Best point-and-shoot for photos of babies?

[jengrant01]

Hi everyone! I am looking for suggestions on what point-and-shoot is best for taking pictures of babies. I am missing a lot of shots of my young daughter with the camera I have now (it's slow) and am looking to upgrade to something with a relatively low shutterg lag, that takes good indoor shots and still has good image quality. I am willing to spend up to $400, would prefer at least a 8x zoom and image stabilization since my daughter is constantly moving. Any suggestions? Thanks!

[mtclimber]

jengrant-

Just for clarity, Image Stabilization does not stop subject movement. It dampens camera movement in the hands of the camera user. The Panasonic ZR1 is currently on special at Costco for $170.00. It has 12mp, 8X optical zoom (25mm to 200mm), and does HD video and allows zooming while filming.

You may need a little flash help from an accessory Slave Flash unit if the camera to subject distance gets greater than 10 feet. But that can be purchased for less than $20.00. I have attached a photo of my ZR1 with the Slave Flash attached.

Sarah Joyce

[jengrant01]

Thanks for the recommendation Sarah! Hee hee….and thanks for the clarification too. In re-reading my post, I can see that it does look as if I was looking for help with subject movement rather than camera user movement. I meant to say that, when my daughter moves, I (my hands) sometimes have to move a little bit too to get a good shot of her and was looking for image stabilization to help with my hand movement. J

That’s a great price on the Panasonic ZR1. Unfortunately, I don’t have a Costco near me but do have a store nearby that has a Panasonic ZS3. Would that be similar?

Also, I visited the Sony P&S forum here and read that you own a HX5. How do you think that would fit what I am looking for?

[mtclimber]

jengrant-

The Sony HX5 is a good compact zoom snapshot camera. It has 10X optical zoom (25mm to 250mm) does HD videos and has some unique features. I like the HX5 a lot as you can see from almost 250 posts and photo samples found in that "User First Impressions of the Sony HX5 thread."

Sarah Joyce