Digital cameras again.

[sirstude]

I think I am going to make my current camera a garage camera (Olympus 3030) and upgrade to a newer something for use other places.  I have thought about just picking up a newer Olympus since I am familiar with it, but looking for opinions.  I am sure that I'm not the only one curious about digital cameras, and has not kept up.

George, is your new Canon faster taking pictures than the Olympus?  That is the biggest complaint about mine, hit the button and 5 (seems like) seconds later the picture is taken.

Anyone else that has good or bad things to say about point and shoot digital cameras step in please.

Thanks
Doug

[Sean]

Depends on what you want. I love my newest Minolta, but its not a point and shoot. Its got the big, quality lens of an SLR, but its still as easy to use as a point and shoot. It is larger than point and shoot type cameras, but only about 3/4 the size of the SLR's. It has full manual controls, if you know how to use them. Or you can just leave it on Automatic and get great results.

Picture quality is excellent, and at 8MP you can crop shots quite a bit without losing picture quality. It has 7x optical zoom. It also has Anti-Shake, which helps a lot in low-light situations, and takes 15 minutes of movie with sound. The movie capability is what made me buy it over a true SLR. It also has a remote control.

I think you can get the Camera new off ebay for less than $500 now. I bought mine when they first came out in kit form off a dealer on ebay. I got the Camera, a decent tripod, a 1 gig memory card, a telephoto attachment, fisheye lens, and an extra battery for $700.

http://www.dcresource.com/reviews/minolta/dimage_a200-review/

[Sean]

And I don't know about your Camera, but lag time is usually caused by the auto focus system. With Minolta Camera's, you can push the button about halfway down and let the Camera focus on the subject first, although its pretty quick anyway. Yours may be capable of pre-focusing too, I don't know.

For example, if you were trying to get a shot of a car pulling the wheels at the dragstrip, you push the button partways and let the camera get focused while the car is staged. Once you have it focused, the shutter release is nearly instantaneous, so as soon as you see the car start to move, you push the botton the rest of the way down. if you're reflexes are as slow as mine, that should be just about right to catch the car with the wheels in the air...

[kb426]

I'm using the sony cybershot w1. It's been replaced by the w5. It's excellent on shot to shot times. I'm not much of a sony fan but this camera has  been great. My previous camera was a canon a70. it broke a few weeks after the warranty expired and they told me to stick it. I don't have to many canon products now. I bought my wife a Fuji that is about the size of a credit card. She's real happy with it but size was a requirement  for her to carry it in a small purse and be light.