Got a new digital camera...

We love our "old" digital camera - a Sony MVC-CD300. It's medium in size, has a fantastic lens, and is all around a *great* camera. I've gotten really good shots out of it.

But I've always been jealous of those guys with the palm sized Canon Elph's. This year at JavaOne (the yearly Java computer conference) I saw about a dozen geeks who had Canon's newest digital Elph, the S400. 4 Megapixel, and smaller than a pack of cards! Absolutely amazing device.

Well, I just had to have one, and thanks to www.bhphotovideo.com, it arrived today.

I just shot my first "roll" - 15 shots (it comes with a puny 32meg card, I have a 512meg card on order). Here's the first keeper shot:



Pretty neat, what this little guy can do! (the camera, not the kid)

jeff

 

Nice Picture!
I will look at the elph when I am ready to upgrade.
I like my olympus a lot, yet it was dropped once and did not like it very much.

 

Nice picture,

I've got a 2.1 mega-pixel Canon Elph. Last year I upgraded to the 3.2 mega-pixel Canon Power-Shot S30. I'm tempted to buy that 4 mega-pixel Elph as well. I was never into photography until I bought my first digital camera.

What's the optical zoom of that camera?

 

One more question,

Will it take black and white pictures? Is there a vivid photo, sepia tone, or neutral setting?

 

Hey PL,

It has 3x optical (11x digital, which as you know you should never use). It has a B&W mode, but I haven't tried it yet to see if it gets rid of the nasty chroma artifacts that can happen by just desaturating the image (our Sony does a *fantastic* job in B&W mode).

Lets see what else it has....

Sepia,
Vivid,
Neutral (not sure what that is)
Low-sharpening mode (cool!)

plus the aforementioned B&W.

I'll shoot some pictures with the different modes and post them here.

jeff

 

Thanks!

Yup, I've got to get one. My wallet is going to hate me this month!

 

Nice pic and a nice camera... I wished I could have a smaller camera!

My Nikon is a little too big... but still small against their competitors

 

S50

Just got an S50 along with 512 MB compact flash memory. I love this thing. Can't imagine it getting any better. The movie mode rocks as well. I was really surprised at how good the movies turned out.

 

I got a 3.2 MP Konica - what is great about it is that it can use two different flash memory cards at the same time - SD and Sony Sticks.
Like the pictures it takes a lot

 

I just walked through the door with my first digital camera. I got an Olympus Stylus 400. It's a 4 mega-pixel camera. This kid at Best Buy was a super geek with these things. I bet I spent an hour with him. We took pictures and printed them out to compare color, contrast, etc. Very helpful dude.

I'd take a picture of it but ironically it's the only thing I can't take a picture of... besides air and love.

 

How about taking its picture with you and it before a mirror?

 

That would mean I'd have to shave and clean the mirror.

 

too cute!

 

I have an Olympus point/shoot from a couple of years ago, 2.1 megapixel or something like that, which I bought refurbished. Can't get over how good the pix turn out, and some of the SLR-like features including spot metering.

However, I really want to get into an SLR-based digital the next time i get one. The Canon EOS-10D is in the running. I would like to have a digital camera body, and film body, where I could interchange lenses between the two. Canon also has a 1S model that has an image sensor measuring 24x36mm, which is equivalent to the image size of 35mm film...11 megapixels. And way too expensive for MY taste.

 

That brings up an interesting point... When does the resolution of digital cameras equal that of a good 35mm camera?

 

Digital cameras are still a ways off from attaining 35mm quality. I've got a 35mm Olympus camera, but I rarely used it. I never really got into photography until I bought my first Canon Digital Elph.

While Digital cameras aren't quite 35mm quality, I'll never go back to film cameras.

 

I hope you enjoy it, I've owned an Olympus, and a couple Canon's. Both take pretty good pictures.

 

I'm also wondering if the pictures taken by these digital cameras we have are going to look dated in 15 or 20 years. I look at photos of my childhood (70's and 80's) and just cringe. I know a lot of this has to do with the colors fading, which isn't an issue here, but there's something else that makes them look old. Any thoughts?

I used to take a lot of black and white photos. Even the pictures from almost 20 years ago look great. I wonder if B&W digital pictures are going to have that sort of longevity?

 

They are really convenient. I'm having trouble getting used to the delay between pushing the take picture button and the picture actually being taken. I've missed a few shots because of it.

 

Thank you for not mentioning my man-perm. I looked like a Brady boy!

 

S50

Well the Canon S50 is 5 MP and I can't imagine it being much better as far as clarity and colour go. Especially on photo size snaps. Now if you were blowing it up to poster size you could probably see the flaws. It's a beautiful thing. Dump the pictures you don't like and the ones you want to print you just take to your computer and print them. The output from my Canon i850 looks like it came from a lab. After about 50 prints the ink cartridges are down about 1/4 on average which seems to indicate that I will get 200 pictures from a set of cartridges.

 

I'm hopeful.

I was thrilled when I took my first B&W digital photos with our Sony. You can almost see "film grain".