Any tips on digital cameras?

[Snowball]

I want to buy a digital camera for myself for Christmas, one that has decent features but still manages to stay pretty small.
Basically my priorities are the most megapixels for the lowest price/image quality, battery life, and a relatively small size (not that credit-card sized one but still, not a professional thing with mutiple lenses).
It can't go over $300, or at least not very much more than that, and for that much it seems that Canon can give 2.x megapixels. What do other companies offer that you guys like?
I'd love to hear any experiences you guys have.

Thanks!

P.S. oh yeah, anybody know if there's a site like ramseeker.com that lists camera prices from online vendors? Or, even better, like previous Christmases, are there any 25% off deals at buy.com or outpost.com or anywhere? Just trying to save a few pennies, being a student is hard.

[Trip]

Look for an HP cam. They have some really sweet (super-mega-pixel, something like 2.7 or 27.0 or something i can't remember) and they only cost around $100! Sorry for my lack of camera knowledge, but i do know HP sells them good and cheap.

NOTE: But if you have enough $$$ go for a canon. You can't beat 'em.

[Jason]

hp sucks

go with the cannon

if you have more dough, i like nikon, but thats just my preference

[Izzy]

I have a Canon Powershot A40 and I couldn't be happier with it. Great resolution, not too huge, great price, and I love the movie mode on it.

[mdnky]

Olympus cameras are good quality and realtively inexpensive.

You probably will not need anything over a 2 megapixel unless you're doing some major photography or similar things. You can get a good quality 8x10 out of a 2 megapixel camera, just depends on your printer. Mine is an Olympus 1.3mp camera, and you can't tell the difference from 35MM developed shots and the ones from the digital camera when printed on a dye-sub printer (Kodak PictureMaker at Kinkos, Walgreens, etc.) at 4x6.

Toshiba also makes some nice cameras. Stay away from HP, I've know alot of people who've had major issues with them falling apart. My uncle has a Cannon (one of their micro digital cameras) and he likes it, I just think they're a bit pricey for what you get.

Oh, highest you can get right now is around 6 megapixels.....27mp would create a HUGE file. On high quality on my 1.3mp, the files are 750k...so a 27mp would probably create around a 14.5mb file on high quality mode!

[Wilsonium]

I've had several digital cameras over the years and here's my humble opinion...

First, get the most resolution you can afford. 2 megapixel cameras will give you great 5x7, 3 will go to 8x10 and 4 will go to 11x14. You can get cameras with more than 10 megapixels but you're going to shell out more than $8k right now.

Second, make sure your camera has good optics. Digital cameras that don't have any optical zoom should be avoided because they only introduce artifacting/pixelation when used. Most have around 3 but there are some great cameras with more. Olympus C720 has 8x and the Fuji 3800 has 6x. Also avoid cameras with small plastic lenses which don't transmit light into the camera well sacrificing color saturation and depth in your pictures.

Third, make sure the firmware supports Exif Color data. This records exposure and color saturation data into the JPEG headers. This will give you more consistent device independent quality and color accuracy.

Finally, you should check out what Foveon is doing. www.foveon.com. They've got a new sensor that's layered, not staggered so each pixel get's a red, green and blue signal effectively doubling or tripling the resolution on the same sized sensor. Sigma is one of the first cameras with this new CCD.

Hope this helps.
Cheers - Don.

[Snowball]

Thanks for all your input guys, I ended up getting the Canon PowerShot S330 - and so far it looks mighty nice . I'll probably post some pics from it sometime...

[twister]

So snowball hows your camera?

I wan't a new digital camera also. I hardly (if ever) will print off picts. If i do, they will be 4x7 (or whatever is standard). I do, however, want to take picts at night, in motion, stills, all that stuff. Especially of the weather. Clouds and lightning if i can. Most picts will end up online. I want to keep my price below $300 and i want a good optical zoom.

Twister