{"id":363,"date":"2004-04-21T18:13:00","date_gmt":"2004-04-21T18:13:00","guid":{"rendered":"\/?p=363"},"modified":"-0001-11-30T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"-0001-11-30T07:00:00","slug":"searching-for-a-good-digital-camera-success","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/princessleia.com\/journal\/2004\/04\/searching-for-a-good-digital-camera-success\/","title":{"rendered":"Searching for a good digital camera, success!"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I like to take pride in my searching abilities, but when it comes to doing research for products and actually shopping online, I suck. I don&#8217;t know what the trouble is, but Michael can hop online and within 20 minutes find what I can&#8217;t find for 3 hours of searching and wading through reviews. Part of my trouble is that I get stuck on one track and start blocking out other options. It&#8217;s really a horrible habit. Maybe some of it has to do with not taking enough breaks while searching. After a while I just get so numbed to reviews, and it&#8217;s gets frustrating because you have half a dozen reviews that say &#8220;this camera rocks!&#8221; and then you come across two that say &#8220;I hate it.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Just for fun and comparison I decided to look up some reviews of this old HP one that we have, and some people actually said they liked it! It was comforting to discover that it is a particularly bad camera, and lots of people had trouble with the flash stopping working, and it being a battery hog.<\/p>\n<p>Anyway, after all the recommendations (thanks to everyone) I was able to get on the right track with exactly what I wanted. <lj-cut><a href=\"http:\/\/www.dcresource.com\/reviews\/cameraList.php\">DCRP Reviews<\/a> are amazing! They provide picture gallerys of shots from cameras, a lot of different sorts of tests. There were also all sorts of normal user reviews that I could scan through for each camera. Remember back in the olden days when product research wasn&#8217;t so easy? Me neither.<\/p>\n<p>I was quite interested in an Olympus recommended by <a href=\"http:\/\/ssovida.com\/journal\/\">Sam<\/a>, but then Michael mentioned his preference for compact flash cards (apparently we do have a couple small ones around).<\/p>\n<p>I went to that camera review site with a list of a few recommended cameras that used CF cards.<\/p>\n<p>The <a href=\"http:\/\/www.powershot.com\/powershot2\/s500-410\/index.html\">Canon s410<\/a> (which is the newer version of s400, recommended by a bunch of people) is nice. Unfortunately it&#8217;s expensive ($379.94 at amazon, I did price checking elsewhere, but amazon proved to be a pretty good basic indicator), and I really wasn&#8217;t sure we wanted to push the $400 mark if we didn&#8217;t have to.<\/p>\n<p>I looked at a relatively higher end <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nikonusa.com\/template.php?cat=1&#038;grp=2&#038;productNr=25507\">Nikon Coolpix 4300<\/a> that <a href=\"http:\/\/www.xanga.com\/home.aspx?user=brinkecw\">brinkecw<\/a> suggested. Well this is a pretty nice camera, 4 megapixels, but the price tag was $343.88 at amazon. I also discovered that it doesnt take AA batteries, it takes either a rechargable battery pack, or a 2CR5 Photo 6 Volt Lithium Battery. I want to stick with AA batteries in case I am stuck at a lan party with a dead camera and need some quick replacement. Sorry Nikon!<\/p>\n<p>Michael dropped by <a href=\"http:\/\/www.spoofee.com\">spoofee.com<\/a> and saw that they had a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.powershot.com\/powershot2\/a70-60\/index.html\">Canon PowerShot A70<\/a> for $218.39! 3.2 megapixels, which is fine, getting more for under $300 is difficult. I checked out the DCRP Reviews and was quite pleased with the one for <a href=\"http:\/\/www.dcresource.com\/reviews\/canon\/powershot_a70-review\/index.shtml\">this camera<\/a>. I went through and read user reviews, and the only issue people really seem to have with it is that it&#8217;s not very durable (broke when they dropped it). That&#8217;s reasonable, I think I can handle that.<\/p>\n<p>Of course now that I had seen the A70 I HAD to check out the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.powershot.com\/powershot2\/a80\/index.html\">A80<\/a> *drool* this is a pretty slick camera! Quite simliar to the A70, but it was 4 megapixels, more durable, less redeye trouble, and had a couple trivial features that I didn&#8217;t really care much about. Price tag at amazon: $339.94. We agonized over it, and in the end decided that it really wasn&#8217;t worth the extra money.<\/p>\n<p>I spent a bit of the afternoon going through reviews of flash card cameras without much more luck. Apparently the Canons really are the best out there in the $200-400 price range, even compared to Kodak, and most of the Nikons are pretty sad in co<br \/>\nmparison.<\/p>\n<p>So we&#8217;ll talk about it tonight, but I&#8217;m pretty sure we&#8217;ll be going with the Canon A70. And since the price of the camera + next day shipping is STILL cheaper than trying to find the camera at a store, we should have it here by friday %)<\/p>\n<p>Enough about digital cameras. If I look at another hi res digital test picture today I&#8217;m going to be ill.<\/p>\n<p>Yesterday I did as planned, some yard work in the morning, showered, ate lunch, and then walked up to the library. I love libraries so much. Libraries make me want to lock myself away forever and just read. I want to check out 2318903 books and fill my head with everything that&#8217;s in them. Well since that&#8217;s not possible I picked up a <u>Second Foundation<\/u>, a sociology book, and <a href=\"http:\/\/simonwinchester.com\/books\/pm_description.asp\">The Professor and the Madman: A Tale of Murder, Insanity, and the Making of The Oxford English Dictionary<\/a> which I have been wanting to read since it came out but kept forgetting about it. Since I needed a break from Foundation (reading them too quickly) I decided to start on Professor and the Madman last night, and so far I&#8217;m quite pleased with it.<\/p>\n<p>Last night we left the windows open again, it got cold. I&#8217;m not sure how cold it got last night, but I wouldn&#8217;t be surprised if it was in the 40s. As a result, our little temperature sensative kitten snuggled under the covers the *entire* night. It was so adorable. When Michael got up this morning to get ready for work Caligula kept crawling out of the bed, following him for a bit, and then coming back to snuggle under the covers with me. When I got up out of bed he followed me (and my comforter, it WAS cold!) upstairs and snuggled in with me again. Even though it&#8217;s warmed up he&#8217;s been like this most of the day. I was even able to trim his claws! I love having a cat.<\/p>\n<p>That&#8217;s it for now. *wanders off*<\/p>\n<p><\/lj-cut><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I like to take pride in my searching abilities, but when it comes to doing research for products and actually shopping online, I suck. I don&#8217;t know what the trouble is, but Michael can hop online and within 20 minutes find what I can&#8217;t find for 3 hours of searching and wading through reviews. Part [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-363","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/princessleia.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/363","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/princessleia.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/princessleia.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/princessleia.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/princessleia.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=363"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/princessleia.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/363\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/princessleia.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=363"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/princessleia.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=363"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/princessleia.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=363"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}