Ultra Zooms or Wide Angle P880?

[En121]

I disagree with the fact that the P880 can not do action photography. Or it has bad low light performance. Maybe the one you tried at the store was on the old firmware...?

My P880 focuses in complete drakness.(Its quite zippy, also. Anywhere from maybe 0.3 to a second or so... it depends on the subject. But... that's for complete drakness.:-)) With its AF light. I plan on getting a P20 flash to see how much the indoor shots inprove.

Anyway, I seriously disagree that the P880 is hard for action shots. I think the shot to shot time is very good. Was qucikview turned on, or the orientation sensor? Both of those slow down the shot to shot. (The orientation sensor only effects te shot to shot if you shoot a verticle, I think.)

Anyway, here's an action shot of a couple of seagulls... going after a cracker. :blah:



And another of a dog on the beach. :G





But, I will say this, the P880 is not a true sports cam. It just doesn't really have enough zoom for that. And it doesn't have sports camera performance. But, if you're having issues with shutter lag, the firmware upgrade helps with that. It also helps with the AF.

Cheers.

-En

Hi there,

So after probably 100 or more hours of obsessive research I decided to get the P880 at that great costco deal.. but then after a little more deliberation I'm not getting it. I will let you in on my reasoning and maybe you can draw some knowledge from it.

It all depends on what you want to photograph. I read the 4 or 5 really indepth reviews of the P880, and then went to the camera store to actually try it out. (never mind that every camera salesman will tell you no, they are just trying to sell you something else).

First the bad:
The P880 takes longer than most other cameras to get ready for the next picture. That is to say *CLICK*...wait...wait...wait...*CLICK*. Most other cameras have maybe 2 waits :!:. This is important if you are taking pictures where the action is moving, like at a party, or with friends, or with kids... dont' even talk to me about sports. P880 users will tell you it's not so bad, and maybe you get used to it, I don't know.

I've read that compared to other cameras on the market, the P880s low light performance isn't the best. Low-light encompasses indoor photography. So if you are having a party and all the lights in the house are on, you should be ok. But once you start turning off the lights it's going to be challenging.

Further, the P880 often takes a while to auto focus in low light. Lots of cameras suffer from this problem, it's their nature, but I think the kodak falls into the less-than-average category here.

Now the good:
The P880, when all forces come together, takes beautiful pictures! The color and the exposure are great. This is bottom line.

The lens is awesome and versatile. Nice wide-angle shots, and the mechanical zoom ring lets you get closer when you need to.

If you like buttons and easy access to necessary features, this camera is for you. There's also a nice thumb-wheel for your right hand. Put the camera in aperture priority mode and you can select an fstop easily.

There's a hot-shoe for a flash, this will help with low light photography.

Conclusion.
For the price, you can't beat this camera. It's a great gateway to really learning about photography, and it will take exquisite pictures.

BUT

Do yourself a favor, go to a camera shop and hold and click around with a few of the models you mentioned. The painfully slow picture to picture recycle rate was a deal breaker for me.

Two more things.
1. The fuji 5200 is deeply discounted these days, a good deal.
2. Don't be swayed by megapixels. Althought the P880 has 8Mpixels, there are far better cameras with lower counts. Unless you intend to print at 8x10 or larger (that's HUGE!) or you plan to heavily crop your images, there's no need to use that as a criteria.

TurboRegal wrote:

[TurboRegal]

Hey En121 just wondering what speed is the SD card that you had? I just bought a high speed 150x OCZ SD card today (it was a good deal, and even if I didn't get an sd camera I'll just sell it to someone else) I heard that a faster SD card can make the wait times not so bad. I really don't need a super sports oriented camera, I'd like to take a few action shots maybe, but nothing to intense.

I also heard that the wait times were reduced a bit after the firmware too, and I would bet the costco display model didn't have the firmware installed...

[En121]

Hey there, TR. I have 3 1gb cards. 2 kingston's and one Sandisk. They are just normal cards. No special speed or whatever. And, the video is silky smooth, and the shot to shot is good. Well, since you don't need a super duper sports cam, I think the P880 will most likely do it for you.

If you want to see some of what it's capable of, I just made a post in the Kodak forum. With a bunch of pictures of clouds. Feel free to check 'em out.

I don't know if the faster card will speed it up, but I heard that it helps as well.

Good luck with your decision!

Cheers.

-En

Hey En121 just wondering what speed is the SD card that you had? I just bought a high speed 150x OCZ SD card today (it was a good deal, and even if I didn't get an sd camera I'll just sell it to someone else) I heard that a faster SD card can make the wait times not so bad. I really don't need a super sports oriented camera, I'd like to take a few action shots maybe, but nothing to intense.

I also heard that the wait times were reduced a bit after the firmware too, and I would bet the costco display model didn't have the firmware installed...

[NuclearWinter]

digraph wrote:

First the bad:
The P880 takes longer than most other cameras to get ready for the next picture. That is to say *CLICK*...wait...wait...wait...*CLICK*. Most other cameras have maybe 2 waits :!:.

Further, the P880 often takes a while to auto focus in low light. Lots of cameras suffer from this problem, it's their nature, but I think the kodak falls into the less-than-average category here.

After I purchased my P880 in September, I was a little disappointed with the lag (wasn't much difference between using the internal memory and with a SanDisk gig card in lag time), butoverall was too happy with the camera to let it bother me that much.Two weekslater, I came across a forum where the firmware update was mentioned,but was quite skeptical that it would make as big of a difference with speed as P880 users claimed.

Not really knowing what to expect, I moseyed over to the Kodak website and downloaded the firmware update. To say I was surprised with the update would be an understatement; the difference it made with speed is incredible. In hindsight, I can say that the pre-updateP880 was a slighty dull cubic zirconia, whereas the post-update P880 is a sparklingdiamond (on a high-end CZ budget, of course, :lol.

[TurboRegal]

That's good to hear because I ordered it from costco on tuesday night, and just got confirmation that it's shipped! I guess the first thing I do when it gets here is install the new firmware! I'm excited now!

[NuclearWinter]

I'm assuming from the Costco Canada link that you also live in Canada. I'll tell you what: that's by far the best deal for buying the P880 within Canada that I've seen, especiallywith shipping and handling included. I ended up buying mine on Buydig.com for $388 CAD, including $6 for three day shipping... But not including the price of gas it took to make the fifty-minute journey across the border in to Washington state to pick it up from this parcel business that I get all of my packages ordered from online sent to in order to avoid the harsh charges of havingAmerican packages sent to Canada. :-)And I thought I got a good deal!

Enjoy your camera when it arrives, but until then, you can enjoy the satisfaction of getting such a great deal.

[TurboRegal]

Ya it seemed like a pretty good deal, ESPECIALLY because of costco's return policy on basically everything (aka if you ever have a problem we'll give you a refund no questions asked) I'm pretty pleased, there were 1 or 2 places I think in canada that had it cheaper but it was only like 10 or 20 bucks and they were really sketchy looking. I just can't wait now, too bad I have midterms next week, or else I would be all over with this thing!

[TurboRegal]

Well if all goes well it should be here tomorrow I would assume, as right now it just went through an origin scan at Concord, On, an seeing as that's about 1 hr away from UWaterloo, I'd assume they could get it here by tomorrow! A good way to relax after a midterm would be to have my nice new camera come, oh please UPS!

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