need a camera genius quick... anyone..

[Guest]

I had an s5000 as well up until a couple of months back, swapped it in for the S5800 (which has anti-shake by the way!) - it was £85 quid but appears to have gone up a fiver.

Investigated, researched and ultimately went with your advice! Should be getting a refurbed S5800 for Christmas, lovely stuff. Sounds like just the thing I've been wanting in terms of results, my old Cybershot can take half-decent pictures but you have to go to a hell of a lot of effort, use a tripod and don't even think about doing anything by the time the sun is starting to set as it'll be blurry, grainy and useless.Was bothered about memory cards but didn't realise they were so ludicrously cheap now, why back in my day 1GB cost you £50 etc etc. Cheers.

[retrogeezer]

Hirst, I got my XD memory card from play, lots of copies about and thought that they could probably be trusted. It takes SD cards too by the way.Some further tips from those more into photography than me:

Everyone using this camera shd know this:As you can see from reading the posts in this thread, that most of our members have found the that placing the Mode Selector in the P for Programed Auto position, setting the ISO selection to the "Auto(400)" position for out of doors photos, and to the "Auto(800)" position for indoor photos made without flash seems to produce better results. When using flash and finding yourself within 6 to 8 feet of your subject, you can safely set the ISO setting to a hard ISO number, in this case, the ISO is set to "64." So there is the beginning of a set of formulae that produces some very good photos."from http://www.dcresource.com/forums/showthread.php?t=31915TIPS:OUTDOORS= P>ISO400 INDOORS=P>ISO800 FLASH=P>ISO64

Ditto: Does anyone know the optimal settings for this camera for different occasions? from http://www.dcresource.com/forums/sho...=31915&page=55In ideal conditions , in outdoor shooting, i always use ISO not gretaer than 100 and WB set to Normal and Shade if there is need to get some boosted colors... Always using P-mode, because this camera almost always sets right aperature and shutter, of course in ideal case(light enough for camera sensor...)!! Aperature for those macro shoots is almost always at F3.5 and shutter at 1/200.. I just concentrate on composition and situation... 1/3 grid is awesome feature and I sugest using it.. You can get as much simetry as you can of scene !! It`s ideal to have object in line cross not in the middle of scene.. That gives a `motion-like` effect to object and it`s not hard to look at photo later like when you have it in the middle!! Sharpness always at Hard and quality-Fine!!! And, everytime you can, use EVF for looking into scene.. LCD is good, almost great, but I never can get maximum of concentration whwn just look and shoot using it...It`s important to be sure that you captured what you... want and that is not possible in strong light conditions, when Sun can juggle you..take as many trys of same scene, with different angles and exposure settings until you can be sure that you have all possible situations(from worst to better...)! It seems that scene looks little brighter on LCD and that bluffed me million times!!! Take 7, 8, 15 trys dont be tight with your memory resources.. It`s better to have 1/10 with great photos than all average photos...SO COMBINED TIPS:OUTDOORS= P>ISO400 or 100 WB>normal or shade for colorboostINDOORS=P>ISO800 FLASH=P>ISO64MACRO=F3.5 shutter 1/200Set sharpness to hard

[VWPowered]

second links dead wow aint cameras hi-tech... more than my little brain can cram in

[retrogeezer]

2nd link is the same as the first - just a different page.

 

Hirst, there is a 'group' on flickr with loads of photos and a forum etc here, might be useful but I've not had a good look myself yet:

 

http://flickr.com/groups/621858@N25

[pompei]

I wish I hadn't given away my Pentax K1000

[Guest]

This camera is ace! Got it today obviously.

 

 

This somewhat down-at-heel Merc on my gran's estate was ludicrously far away, nearly took it to the absolute maximum zoom to get it and even with my wobbly shaky hands it came out like this. Going to get some good spotting done with this I suspect.

[VWPowered]

thats what i need

[fotorabia]

ive just recently bought a Canon G10...15MegaPix...28mm wide angle [perfect for photographing cars] to zoom...its the baby that a lot of the profis use as a back up..acts like a normal old camera...easy to understand...huge screen...and u can add on lens attachments etc..with your high st collapse u should be able to get it cheap..with a 8MB card i hurriedly paid about 300 quid here in NZ...but u can get it cheaper...

[VWPowered]

should get it dirt cheap at the moment

[retrogeezer]

Glad you are pleased with your purchase Hirst....what was the 'reconditioned' one like?

nearly took it to the absolute maximum zoom

I don't think you have the digital zoom on, it needs to be turned on somewhere in the menu - I'm not sure without looking. Not that you need it as the photos are not as sharp but you get a bit of extra distance.

[Guest]

Yeah that was just optical zoom, I'm not a fan of digital zoom, would rather just crop down the picture later.It's further away than it looks, the car was probably about 20 houses down the street. To give an idea of distance, I've got pretty good eyesight and I could read the plate quite easily, but could only just make out the SL500 badge, it's clear as day on the picture though and that was with me holding it with my twitchy hands of doom. I imagine with a tripod you can get amazing pictures, I'm going to take a few of the Cuore in my usual "photo spot" tomorrow probably.Camera itself seems brand new. I'd definitely buy a refurb one again.

[VWPowered]

I'm going to take a few of the Cuore in my usual "photo spot" tomorrow probably.

yay we wait for results....

[Milford Cubicle]

I do miss the mega-zoom! My current camera only has 3x equivalent zoom, which is a bit weak.

My next camera will have 0x optical zoom. Kwal!

[55bloke]

Go for the best optical zoom you can get- digital zoom is a waste of time- all it's doing is "zooming-in" on a smaller area of the optical image, which you can do anyway on the computer.

[seth]

twitchy hands of doom.

Looks good Hirst!

[Guest]

yay we wait for results....

It's been ages since I went up here, they've changed my favourite hill stretch from 60 to 40, the sods!

 

 

Very strong light, came out well considering! In this situation my old camera would have 4/5 shots utterly unusable and the rest would require extensive processing to become even alright-ish. Tried to find some shitey cars to take pics of on the way, but found nowt. Soz!

 

Though if it makes this update more shitey, note the lack of a tax disc - it's there on the dashboard but the X of masking tape holding it to the windscreen has finally given up. Might have to get some new tape - you can take the shiter out of the shite, but you can't take the shite out of the shiter.

[Milford Cubicle]

Cheapskate! Magnetax holders are only about £1.50Pics came out well, good to see the newer Fujis still produce some vibrant colour.

[Guest]

Cheapskate! Magnetax holders are only about £1.50

Only?! For £1.50 I want some tax thrown in, they must think I'm an oil shiek or something. Might upgrade to Blu-tack if I can find any (on the notice board at work).

[VWPowered]

wow thats pretty small that isnt it... (do they all say that)

[Richard]

What's with the splashing out on adhesives for the tax disc? In my day we stuffed a rag behind the disc.

[AXrescuer]

ive just recently bought a Canon G10...15MegaPix...28mm wide angle [perfect for photographing cars] to zoom...its the baby that a lot of the profis use as a back up..acts like a normal old camera...easy to understand...huge screen...and u can add on lens attachments etc..with your high st collapse u should be able to get it cheap..with a 8MB card i hurriedly paid about 300 quid here in NZ...but u can get it cheaper...

An 8mb card? You'd only get half a pic with a 15mp camera!