What to look for when buying a compact camera!

Andr3w · 20 May 2011 at 08:41

Hi all,

I need to get myself a digital camera, just for holidays/days out and about etc etc. Just a small compact one, nice and thin (i like the styling on thin camera's)

I have a budget of NO MORE than £200, ideally looking around £150-180!

What should I be looking for, I'm not sure that for a simple point and shoot camera there can be that much difference between them.

I've looking around but I just don't know what to go for

Any ideas?

Thanks!

robertgilbert86 · 20 May 2011 at 09:00

Stick to the big brands,
a 'wide angle' lens,
the fewer megapixels the better - 10 or 12 max, don't be sold on the number of megapixels, these have little to do with actual image quality. The top end cameras have been bucking the trend for a year or two now and sticking in the 10-12 range rather than push for 14, 16 etc, and,
the bigger the glass the better - a bigger glass area of lens should give better image quality,

Anyway, play with lots in a shop and see which you like best.

Liquid_Entity · 21 Jun 2011 at 13:25

Dragging an old thread up as been searching and most posts are from 2010 now.

I can get a Canon Ixus 120IS for under £100 - would this be a most suitable camera for standard usage, festivals, clubbing, holidays etc. I already have a Canon G10 for when I want to take some good photos but it is bulky and I want something that slips in to my pocket with ease.

I've heard it suffers from image quality but my friend has the earlier model and swears by it so surely a newer model would be better than before ?

Anything in a similar vein I should be looking for. The size does appeal to me of this Ixus 120 though. Perhaps a Panasonic Lumix. What is the equivalent model ??

theheyes · 21 Jun 2011 at 16:40

I've used the 120 IS a few times and it's pretty decent. The IS works great but it gets noisy very quickly as you go above 400 but you should expect that from this sort of camera anyway. For less than £100 though you shouldn't be disappointed. It has quite a smooth finish as well so I would recommend using the lanyard.

Liquid_Entity · 21 Jun 2011 at 16:42

Thanks for that, I think I'm sold on it as I think all the other models around that price range are all similar.

theheyes · 21 Jun 2011 at 20:09

I go through a lot of compact cameras at work and that particular one is largely as good as some of the £200+ cameras we've got kicking around. Like I said, the noise is the main thing that comes to mind when fault finding but I'd take noisy over blurry any day.