

Anyway, I am happy with the quality it is giving me, I guess the part I didnt know about was how people use photoshop to edit their mini\'s and make them look \"show\" quality. I guess I assumed You snapped the picture with the camera and boom it was like internet quality.

Also after reading about lighting, tripod\'s, and photo editing, I am really happy with the choice I made.

Thanks everyone


also, side note about the sales... we have a nice chunk of change set away for when we see some of those last minute sales, Actually odd thing is I recently bought about 1000$ worth of halloween stuff (costumes, props, and what not) for under 100$ due to all the crazy sales they had. 75-90% off, now I might not need most the stuff I bought, but I got some ideas of what I want to do with it.
 
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