Looking for a digital camera.

[Rydian]

My current camera's shit. Takes like 10 seconds to start up, takes low-quality video, if I move at all during images they come out really blurry, there's optical artifacting, blah blah blah. It was a cheap camera out of the bargain bin of walmart and I use it because it's a functional digital camera... so pretty much anything that's not a total piece of shit will work.


So I want a new one.

• Under $125 or so.
• Starts up really quick. This is a main issue. Moments in life aren't going to sit around for 6 seconds waiting for a camera to load up... I want to be able to pull it out, press a button, and take a picture.
• Internal/rechargeable battery. I'm not lugging around cases of AA batteries in this day and age.
• Uses SD. I guess I could go for Memory Stick as well, but I already have some 2/4GB SDs laying around, 'ya know?
• Can function as a webcam when hooked up to a computer. This isn't a requirement... but it is something I'd really like.
• Anything 5MP or up is fine for my needs, almost everything is going to end up online, maybe as a wallpaper or photoshopped first, so I don't need images larger than 2560x2048 or whatever.
• Can do decent-quality video, I don't need 1080P recording.
• I'm not that concerned with video format as long as it's in the AVI container so I can mess with it's internals with VirtualDub without having to do a video transcode first.
• While I would like to be able to focus on things close up (my current can't focus less than about a foot away), I don't care much about zoom. This is going to be a "life" and "projects" camera, not something to record microchip transistor designs with.

 

[Snailface]

Canon point-n-shoot
http://www.walmart.com/ip/Canon-4944B001AA/15754537
/thread

I have one and it's fantastic. I've owned many cameras in that price range and Canon pwns them all for picture quality and just quality in general.
Just use the Macro setting for your close-ups.

 

[retKHAAAN]

+1 on the above Canon. Fantastic for the price.

 

[Rydian]

Okay I totally just got educated on ISO speed and how it works and what affects it and all that jazz so I've edited my first post a bit to reflect this.

I also got suggested this.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx...N82E16830180374

 

[Sanoblue]

http://store.sony.com/webapp/wcs/stores/se...552921666296354

is what i have

and i got it cheap at wallfart.... can look n see if they still have more thou...

 

[Snailface]

Detailed Specs:

Panasonic DMC-FH25K
http://reviews.cnet.com/digital-cameras/pa...g=mncolBtm;rnav

Canon A2200
http://reviews.cnet.com/digital-cameras/ca...g=mncolBtm;rnav

Sony W530
http://reviews.cnet.com/digital-cameras/so...g=mncolBtm;rnav

(the Sony is 1 fps max shooting speed, Canon .9, and Pana 1.4)
so Panasonic seems to be the fastest, but no avi video format.

The Canon doesn't have avi either with is surprising since my 2yr old model does. The Sony is the only one out of the above 3 to have it.

Edit: the Panasonic uses Quicktime, not MOV.
The Canon uses MOV, the Sony AVI.

 

[Rydian]

Well to be honest AVI is an old format and does have various limitations and such, MOV is technically superior with regards to features and resolution support (many "addon" features to AVI are non-standard hacked-in ones that crash certain players), I'm only looking for AVI because it's a container format that many more ways to edit it. With the MOV I can just do a frame transcode into the AVI container (since the actual video format is the standard Motion-JPEG, which works in AVI just fine), assuming it's not doing something stupid like recording with dimensions not divisible by 16 I shouldn't have a problem with that (and the audio can just be converted of needed).

And yeah, I'm realllly edging towards the panasonic 'cause of the shoot time (and the current price on newegg). Lack of optical zoom when recording movies is no downer to me, and the "high speed burst" mode sounds like something I'd use a lot.

EDIT: Alright, going for the panasonic.