I've been interested in purchasing a digital camera for myself to save on the cost of buying disposable ones and getting them developed at the local Walgreens (who always manages to butcher them), plus scanning the said pictures takes away from the original quality. I'm not willing to spend more than $250 on a digital camera and I'm wondering if I can still get a pretty decent product with that amount (or preferrably cheaper). Also, what should I look for in the camera and what brands have a good reputation?
You'll definitely want one with good picture quality: the higher the megapixels, the sweeter your images are going to be. You could settle for something that had a low amount, but don't expect great results, especially on close-ups. Zoom might be pretty important to you too, especially if you're ever interested in doing close-ups or an long distance shots. I'm just saying things that come from my own experience and my own, crappy digital camera.
I suppose you could definitely find one for under $250 that's pretty sweet but I'm not too sure what America is like with their pricing to quality ratios.
I would recommend Olympus. For $250 you can get a very decent camera. If you go to olympus.com you can check out their whole selection of cameras. You can even take a quiz they have to see 'which camera is right for you'. I would suggest looking at their D-series. Now, some of the D-series cameras start at a little higher than $250, but if you shop online you can find places that will give you a discount. I would recommend amazon. You can get a very good discount there, recently I purchased a camera originally listed at $380 new for $300.
Hope this helps you out!
You don't need gigantic resolutions, like the salesmen will tell you. Even 4 megapixels, I think, will more than fill the entire screen. Anyway, you'd have to resize images at that size to email them, etc, and image hosts will shrink the images anyway.
Digital cameras have significantly gone down in price since I received my first one (a Nikon Coolpix 550, a little kiddie toy). It is now possible to get a high quality digital camera for less than $250, so I believe you're in luck.
I'm a Konica Minolta fanboy, so in this post at least, I'll probably only recommend that company's merchandise. I have the [url=http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage.jsp?CategoryID=cat04002&id=1081512624553&skuId=6584715&type=product&DCMP=KNC-TLC&ref=25&loc=GOO]Dimage G600[/url] camera, which is more than a little out of your budget. I still felt it was worth mentioning, though, in case you're wondering what sort of camera I take most of my pictures with.
As far as megapixels go, anything less than 3.2 is rubbish; that's as low as you'll want to go. I recommend something 4.0 or higher. If you're not going to print out poster-size prints regularly, I think you'll do fine with 4 or 5-megapixel, or even 3.2, if it's a quality camera. Another important specification to pay attention to is the optical zoom. The higher the number, the closer you can zoom in on objects in focus. If you're into wildlife photography, for example, you're very often photographing from a distance, and would want rather have a 12x optical zoom than, say, a 3x. If you usually just take normal shots of proximate objects, though, a 3x would be fine. I often wish I had a camera with greater optical zoom, as I frequently find I can't zoom in far enough on certain objects to get a quality photograph of them.
Here's a camera with a higher optical zoom but a lower megapixel rate: http://www.buy.com/retail/product.asp?sku=90137868&loc=33409&sp=1. Dimage is an excellent brand with a great reputation, by the way. You may be able to find a Dimage G400 (basically the same as my camera but with a perfectly suitable 4.0 megapixel rate) for around $250, if the camera looks good to you.
Though I am personally tired of dealing with Nikons, Coolpix is a trustworthy brand. If you shop around, you'll likely find a 4.0 megapixel Coolpix model for around $250, as well. Come to think of it, any higher than 4.0 megapixel, and you're looking around the $300-$400 range.
It's important to pay attention to start-up time, as well. It's easy to miss a potentially great shot if you're waiting for your digital camera to boot up when you turn it on. Mine starts in 1.3 seconds, so I don't miss too much.
Personally, I would kill to have [url=http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage.jsp?skuId=6968748&type=product&productCategoryId=pcmcat64300050008&id=1099386045015]this[/url].
http://olympusdigitalschool.com/cameras/d-series/D_580_170.jpg
Good price, awesome quality. Olympus D-Series.
I havent really been shopping around for digital cameras lately but just let me give you a point of advice, DONT BUY CONCORD BRAND DIGITAL CAMERAS. I have the 3040AF model and its the touchiest, graniest, and fuzzziest picture from a 3.1 MP camera that I have ever seen!
As many others have suggested I would go with an Olympus camera, with Konica in a close second.
