Help

[fledgling]

hello

I am an absolute beginner in the photograghy stakes but am keen to learn as much as possible, I would like to take photos of birds and animals and wildflowers, can anyone recommend a good starter camera which will be easy to use and carry about and doesnt cost more than £250 I am going to cornwall in 4 weeks time and hope to have my camera by then, thanx in advance of your help

fledgling

[eeyore]

with that budget you arent going to get a dslr so your next best choice is a bridge camera (ie one with a fixed long zoom lens) the panasonic fz50 is the one most comonly recomended on here for this sort of thing - its rrp is closer to 300+ but you can get it for 250 if you shop arround

[Za]

Camerabox is selling the FZ50 at £269.99 at the moment,and the Canon S3 IS for £204.99, might be worth checking both of these out.
Za

[warehouseman56]

Hi Fledgling,
Like you I am an absolute beginner at photography. Last week I took the advice and purchased a Panasonic FZ50. I am really pleased with it. I got mine for £269 but with extras (2gb card, spare battery and case) £325.
Enjoy your holiday.
Colin

[SandraI]

I am also a new member although not new to digital photography. At the beginning of May I acquired a fuji finepix S6500fd which cost £199 whichI believe can be bought for less now. A very similar camera - Fuji finepix S6900 can be bought for around £250. Have a look at the reviews on the internet for more information. I am very pleased with the S6500 as I am getting excellent results with macro shots. I think these two cameras are very good when starting in digital photography as you can choose whether to use the auto setting or manual settings, both giving very good results.

Sandra

[GME]

Hi Fledgling,

I have been debating all sorts of cameras at that sort of price range. Most recommendations are for the Panasonic FZ30 or 50, although I like the Fuji S9600 (Eeyore found it for me on the internet for £236). I am now pretty sure that between these and the Canon Powershot S3 IS it will just be a case of trying them and finding the one you like the feel of. I'm yet to try the Panasonics but definitely will before I take the plunge. I have got the impression that they will all produce similar results with different specialist advantages (e.g. Fuji better Macro, Panasonic better zoom range). Good luck - I know it's a tricky decision!

[eeyore]

a late contender - Which i have never used but which looks good in the reviews is the Olympus SP550 - which has 7Mp and a whopping 18x optical zoom (thats about equivalent to the fuji with the Tcon on) - its also available for £266 which is pretty much the same as the others

cheapest i can find is here Olympus SP550UZ - 7.1 Megapixels 18x wide optical zoom (equivalent to 28-504mm on a 35mm camera) movie mode with sound 20MB internal memory xD picture card compatible. 1 year warranty (N2517692)

It would be interesting to hear from anyone whos actually used this as it could be a contender to replace my Pan FZ7 as my utility camera if its any good

[GME]

Here's another thing to consider (and that I hadn't until last night!):

If your budget is a 'tight' £250 you will also need things like memory cards and batteries before you even take a picture. Whilst not a massive expense it will knock up the price. Obviously, you can leave the bag, etc. for a while until you can afford them (next pay day?)

I ran my mate's Canon 400D until the battery went flat last night as I had to (begrudgingly) give it back today This is when I realised that if I had a camera that took AA batteries I could pop them in and carry on I didn't That led me to ponder the question of choosing a camera that has a rechargeable or one that takes AA's. I know you can get rechargeable AA's (so stick another £30 or so on your budget or else stick way more than that on over a period of time for all the disposables you'll be buying) and spare Lithium-Ion's in case it dies when you're out and about. But you may need to consider this when buying the camera.

As far as I can gather, the quality of the memory card makes a difference as well. If it is a high speed card write times will be reduced, particularly if you are using large, high-quality images. I think this is more of an issue if you plan to take servo type consecutive shots with a non-DSLR though. Still, an expense to consider when planning.

If your £250 is more of a rough guide then hopefully you'll be able to stretch and include these items easily enough

Someone with much more experience in these matters than myself might be able to help a bit more in this regard?

I know I'd also be interested in any responses from people who have used these types of cameras for longer than I have

Cheers

Gareth

[matt_xyz]

yes, you definitely need to budget for spare batteries and spare memory cards. Both can be bought very cheaply though, I've never felt the need to buy expensive brands of either. I've bought batteries for around £10 and never had any problems. Ditto memory cards.

Matt

[eeyore]

yep i agree with matt - there is no point in buying expensive hi speed memmory cards as you wont see any improvement in read / write speed unless the camera is designed to use them - with a high end DSLR shooting multi burst RAWs then yeah sure 133x or faster is the way to go - but for a 250 quid bridge camera you will be fine with generic 80x (or even 40x)

7 day shop is the place to go for batteries - starting at 99p

my memory or MX2 for cards