?'s About Camera's

[CheapCherokee]

I'm looking at a Nikon Coolpix 8800 VR. It's only a 8.0 but I have to degrade my pics. now to host on e-bay, do you think I will need better then that for the outdoor pics. I have no plan to ever make any large prints or posters. I'm looking to do a lot more out door wildlife photos, but most I'm needing to get an up grade for my e-bay stuff so it needs to do the closeup shots great. It will also need to have a flash that can be removed and placed to the side for less glare on closeup shots. What do you think of this one? What others do you think I should look at?
Thanks
Pat

[colemany]

I'm looking at a Nikon Coolpix 8800 VR. It's only a 8.0 but I have to degrade my pics. now to host on e-bay, do you think I will need better then that for the outdoor pics. I have no plan to ever make any large prints or posters. I'm looking to do a lot more out door wildlife photos, but most I'm needing to get an up grade for my e-bay stuff so it needs to do the closeup shots great. It will also need to have a flash that can be removed and placed to the side for less glare on closeup shots. What do you think of this one? What others do you think I should look at?
Thanks
Pat

What do you mean by "host on e-bay"?

As for the flash question get a light defuser to avoid glare. This is what my gf uses and swears by em: http://store.garyfonginc.com/licl.html

[CheapCherokee]

My photos look crappy when they are on e-bay and they tell me to reduce the file size, and I can not even put them on Craigslist as they are to big of a file. I just picked up a point and shot to try out $200 I don't have high hopes, but still would like a real camera soon as it will be spring time with a lot of time on my hands as I still do not want a job yet so I'll have a good chance for some great spring time photos. What kind is your Tony G?

[TonyG]

I use a Canon G9...the G11 is the current model, they both sell for $499 new. 12.1mp for the G9...I think the new G10 went back to 10.1mp for noise reduction because of the small sensor. It is an amazing camera for sure, even shoots HD video. It has a macro setting also, in macro mode with this camera you can actualy set the lens on the item being shot and it will still focus...its awesome. The G7 is the same as my G9 but without video, you can get them pretty cheap now.
With 12.1mp I get huge image sizes because I shoot on the highest quality .jpg setting, I reduce my images to 640x480 while retaining the high quality and getting file sizes of 30k to 70k by using a free program called Picasa from Google....its a 2 second process....open the image then resize and export. It will export to a folder called Picasa Exports so they the reduced images arent mised up with the full size image folder, very fast and very simple.

The Nikon P90 would be a good choice, the Fuji Finepix series, Canon G series...would be great choices for what you need, Fuji being the cheapest of them.
www.bhphotovideo.com Go there and read up on some of the cameras, get some ideas. They have an extensive camera collection and they know their stuff.

Picasa 3.0 ..... open image from your gallery, choose resize...640x480...file...export image to folder...done! It has a really good auto color correction feature along with rotate to straighten, sharpen, B&W and other nice features. But for the basics of resize its super easy and quick...check it out.

Canon G9 macro @ 100% crop..."Cut from full size image without blowing it up"

[MatthewG]

Before you go out and drop coin on a new camera, check your current camera’s settings to see if you can “degrade” the pictures as they get taken.  Most digi cams have some sort of PICTURE QUALITY setting, where you can shoot at full resolution or pick a lower one for various reasons(Like posting on ebay or CL).  Often the options will be labeled as Fine, Standard, & Email or something similar to that.  If you’re having trouble finding it consult your manual, or just post up the make and model number of your camera and I can tell you how to do it.  From my time selling cams & camcorders at Ultimate I’ve been hands on with almost every brand there is.

As far as a flash diffuser is concerned, I’ve made them from Kleenex before and they work very well.  I usually wrap 2 pieces around the side of they camera that has the flash and hold it on with a rubber band.  It has worked well for me before as a quick n' dirty fix.  If you want a photo of what I’m describing, let me know and I’ll post one up.  I also once made my own ring flash one time, but that’s a story for another day.

[Troy H]

You should be able to set your camera for resolutions down to 640X480.

You want a bounce flash, aim it at the ceiling, bracket a full stop adjust as needed.

The P90 is an excellent camera, I'm still getting the hang of mine but I'm so looking forward to seeing what it can do in South Dakota and the additional telephoto range over my Lumix will ne nice at the Kansas Speedway this fall.

[CheapCherokee]

Tony does your G9 have a manual focus or is it auto only?
I have given a little thought in to getting one that I can add long lenses onto. What do you guys think of the extra lenses are they worth the mess? I think they might help for the bird photos.
Thanks again.

[JeepinJon]

I know I picked up the Nikon D5000, with 2 different lenses, and I think it was worth it for me at least. I know that my wife and I wanted a camera that we could use to shoot wildlife from a distance, or take pictures at family events, and I think our camera accomplishes that by changing the lens to what we are looking for. I am not a big fan of cameras that use digital zoom, because all you are doing is increasing the pixel size. Here are a few pictures that we have that show how versatile it is. The night shot is a 30 second timed one, so it could show some movement. If I were to buy one today, I would maybe go down to the Nikon D3000 that came out since we got ours. I like the fact that you can manually focus the lenses, or use auto focus at the flip of a switch because sometimes what the cameras think your focusing is not what you really want as the focal point, so you can choose.







The link to the rest of the photos, http://www.flickr.com/photos/38982816@N06/sets/72157622258737045/

[Troy H]

I have a Panasonic Lumix FZ-5, 5 megapixel with a 12X optical zoom Leica lens and for Christmas I got a Nikon P90, which is an 12 megapixel with a 24X optical zoom Nikkor design. At max zoom the FZ-5 is a 420mm equivalent f3.3. I paid $399 for it, this was at full zoom, resolution set at 1600 X 1200, ISO 100.





Haven't had much time to play with the Nikon, at 24X, it's a 624mm equivalent f5, not sure what my wife paid for it, but i find the hand helds offer exceelent quality for the money, much more so than entry level dslr equipment at least.

The eagle was taken from the south end of the parking lot on the east side of the river at Saylorville, shooting northwest across the river, full telephoto, ISO 100, about 100 feet away. I cropped this out of the original full res. Still learning the quirks of the camera so it's a bit blasted and a tripod would have been nice instead of a mono.