High-End Digital Cameras shahram shiva Best Compact Digicams
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High-End Digital Cameras shahram shiva Best Compact Digicams
IH9_16-19 1/16/07 5:23 PM Page 16 High-End Digital Cameras Best Compact Digicams shahram shiva Bang for the buck: today’s digital cameras offer big power and high tech features in a small package. Canon’s powerful G7 Sony Cybershot N2 Canon SD800 IS hey are compact, they are powerful and they take great images. If you're still shooting with a slow, low-resolution camera, it's time to upgrade to one of these hot new digicams. Digital cameras are breaking sales records and their popularity has started a new photography craze. Today's digicams feature large and bright LCD screens, very fast response time, image stabilization, face detection technology, great video, sleek styling loaded with massive amount of features, all offered at lower retail pricing than the years past. This is a great time to be buying a new camera, and I've picked what I think are the best digital cameras on the market today. These cameras are compact so you can easily take them with you on motorcycle rides. They each offer something unique whether it's a wide-angle lens, or low light no flash performance, or very long zoom lens, T 16 or professional image quality or super slim design. So slip them in your pocket and start taking great images. Canon PowerShot G7 and SD800 IS The camera that is on my wish list is Canon's new G7. G7 may not be the slimmest camera in our group or the cheapest for that matter, but it can take images that rival that of professional Digital-SLRs costing 3 or 4 times as much. For a street price of about $525 the G7 at 10 megapixels has been rated as the best digicam on the market today. However, best is a relevant term. It certainly excels at many tasks, but does have some shortcomings. It's a bit bulky, although it fits easily in a coat pocket--- slipping it in your pants pocket is out of the question. And it lacks a true wide-angle lens, although it comes with optional wide and tele-lenses and accepts external flash. The G7 has an outstanding build quality and a complete auto and manual control features. If you want a true wide-angle 28mm lens, shirt pocket small, auto and manual controls, consider the Canon SD800 IS. The SD800 has a street price of about $390. This Canon has 7.1 megapixels offered in a slightly smaller sensor than that of the G7. It's rare to find a wide-angle zoom lens in the digicam market, since most cameras start at about 35 to 39mm. The SD800 has optical image stabilization (same as the G7) and optional underwater housing. Contact: usa.canon.com Sony DSC-N2 and T50 I have selected two cameras from Sony, the N2 and T50. Both have very IH9_16-19 1/16/07 7:41 PM Page 18 Nikon Coolpix S10 Fujifilm Finepix F31 large 3” touch-screen displays and built-in slide show capability. The new models' extra-large screens with intuitive menu options allow for less physical buttons on the camera bodies, resulting in a sleeker design. The T50 is one of the slimmest cameras on the market today; it easily fits in your shirt or pants pocket. The ultra-slim and stylish DSC-T50 is the new top-of-the-line camera in Sony's T-series. It's equipped with a 7megapixel sensor and a 3x optical zoom lens. The N2 is a bit bulkier than the T50, but in this case larger means more potent lens and it comes with a 10-megapixel sensor. Sony has figured that consumers love to show off their pictures on their cameras; therefore it equips them with very large screens and cool slideshow with music and transition effects. Sony N2 and T50 both retail for about $350. Contact: sonystyle.com Fujifilm FinePix F31 fd All digicams suffer from low-light performance woes. Unless you use flash, the pictures tend to be grainy or blurry. The alternative to lowlight, no-flash photography is high ISO setting. ISO sets the light sensitivity, so if you shoot in low light, you want to increase the ISO. The ISO settings generally range from 100 to 1600. On almost every digicam ISO setting of over 200 will produce a noisy or grainy image, but not on Fujifilm's F31. Fujifilm has created a sensor that at 400 or even 800 ISO will produce a clean image. This is quite a feat. Fujifilm's new F31 offers a large screen, a sensor that is a bit bigger than most digicams, and a cult following. Finepix F31 has a 6.1-megapixel sensor and a street price of under $300. Contact: fujifilmusa.com Nikon Coolpix S10 Nikon S10 is a very unique camera. It features a very long, rotating 10x zoom lens, yet it fits in your coat pocket. Most digicams today offer a 3x zoom but the S10 covers from 38mm to 380mm. Also, the unique swivel lens styling allows shots from more imaginative angles. The S10 wouldn't be the ideal camera for the serious-minded photographer because it lacks manual controls, however, if you want near 400mm zoom in a very compact, but elegant and sleek package, the S10 will do the job well. The Nikon S10 has a 6-megapixel sensor, a high-resolution 2.5” screen and a street price of about $325. Contact: nikonusa.com 18 Ultra-Slim SonyT50