cheap, good quality digital camera for road trip

[TMM]

hey... it's getting close to the departure time of my roadtrip, and it's been suggested that i bring something along besides my SLR manual. do any of you know of relatively decent cameras that are in the $50-$150 range that are relatively robust and worth the money? i'm not looking for beautiful art-quality shots, that's what my 35mm is for. also, i'd need a 12v car charger, and some way to store the photos. would it be cost effective to get multiple cards, or can photos be saved on a flash drive?

thanks

~tmm

[K Frame]

Yep, any of the Canon Powershots or Fuji FinePix cameras are good choices.

They're broad lines, so you'll be able to find them from in the $120s to the $350s.

[Manedwolf]

Olympus D-series.

Excellent color reproduction, and extremely good contrast. I've gotten lots of "art" shots with my older D-560.

[charby]

Kodak EasyShare M753

I bought it for techically deficient wife for Christmas and she takes from awesome pictures with it. Many are hanging in larger format on our walls in Casa de la Charby.

-Charby

[Brad Johnson]

Hit Best Buy or Circuit City.  They are starting to clear out some older stuff in preparation for fall.

Brad

[Phantom Warrior]

I just bought a Fujifilm Finepix (F20sd, $175 on newegg.com) and took it on my trip to Munich and Salzburg.  I was very pleased with the pictures it took.

A good sized SD card, 2GB+, will hold a couple hundred pictures.  If you have a laptop you can easily transfer and store all the pictures you could possible take on it.

[mtnbkr]

hey... it's getting close to the departure time of my roadtrip, and it's been suggested that i bring something along besides my SLR manual.

Why?  No other camera is going to take better pictures.  The cost of the new camera is going to more than offset any savings in film and processing.  If you're comfortable with the manual SLR and it delivers the results you want, take it. 

I still shoot film, the medium hasn't died yet.  I reserve the digitoy for when I need extreme portability (mountain biking) or I need images immediately.  I use film for important work (family, vacation, etc).

FWIW, I have a Fujifilm Finepix Z10fd.  It does great outdoors, but only so so indoors with flash.  Sometimes it gets a great shot, other times the flash destroys the scene.  It's big feature and benefit is the size.  With a 2gig memory card, I can fit over 500 shots at full rez.  The battery is good for 250ish shots, but recharges in less than 2hrs and is very small (easy to carry several).  I don't know if it has a car charger, but you could run the AC charger off a small 100watt inverter.  I got mine online for $96 shipped.

Chris

[Ryan in Maine]

I'd go with one of these Power Shots from Canon:
Canon Power Shot A570 IS for $143.99 - http://www.beachcamera.com/shop/product.aspx?sku=CNPSA570
Canon Power Shot A590 IS for $148.85 - http://www.beachcamera.com/shop/product.aspx?sku=CNPSA590

I kind of like Nikon and Kodak for small cameras too. They're easy to use and take pretty good pictures.

I don't think I'll ever get another point and shoot camera without image stabilization, for what it's worth.

[LAK]

Any 5 or greater megapixel Panasonic Lumix, Sony, Canon, Olympus, Samsung or Kodak etc. Lens quality aside, shutter lag time is one of the biggest hangups on compact digital cameras.

I bought my wife a Panasonic Lumix LZ7 from a chain store last year for $200; 7.2 MP, 6x optical zoom, runs on AA batteries.

Here's a refurbished example at $180 total (no connection with seller) with all the specs - you might find a similar model cheaper at your local chain:

http://cgi.ebay.com/Panasonic-Lumix-DMC-LZ7-Digital-Camera-7-2-MP-3-BONUS_W0QQitemZ270215306279

[mtnbkr]

BTW, something nobody has mentioned: shutter lag.  Digitoys have it terrible.  Don't buy one until you've had a chance to fondle it in person.  Lag isn't a problem for static shots, but if your subject is moving, it's a problem.  The Fujifilm Finepix Z10 and Z20 cameras had the lowest lag of any of the pocketable cameras I looked at, which was why I bought one of those instead of the Nikon or Canon models that might have had better image quality.

Chris

[MrRezister]

Thirded the Fuji Finepix.  I have one of the old 3.1 Megapixel ones that I've owned for about 7 years that still works great, and small-to-medium memory cards are really cheap these days.

[HankB]

I've had a Canon Powershot A620 for a while - it does what I want it to, and was arguably the best camera in its price range at the time I bought it. I like the fact that it's powered by conventional AA batteries.

You can find plenty of digital camera reviews on-line; here's a place to start: http://www.dcresource.com/reviews/allreviews.php

[erictank]

I've had a Canon Powershot A620 for a while - it does what I want it to, and was arguably the best camera in its price range at the time I bought it. I like the fact that it's powered by conventional AA batteries.

You can find plenty of digital camera reviews on-line; here's a place to start: http://www.dcresource.com/reviews/allreviews.php

That's one of the reasons I got my Powershot A630 a little over a year ago.  4xAA batteries so I can get 'em at the 7-11 or hotel convenience shop (if my rechargable AAs die, that is - and I have about 7 sets, which cost me about $30 all told IIRC), large twist-and-flip LCD screen on the back, 8MP resolution, and while it's not an ultra-compact by any measure, it's not even close to being a boat anchor either.  4x optical zoom is not fantastic, but I'd never owned anything with more than 3x previously, and the digital zoom added to optical doesn't start getting too obnoxious until about 6.4x combined.  As mentioned, a 2GB SD card will hold several hundred pictures at max res and quality (mine will not take RAW-format pictures, which I don't mind - I'm not a professional or even a really serious amateur photographer).  Not too shabby for well under $200 at time of purchase, I thought.

Low-light performance is not great (I understand that to be a common problem with digital point-and-shoots - I hear Fujis tend to be slightly better in that regard, though I don't know why), and the shutter lag is annoying, although the 630 is worlds better than my older 3.1MP supercompact Pentax Optio S (which, to be fair, fits into an ALTOIDS TIN - I could take it ANYWHERE) in that regard.  Those are really the only things I wish were better, and there's no digital point-and-shoot I've seen or heard of that's enough better than this one to make me replace it.

I second the recommendation for DCResource.com's reviews - I used that site extensively while researching prior to my own purchase.