SummitPost.org

Trying to decide between a few cameras. Maybe some of the users who are photographers have any suggestion regarding which one is better? Looking for a camera to take up on climbs. Do not care about video option as much as quality of photos. Would be nice to take some basic night pictures but not required.

Canon - PowerShot SX260 HS (looks nice, many positive reviews)
http://www.bestbuy.com/site/Canon+-+Pow ... Id=4858281

Canon - PowerShot S110 (has the best reviews online, but is expensive)
http://www.bestbuy.com/site/Canon+-+Pow ... Id=6612665

CANON - PowerShot ELPH 330 HS (nice features and less expensive than S110)
http://www.bestbuy.com/site/CANON+-+Pow ... Id=8186069

PowerShot D20 (seems to have VERY nice features, less expensive, durable-shockproof/waterproof)
http://www.bestbuy.com/site/Canon+-+Pow ... Id=4882745

You get what you pay for. Usually.

Get last years high end model off of craigslist or ebay and forget buying new on cheap cams like these. People use these small cameras so little that when they do go on ebay etc they are essentially brand new anyways. There has essentially been NO image differentiation(improvement) in the pocket snap shot camera arena in the last couple of years as companies are selling far fewer of them due to the vast increase in camera phones. Therefore last years model, is vastly cheaper and essentially no different in terms of image quality. The newer model will have more gee whiz wing wang bang features.

PS. Look at sensor size, 1/2.3 is largest on these multi zoom snap shot cams, and do not buy smaller. Look at lens. Smaller the F-stop generally the better the lens is. Not necessarily true, but generally true. Other than these two diffining bits, all those pocket cams are the same where the only difference pretty much other than waterproof cams, is their software.

I have a Canon S100 and the images are very good. It's a good climbing camera, though with gloves on the buttons might be too small for some. You really need to try a lot of these small cams in the hand to decide yourself if they're good for climbing. The Canon G12/G15 are also good climbing cameras but significantly bigger than something like the S110 - but they are better with gloves and have a viewfinder.

Until recently the S90/S100/S110 was generally considered the best of the small p&s cameras, but from images I have seen the new Sony RX100 is noticeably a step ahead of any small camera on the market. But it costs, and may not be glove-friendly.

http://www.dpreview.com/products/sony/c ... y_dscrx100

I have an Elph 300 and I'm not happy with the picture quality verses the Powershot A590 that I used to carry. The powershot was big because it ran on AAs but I kinda liked that battery option. You must be very steady with the Elph and if you zoom beyond a certain point you can't be that steady. It is small and can take hundreds of pics on a battery if you don't shoot vids.

You might also want to check user reviews on Amazon.com, since some items may have hundreds of reviews aggregated into a single "score." It looks like one of these cameras has a pretty significant number of reviews (180), but the others are pretty low. Of course, user reviews aren't the final answer, but in my humble opinion they can be helpful, particularly when trying to decide between two similar options.

There is a trend for P&S cameras to go to more megapixels, and crappier lenses. More megapixels means larger files to clog up your hard disk, and crappier lenses means the picture quality is about back at the level cameras had when they were just 5 MP.

Even with Li-ion batteries, if you don't keep the camera warm, it may cease to function. Li-ion fades quickly below 14F. Unless you are going for the best picture quality, look for a camera that will quickly slip below your jacket on a neck strap.

The best P&S quality comes with the largest lenses on extensible barrels. Cameras with extensible barrels are inherently not waterproof, and if a grain of dust gets in the barrel, you may be fighting with the camera a while to get any pictures. Cameras without extensible barrels on the lenses can be waterproof and shockproof, but take fuzzier pictures, because they have small lenses with shorter lens-to-photoarray (sensor) distances (so any small physical displacement corresponds to a larger relative displacement on the sensor array).

I got a few photos of the week here on Summitpost a while back with my little ol Fuji X10. Glove friendly, viewfinder, large sensor, robust and does a mean pano when required.

http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/fujifilm-x10

I think that having a waterproof camera helps. I have been using the Olympus (I have the 1030 SW now, but there must be a new model since 2008) for years, with great luck. It is durable, I have been cliff jumping with it, dropped it in mud once, etc... The pictures turn out awesome as well. All of the photos on my page are taken with that camera.
This summer I got a Nikon AW100, for the GPS feature. The anti-shake feature is terrible, and many of my pictures are blurry. I warrantied it at Costco and went back to the Olympus (the new Olympus has the GPS feature too).

Sony RX 100

Extremely small, very high quality lens and image quality.

Best pocket camera available right now.

I went APE - SH ! T over Canon products a long time ago ... seems like they're comin' out with a new one as we speak ...

Wastral wrote:You get what you pay for. Usually.

Get last years high end model off of craigslist or ebay and forget buying new on cheap cams like these. People use these small cameras so little that when they do go on ebay etc they are essentially brand new anyways. There has essentially been NO image differentiation(improvement) in the pocket snap shot camera arena in the last couple of years as companies are selling far fewer of them due to the vast increase in camera phones. Therefore last years model, is vastly cheaper and essentially no different in terms of image quality. The newer model will have more gee whiz wing wang bang features.

PS. Look at sensor size, 1/2.3 is largest on these multi zoom snap shot cams, and do not buy smaller. Look at lens. Smaller the F-stop generally the better the lens is. Not necessarily true, but generally true. Other than these two diffining bits, all those pocket cams are the same where the only difference pretty much other than waterproof cams, is their software.

The larger the sensor is the larger the lens is and the larger and heavier the camera is. On the other hand, the smaller the sensor is, the smaller the lens is, and a particle of dust on a smaller lens will degrade the image more than it will on a large lens.

This site gives good overviews and research tips/sources for all kinds of products, including cameras:

http://www.consumersearch.com/digital-camera-reviews/review

lcarreau wrote:I went APE - SH ! T over Canon products a long time ago ... seems like they're comin' out with a new one as we speak ...

...much more contained in that post than meets the eye at first glance there .


Maybe there are several modern solutions to this, but most of my digital images that would be useful to SP mountain and route pages are trapped on old hard drives, plus my aging camera requires uploading to a functional computer (don't currently have one) prior to uploading to SP or other sites. The darn smartphone my wife passed along to me takes good shots for what it is, but is lacking the optical zoom capabilities (and probably some other things) that make for decent quality distance/mountain shots. Anyway, I've abused two generations of Canon Power Shots, myself, but I've heard some things about Nikon.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EGk4MuuvThc[/youtube]

Edit: Spelling error &: Sorry, Vitaly, I don't know which one I'd get, but Chad's right>>>

ANyways, if you could choose from 4 cameras I proposed which one would it be. Considering performance and price.

For starters... don't get it from Best Buy.