Earlier this year I had by brother and sister-in-law scouting for a
house for us 300 miles away from our current house near Boston. It soon
became apparent that verbal descriptions and MLS listings left a great
deal to be desired. I needed to see photos and lots of them. If I was
going to pick up and drive 300 miles to see a house I wanted to be
pretty sure that it might be the one.
Since my brother-in-law hadn't owned or used a camera since the SLR he'd
bought in Vietnam (and never learned to use well) I bought him a small,
used Canon A70 digital <http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/canona70/> for
about $100 so he could shoot and email lots of images to me. Since he
only has a dial-up internet connection I also set him up with FastStone
Image Viewer to sort, resize and email the images.
<http://www.faststone.org/FSViewerDetail.htm>
FastStone is a free, near clone of BreezeBrowser. The implemenatation
is very good but the documentation is (charitably) skimpy. But it was
easy for him to learn the few things he had to do such as resize larger
JPEG's down to small web images so his phone wasn't tied up all night
and select the images for inclusion in an email message. He loves the
camera and the program even though he doesn't use but a fraction of the
capability of either tool. The 3MP is plenty enough to make an 8x10 and
that 3MP sensor is probably larger than the 8-10 MP sensors in the
current crop of P&S cameras.
I don't mean to push the Canon but only point out that the technology of
2003 for a small digital camera is still pretty good for today. Nobody
needs 10MP for small prints and web images. I'm sure Oly, Nikon and
others have equivalent stuff. One feature about the Canon that blew me
away (wish my 5D had it) was the panorama mode. When you put the camera
in panorama mode it displays part of the last frame on the display
screen while you line up the display of the shot you're about to take
with the previous one. Pretty cool and makes panos a piece of cake.
I think the real problem might be that a 13 year old might not
appreciate used gear but you can buy some cool used stuff for $100.
Chuck Norcutt
Wayne Culberson wrote:
> Does anyone have a good suggestion for a P&S digital for a 13-year-old for
> Christmas. It doesn't have to be the latest model, or good for much beyond
> 4x6 prints and the screen, and hopefully woud come in below $150.
> Thanks,
> Wayne
>
>
> ==============================================
> List usage info: http://www.zuikoholic.com
> List nannies: olympusadmin@xxxxxxxxxx
> ==============================================
>
>
==============================================
List usage info: http://www.zuikoholic.com
List nannies: olympusadmin@xxxxxxxxxx
==============================================
|