| Camera
Eileen,
Were you thinking of replacing with a film camera or a digital?.
(You will gather from the following I am a digital fan, I went to try digital 2 years ago and have not gone back to my 35mm since)
For my part I have both, an old 35mm with 210mm zoom and a newish Fugifilm S304 3m pixel with 6x zoom (roughly equal to the 210mm zoom), and I have to say I have not used the film camera since I bought the digital.
The S304 has the auto focus, macro and 6x zoom you are looking for, it's nicely sized and handles like a 35mm body, it gets my vote. I went for it after having seen a friends 2mb predecessor to the 3mb.
There are certainly other makes out there and good ones too, go for a high a pixel count as possible in your price range but with the other features (macro, zoom auto foucus) as well.
Points to watch out for -
Look out for the minimum distance in macro mode, the shorter the distance the closer you can get to the subject, but you will need a steadying device of some sort, but it can be as simple as a block of wood to rest the camera on.
Watch out for zoom "types" some cameras advertise "6x" zoom but this is made up of 4x optical and 2x digital. This camera will zoom to 4x getting you 4x "closer" but the remaining 2x is done by altering the captured picture size electronically, so the quality of the picture goes down, probalby not so important now the pixel counts are going up but worth noting. The S304 is true optical 6x zoom, go for true optical zoom first.
Get the largest memory card the camera will hold, S304 takes 128Mb giving over 100 photos at full resolution and upwards of 200, 350, 900 at lower reolutions or an hour of video !. A large card will be an extra to the one that comes as standard.
Get high capacity batteries, standard ones are 1000Mah or 1300mah, I got 1700Mah, but you can get 2000Mah and above, obviously they cost more but they last longer in use, and the damn things always run out at the wrong time !. Also get a 1 or 2 hour charger (with a car adapter for use away) saves waiting overnight for a 16hour charger. I paid £25 for the 1700Mah batteries and 1 hour charger, car plug and foreign plug adapters, a reasonable price.
Along the same power lines look out for a camera with power "save mode", helps to extend the battery life that bit more.
Very happy with the S304 and it does have a newer better replacement, I paid £350 2 years ago, but do look out for other makes, you can now get upwards of 5m pixels for the same money. There was a sort of rule of thumb that 3m pixel was equal to a 35mm when printed at 6x4, 5m pixel is going to be better.
Other comments / reccomendations anyone else ?, I'm open to suggestions too
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