Hi,

I need some help on deciding what camera. I have about £120 (not much I know) and would like a camera that ideally has up to ISO800, is useable for taking motion shots as well as having all the manual options and so on. I have no problem with buying refurbished/second hand and I dont have a need for high resolutions, but I want to avoid those little sub compacts and fashion cameras.

Any idea or is my budget too small?

Thanks

John

Look at something in the Pentax Optio line.

Maybe you could look at a few second hand digitals as well.

-- Terry

A Kodak DX-7440, now price at $147 (US) has a lot of cost to value ratio. The new Pentax Optio S-60 has not been reviewed as yet but it does have interesting specifications. The only problem I can see is that the Pentax S-50 was very hard indeed on batteries.

In the very same price range, ($200 approx. (US) there is also the Olympus C-5500 that give a great dealin thecost to value ratio evaluation. It provides 5X optical zoom, 5mp full manual controls, and a great lens.

Sarah Joyce

There are no cameras (used, refurbished, or new) within your budget which fit your criteria. In fact, there are very few digicams, other than DSLR's, with ISO higher than 400.

Really? That's a shame.

I was thinking of a Fuji S602 if I can pick one up at a bargin price, but I like the look of the kodak one as well.

Is it worth sacrificing image size for more features? And Am I making too much of the ISO thing, I want it to take action shots in low light, is one cameras iso 400 as good as anothers iso 800 and so on.

Im going to investigate further though.

All help appreciated

John

John-

There might be some confusion. The Fuji S-602 will go to ISI 800, that is true. However, when you go to ISO 800 the camera's resolution is automatically reduced from the native 3.34mp to 1mp.

You often find both the Fuji S-602 and the Kodak DX-7440 on ebay.com are very good prices. The Kodak 7440 keeps its full resolution throughout its entire ISO range.

Sarah Joyce

I hear alot of good things aboutthe DX7440 from users. The KODAK Z700 4mp 5X optical zoom sounds good also for under $199.

Well I ended up with a nearly new still under warranty DX7630 for £100 including 512 card and lens adaptor.

Fully point and shoot and all the manual fiddling I could wish for

I am quite happy with it, The jpeg compression is a bit much even at fine, it would be nice to have a RAW or TIFF with no squishing.

And its a little noisy at ISO 400 but again it suits me.

The lens motor got a little noisy but KODAK sorted that out within a week under warranty.

So So far so good. Hopefully a firmware update will happen without the compression and then everything will be perfect.

All I have to do now is learn how to take pictures

Thanks
John