We popped up to the Computer Fairs near Tottenham Court Road on Saturday to see if we could sort out a new phone for Vic. She fancied a Nokia 6310 , not the most recent model, but it has a reputation for being very reliable. We were lucky enough to find a second-hand one for £85 which was 40 quid less than any others we’d seen.
I got my usual cheapskate haircut at Mr Toppers (£6), and we then had a look round some camera shops as Vic has a hankering to start taking some photos.
She’s ended up getting a Canon Ixus 430 off Ebay for £230, and having had a quick play with the camera, I’m quite taken with it.
My own camera, a Sony DSC-P1 that I bought in November 2000 sounds like it’s on its way out. Vic is over in France for a few days visiting a friend, and, because her own camera hadn’t arrived when she left, she’s borrowed my camera and it’s started playing up (not displaying pictures, showing images as all black etc). Chances are I’ll need to get another, a pity as it’s a good little camera, if a little long in the tooth by digital standards. The battery life isn’t great (less than an hour per battery), and the DC connection cover doesn’t fit properly, but it still takes decent pictures (or did last time I used it).
Vic’s due to return from France tomorrow night, and I’m hoping to meet her at Waterloo, but an emergency meeting of Urban 75 techies has been called to look at moving the message boards to a new hosting service, so I might have to leave the meeting early. Looking forward to some nice French cheese, mmmmmm!
If you looking to replace your Sony – then do check out the latest prices for the DCS-V1 – excellent cam – enough features to keep you occupied for at least a year or two – prosumer compact – OK not as ultra compact as Ixus – but takes very, very good pics – esp in AF and “Program Shift” modes – and I haven’t even started on aperture or shutter priority modes yet! Oh – but be warned – battery life is not good – and this I guess applies to any camera you get – be sure to get spares for your journeys. And also get memory sticks etc. If you go for Sony then I can def recommend good value memory sticks (by Scandisk) at Davoom – I placed order for 2 x 256Mb memory sticks the other day and pretty much got them the next day at the best prices I could find (£58 each.)
Hiss – Sony
Mmmmm – Canon
:>
Yeah – Richard is right re Canon in at least one respect: in the same class of cam as the Sony DSC-V1 is the Canon G5 – and that’s just very slightly superior to the Sony. However – it used to be 100 quid more expensive. Hence the reason why I recommended the Sony DSC-V1. I reckon you could pick up one of those (Sony DSC-V1 that is) for around 300-ish quid. I haven’t researched the latest pricing on the G5 though …
My brother has a Canon G3 and that has taken some cracking pictures.
I’ll have to see how my old camera is working, now that Vic’s back. I’ll then have to work out what sort of budget I have and whether I want to carry a relatively large camera around with me.
I think it is the Memory Stick I dislike most – but if you have lots of Sony bits and plenty of Memory Sticks you can’t go far wrong really.
There is great review of the Sony DSC V1 – which compares with Canon G5 at http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/sonydscv1/
And re memory sticks – I don;t think they’re so bad. I picked up a couple of 256Mb sticks for £58 each from Davoom – next day delivery:
http://www.davoom.com/products/index.php?boxaction=memory_cards_ms
I have a Sony Clie which also takes Memorysticks so it’d be useful to keep to one media, though Vic’s camera is CompactFlash, and I have a USB CF/Memorystick reader.
256Mb CompactFlash can be had for £40 of less, so still a bit cheaper than Memorystick.