Time to buy a camera.

[cadhla]

All right, so after ages and ages of not having a camera of my own (and hence periodically borrowing the cameras of others), I'm finally going to obtain a digital camera. This is My One Extravagance for the season, although it can be argued that it's also sort of a business need -- people may start hurting me if I don't provide pictures of the

Comments

[kyrielle]

Other notes: Nikon does really good digicams (my experience and my friends'), but they are spendy, so probably not on your list.

I have only one data point on Samsung - it was a lovely camera for about a year and a half then started having battery problems - but it took three returns to their service department to get it fixed. For pity's sake, they "fixed the autofocus" on one of those and "cleaned the battery contacts" on another (at least the latter makes sense for a "can't be turned on" power problem), and on the one that finally fixed it they didn't even STATE what they did. In other words, their service stinks.

So far I love my new point-and-shoot and I can recommend if you want, but it's a 14 megapixel high-end point-and-shoot with a $300-ish price point - and I've had it less than two months so I can't attest to how hardy it is or is not. Maybe not the recommendation you'd want. :P

ETA: seconding the "optical zoom is all that matters" refrain. Digital zoom is very close to, if not identical to, simply blowing the result up in photoshop later. With about the same quality, I'm afraid. :P

[weezerscaddy]

Yes, but on higher end cameras, I don't notice a huge difference. I think I have like, 8 point optical zoom on my Kodak and it's enough for almost anything I do lol. I seldom use the digital zoom.

[kyrielle]

As I said, "optical zoom is all that matters" - a high optical zoom is a benefit, a high digital zoom is useless crap. As long as you don't use the digital zoom it's harmless, but it's not a useful feature, IMO.