Triv's Journal: Camera Help

All right y'all. You call yerselves geeks? This is your chance to prove it.

In an ill-advised bout of christmas cheer, my girlfriend has decided (over my not so strenuous objections) to take me to England in January. To celebrate, I've decided to get myself a digital camera but have absolutely no idea as to where to buy from, what to look for or how much to pay.

Requirements:

CHEAP. I can't stress this enough. I know ya get what ya pay for, but I'm looking for the best deal for the least amount of money. I really can't afford to spend more than $150 on this piece of tech, and even that's pushing it. (this isn't including any external memory cards, though it'd be REALLY nice if it came with one instead of relying initially on built-in storage. More on that in a sec)

Once that's out of the way...

Ideally, this little gadget would have a physical zoom (instead of an optical one) and an LCD of some description. I'd also like a way to download my pics from the camera to my iPod. As far as I know the only easy way to do this is via CF with a reader attached to the 'pod. This is managable, but I'd like to not have to pay more for an extra memory card, ie, I'd rather it have no interal storage and an included CF card (or, of course, both) rather than it just coming with internal memory.

This seems to be the best deal I've found so far, but then again, as I've said, I have practically no idea as to what I'm talking about. :)

C'mon guys: What're my odds of finding exactly what I'm looking for, and where should I do my shopping?

Triv

some tips

[bethane]

Try this, hewlett packard model [ebuyer.com]. you will be hard pressed to find a 3.1 megapixel camera cheaper than this.

Fuji are a much more respectable make (they put drivers on their site, unlike hp who dont and charge you money to recieve a driver cd) and they do a 3.2 megapixel camera [ebuyer.com] for slightly more.

Re:i would look at epinions before

[Triv]

...epinions says it's a fine camera for the price, that the battery life sucks but that that's pretty standard in digitals. What's your point, AC?

Triv

Camera Reviews

[shadowspark]

You may want to visit Digital Photography Review [dpreview.com] if you haven't already to further examine the quality and the geek part of the camera (tech stuff). Since you'll be in Europe, you would probably want lots of storage and an easily recharged battery so that you can be on-the-go for as much as possible.

In regards to your comment about physical vs. optical zoom... you want optical zoom. I have no idea what physical is, but normally it's a choice between optical and digital, and optical is the way to go.

Re:Camera Reviews

[Triv]

Wow. That was almost an information overload. Absolutely brilliant. Thank you. :)

Triv

What's important to you? (Random thoughts)

[turg]

To make a decision, prioritize the following issues (among others). To fit your price range, you'll have to decide that some of the following is not important.

Resolution -- 2 megapixel will make decent 4x6 prints but not enlargements. 3 megapixel looks okay up to 8x10

Optics/Zoom -- you seem to be confusing the terminology here (1) "Digital zoom" means the camera blowing up the picture by interpolating pixels, just what happens when you enlarge the image with software (and you can probably get better r

Re:What's important to you? (Random thoughts)

[Triv]

This is all sorts of helpful. Thank you. :)

The iPod reader actually reads six kinds of media including CD and CF, so no problems there. It seems that CD media is cheaper, so I'd prefer that, but it's really not an issue if it takes something else. The reader ain't cheap, however, so I think I'll spend the cash on a larger memory card instead, at least for now. The offloading trick I wanted to try to accomplish just for sheer geek points.

I've seen some cameras that, with an AC adapter, can charge batte

more on batteries

[turg]

The cameras that can charge the batteries themselves usually use a proprietary battery format (e.g. Sony's lithium ion batteries) which means a spare battery costs $100 (Canadian) and can't be picked up at the corner story (though Sony's LI batteries are actually the best battery for a digicam -- same with the Sony memory sticks, the best format but with a high price). You've got to get rechargeables -- the NiMH batteries will also last 3-4 times longer on each charge than an alkaline will in a digicam. Wi