Digital Camera: Research

I spent a lot of time recently researching a digital camera to buy. This post is really just my notes / narrative of what I did for future reference for me (or others). Trust me, you don't want to bother reading this!

First I read some digital camera buying guides and determined what features I wanted, didn't want, and what would be nice. Some guides came from a list of sites (listed below) that had camera reviews. Other guides I read included a pcmag article, another pcmag article, a pcworld article (and its companion feature comparison piece), a cnet article, and an article from an amazon.com affiliate.

At this point I know I want 3 megapixlels, 3x zoom, something that uses memory cards of some form (not disks or cds), and with an lcd (for examining and deleting pictures before downloading) and a viewfinder (so I don't have to take a picture by aiming with the lcd). It'd like the camera to have some manual controls, a flash, a "low light focusing aid," image stabilization, a relatively high ISO rating (for taking pictures indoors without a flash), reasonable maximum aperture, passable battery life, and a good response time from pressing the shutter to actually taking the picture. I don't really care about video recording, being able to change lenses, audio recording, mp3 playing, ... Image quality is probably my highest consideration. Price doesn't matter than much, which is easy because I know I don't want one of those large fancy professional cameras, so the price naturally will be somewhat reasonable.

Then, I wanted to narrow it down to a brand or set of brands. So I went to a popular digital camera site, www.dpreview.com, and looked at all the cameras released in the last two years with a "Highly Recommended" rating (their highest rating). Only four brands had at least one camera with this rating: Canon, Nikon, Minolta, and Sony.

Then I went to each manufacturers website and found out what cameras they were still making (and supporting) and which cameras were later version of which earlier cameras. During this I noticed Minolta recently merged with Konica. Since I'm paranoid about mergers and technology combining taking a while to sort itself out, I crossed Minolta off the list (at least partially because Konica wasn't on the list in the first place). I narrowed down my list of cameras to those currently in production with the features I wanted.

I looked up reviews all the cameras I was considering at the following sites -I'm only listing the useful ones- : www.dpreview.com, www.steves-digicams.com, www.dcresource.com, www.imaging-resource.com, www.megapixel.net (magazine), and www.photoxels.com.

From reading reviews, I eliminated a few cameras. Not at many as I had hoped, probably because almost all cameras made by these manufacturers are good. At this point, I decided to eliminate all my sony cameras from consideration because the reviews, while generally highly positive, didn't sound quite as positive as the Canon or Nikon reviews.

My current list of things to consider at:
* Nikon Coolpix 3-5 thousands: 3700, 4100, 4200, 4300, 5200, 5700. (Higher numbers were too fancy for me; lower were too low-end.) This is pretty much the list of what Nikon currently manufactures in that range except for 3200 (which had a not that positive review on dcresource) and 5400 (which had a not that positive review on dpreview).
* Canon a70/a75/80. a75 is the improvement of a70, as is a80 (but with more megapixels).
* Canon s60. Newly released so not many reviews on it. Improved s50.
* Canon s500/s410. Improvements over s400. Smaller than the other cameras, but fewer manual controls.
* Cannon s1 is. Has a very tempting 10x zoom lens (which would be fun) but I've heard it sometimes has noisy images indoors because it has no minor light to help the auto-focus focus.

(For reference, I eliminated the g5 and the s50 because there was some concern about chromatic aberration in the dpreview.)

I've also decided that Canon has too many models.

For reference, the fstop range is similar for almost all these cameras, with the maximum aperture being 2.8.

I stopped by B&H to get a feel for the sizes of the camera. I'd prefer something "pocketable" so it be easier to transport around.

I built a spreadsheet comparing the features (fstop, size, iso, zoom, megapixels, missing features mentioned in reviews) and price of these cameras.

I thought and eliminated the s1is from my consideration. Image quality was supposedly good but not great and although the 10x zoom was tempting, I didn't think I'd use it much.

The decision from this spreadsheet was pretty clear. I didn't really want an ultra-compact camera because it felt too small and these tended to have few manual controls (which would be nice to have). This eliminated the canon s400/s410/s500 and nikon 3200/3700. Those latter two were actually eliminated also because their iso-equivalent was relatively low. The s60 was eliminated because the s50 didn't have great reviews and neither got much attention in general. I didn't think it was likely the s60 fixed some so the s50's problems.

The Nikon 5000-series were a normal camera size, a bit larger than I wanted. The Nikon 4000s (esp the 4300) were tempting, but the remaining Canons a70/a75/a80 simply won in the end. More manual controls if wanted than any of these, a good size, and lower prices than all (but the 4300) of these. And the Canons are generally supposed to have better interfaces.

Of the a70/a75/a80 series, it's pretty clear what I want. The a70 is the basic, old camera. a75 is a slightly improved version, slightly more and better controls. a80 is pretty much the same except 4 megapixels. I'd avoid the a80 since it is just an a70/a75 with a larger CCD and I've read lots of reviews of cameras whose image quality went down with that "improvement" because the lens and algorithms don't match the CCD as well as they used to. Some reviews of the a80 I read hinted at this issue.

The a75 is currently (June 2004) going for 200-250 dollars and actually is pretty much one of the cheapest digital cameras with the features I want, happens to have more of the desired features I want, and happens to be of the size I want. Some direct review links for reference: photoxels (friendly), dcresource, and imaging-resource.