Camera recommendations

Dimple's Mom

My Canon G3 bit the dust over the weekend. Ironically I had been thinking about new cameras for the past month. (Maybe the Canon overheard me talking and got hurt feelings.)

Anyway, I find myself shooting in low light conditions a lot. (Living in the PNW doesn't help with that.) I also shoot a lot of closeups - food and flowers.

I wouldn't mind ending up with 2 cameras - one small one that fits in my pocket or purse and another larger one for times when I'm taking a lot of pics and really need to rely on good quality.

Last weekend I shot a ton of photos while chaperoning our high school grad night and over half of them came out blurry, even tho they looked fine on the lcd screen. (I love my flipflop rotating lcd screen on my current camera.) So that was hugely disappointing as I had some really good shots of the kids.

I also really hate the red eye thing. I can mostly edit it out but the eyes never really look the same. And with dogs, you often can't edit it out with the programs I use. Plus it takes forever to remove red eye from hundreds of shots of many people.

Things I don't care at all about are waterproof so I can use it underwater and video.

In social situations, I use the zoom a lot.

Any ideas on what might be a good camera or cameras for me?

Boilermaker Ben

Depends what you mean by "larger" camera. I love my Digital SLR (it's a Canon Digital Rebel XSi). But if you're used to point-and-clicks, it's huge.

Dimple's Mom

Larger as in anything larger than a point and click. Which I've actually never had. The Canon G3 is sort of in between the smaller pocket cameras and the larger advanced cameras. I'm used to a pretty big camera from my days of shooting film.

Gator Bait

 
Hey Gwen,

Sounds like you photographing a good variety of subjects. I love the new super cameras. The Nikon Coolpix P100 or the Canon PowerShot SX20 IS are amazing cameras.
I don't think either one is significantly better then the other. Both Canon and Nilon have been around for a long, long time and they both manufacture outstanding optics. I have owned Canon cameras that I have loved but am a life long Nikon fan. You will have to study the features and decide which will suit you the best. The MSRP on both is $399.95, when you consider what these cameras can do that is darn cheep. If I had to pick one I would go with the Nikon but that is just my opinion, like I say (and as you know) Canon also makes a great camera.

Good luck,

Gator

 

tach18k

Make it easy, go to the G11,

Photo Egg

I like my Canon G11 a bunch. also has flip screen.
Lawnranger also has G11 and he takes a bunch of great photos.
Darian

asianflava

Just a suggestion, if you are used to driving a Canon, you should consider getting another Canon. They keep the same icons and menus so everything will be familiar.

I have a Canon DSLR and an old Canon S70 PnS for a backup. They use the same memory cards and batteries which is nice. We recently got an Olympus with a 12X zoom and I'm a bit dissapointed with it.

Dimple's Mom

The choices are just really overwhelming. I keep going back and forth on what to do. I'm going to send this broken one in and see if they can fix it so I'll have something to use while I decide.

I had a small Olympus once (film camera) that my husband got me as a gift so I could take it in my pocket skiing. I was disappointed in most of the pictures I took. It was okay for landscape but not good at all for social photos.

Gone are the days when you could walk into a photo shop and look at and touch most available models to make a decision.

The reason I bought my G3 was because I had borrowed a friend's and really liked it. It was an out-of-date model already. I offered to buy my friend's but he declined. So I searched around til I finally found a new one left over for sale. I thought I could get around that annoying lens in the photo with flash issue. Yes, I can get around it, but it's always annoyed me that they would issue a camera with such a flaw in it and I have missed many good shots because of having to compensate for it. So even if I get this one fixed, time for a new camera (or two). As you can see, we keep our equipment for a very long time, so I really feel the need to research before I purchase because I'm not one of those who will buy a new camera often.