recommend me a sub £200 digicam

slothmeister · 23 Aug 2006 at 08:10

Hi guys, its my mums birthday next week and she's decided that she wants a digicam.

Now up until now she has been using my old fuji f700, which when i was using it was an amazing little thing, detail and colour in pictures was second to none, in fact some of the pics that she gets from that camera are better than the ones that i get from my D70.

So we have £200 to spend on a camera, we would like a fuji if possible as she is used to that one now, and we love the pictures that we get out of it. We need to have a nice big screen, 3-6 megapixels, 3-6x zoom, and a bit of an odd request, if we can get it from John Lewis that would be very helpful.

So can i have some suggestions please.

Ta muchely.

Mundu · 23 Aug 2006 at 08:54

The Fuji F30 seems to be the camera to have at the moment and it's slightly over £200.

Im in the same boat as you but have a budget of £150 and am looking at the Fuji F11, Canon A530 and A540. My only requirement is that the camera has manual controls but am still undecided weather to get the cheapest out of those or find something even cheaper.

dunker · 23 Aug 2006 at 17:20

if you're willing to try a different manufacturer, canon powershot a620

should be able to get one for £150 and even cheaper once the a640 and a630 are released soon. auto modes and manual modes, takes aa's and a flip-out lcd. do a search for "a620 bundle" can get some nice kit for under £200.

Mundu · 23 Aug 2006 at 17:46

I was looking at the A620 aswell ans it was that or the F11 or the F30 or A700 depending on how much I wanted to spend.

I doubt I'm going to spend near £200 though so it's betweent the canon and the F11 but it's still a hard choice as the Fuji has the higer ISO advantage but the Canon has the closer Macro focus and I prefer the Canon grip.

If I was choosing between the F30 and A700 though I'd pribably go for the Canon as it goes up to ISO 800 which would be suficiant for me.

I have no idea how I'm going to pick what to get, I think it'll come down to price in the end though.

Is it worth waiting for the price drop as I want to get the camera at the beggining of next month.

slothmeister · 23 Aug 2006 at 19:19

thanks for your input, i'll look in to those.

One of the guys at work have recommended the olympus mju 700, any ideas what this is like?

Ta.

Pearcy · 23 Aug 2006 at 19:37

I spent some time looking at the options lately & found that the Ixus 60 is a good choice + has the optical viewfinder, which does come in useful in v.bright or v.dark situations.

Also, if you look around you can get the Ixus 60 collection kit for around £210 delivered, & that's a bargain considering it comes with...

Charger etc.
2 cannon lion bateries
2 wrist straps (1 leather)
Leather Ixus case

Mundu · 23 Aug 2006 at 20:25

I've now come across the Fuji e900 for £180 but it seems the only difference is the RAW support, 9MP and not very good macro range.

kidloco · 24 Aug 2006 at 13:33

picked up a panasonic FZ7 recently for £200 inc carry case and 512mb card. really happy it.

might be worth a look if your prepared to stray from the fuji camp

Mundu · 25 Aug 2006 at 13:51

I now sold on either a F11 for £150 or a A700 for £180.

I just cannot decie betweent the two though. If I had looked a few weeks back I could have got the F11 for £135 and that would have sold the f11 for me but for £20 extra I'm thinking I should get the A700 for the macro focus range but the size is the only thing stopping me.

What would you do get the A700 with the 6x zoom, 1cm macro focus, 15 seconds min shutter speed or the F11 with 1600 ISO and added compactness.

I really cannont decided between the two even though both camera would fit inside the bag I carry around most of the time. Or should I just wait for the f30 to come down in price?