Compact Camera Advice - SORTED!!

Re: Compact Camera Advice

Rich Aitch":3vina4o4 said:

Step away from anything made by Vivitar, they are hounds that don't last, boast big pixels numbers but undo it with rubbish lenses. I've had two against my better judgement. Mind you for £120 you'll get something way classier than a Vivitar. Maybe go for something thats weatherproof, so you don't have to worry about it getting too wet when you are riding. Avoid one with a seperate underwater case though, as the buttons are usually really stiff so you get blurred shots. Think about the lens above everything. My beloved old Konica only had 5 mp but the lens was superb and made for some really great looking shots. Is it Panasonic that fits Zeiss lenses in their compact cameras?

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Nokia have used Zeiss lenses in some of their smartphones with half decent cameras. My Nokia N8 has a Zeiss lens, and an almost comparable sensor size. Relegated to 2nd handset for work purposes, now, though, but still takes a decent picture for a mobile phone.

Re: Compact Camera Advice

Rich Aitch":1jvth5p3 said:

Step away from anything made by Vivitar, they are hounds that don't last, boast big pixels numbers but undo it with rubbish lenses. I've had two against my better judgement. Mind you for £120 you'll get something way classier than a Vivitar. Maybe go for something thats weatherproof, so you don't have to worry about it getting too wet when you are riding. Avoid one with a seperate underwater case though, as the buttons are usually really stiff so you get blurred shots. Think about the lens above everything. My beloved old Konica only had 5 mp but the lens was superb and made for some really great looking shots. Is it Panasonic that fits Zeiss lenses in their compact cameras?

Click to expand...

Panasonic use Leica lenses. Unfortunately the weather/shock resistant models are out of my price range!

Re: Compact Camera Advice

I use a Ricoh cx2 I picked up for £30 minus the toggle end which was a simple repair. Great quality lens, 10mp and small with list of control if you want it. Old model I know but other cx's are on the bay.

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/RICOH-CX4-DIG ... 461407f9d0

Etc

Re: Compact Camera Advice

There is a 'new' Panasonic LUMIX DMC-FT4 on Ebay for £120 BIN.

Lot of camera for the money!

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/281190769560

Review here: http://www.ephotozine.com/article/panas ... erformance

Re: Compact Camera Advice

I would recommend the Ricoh GR-D series - absolutely stunning little cameras. Small, light, tough, prime lens (aka fixed lens - no zoom - fewer elements so better quality, lighter, smaller etc). Depending on what model you get, they come with a 28mm (wide-ish angle) lens, f1.9 (really shallow depth of field i.e. subject is in focus, background is blurry) and good low-light performance. Battery lasts forever, too. And the controls are top-notch. And they shoot in raw or jpeg with hardly any buffering time.

You can get one secondhand for the top end of your price range... but they are cult cameras, so prices on ebay and the like are often quite high.

Read more here:
http://erickimphotography.com/blog/2013 ... otography/

No, I don't work for Ricoh!

Re: Compact Camera Advice

Alternatively if you want to be a tart and get a film camera, the Olympus XA range are all brilliant, and bloody tiny. The best XA is the original (rather than XA-1, XA-3 etc) as it has a really fast lens (f1.8 from memory) which, with the 35mm format, gives really shallow depth of field (if you're into that kind of thing). The Olympus MJU is good too. Both are cheap - like £5 at a car boot sale cheap (although the original XA is a little more expensive if the seller knows what it is... they are about £80 on ebay).

Jessops used to do process/print/new film for a tenner. Not sure whether anyone does that now though (moved abroad since they went bust).

Thanks for all the advice guys, I decided on the Lumix TZ30 (ZS20).