Tax Day turned out to be lottery day, and so I'm on a bit of a shopping spree this time of year. First up is a replacement for my 2½-year-old Canon S30. An upgrade from a 3.2 megapixel camera won't mean much to you, but it's great for my apartment. I'll explain.
The first question you should ask yourself is, What do I want my camera to accomplish? If settling for e-mail or web display of photos, then a 3.2 megapixel is plenty good enough. In fact, such a model, paired with my $100, six-color Epson R200 photo printer, worked in tandem to provide some very attractive collages of 4x6, 5x7 and 8x10 photos of my vacation jaunts, which can be found in my Fotki.com portfolio.
The main factor in deciding to get a new camera was that the S30 became too cumbersome and too heavy to be considered a universal carry-on, when compared to current models. That makes for a lot of missed photo-ops, as well as that unsightly image of a bulge in my pants.
If you're a point-and-shooter like me, then a Canon SD-series ultra-compact model seems perfect. The first of Canon's line, the 3.2 megapixel SD200, is about the size of an Altoids tin.
But how many pixels do need?. Simple math will tell you a 3.2-megapixel model will suffice for the aforementioned 8x10 prints. I was already buying into the size factor. How much smaller could they get? Probably negligible, similar to the clock speed of current PCs. Seriously, you could buy the slowest computer at a retail chain and be just as happy as you are with the fastest.
But what about these megapixels? Assuming size won't be a factor for a few years, will megapixels have any impact? I hedged my bet with yes. With 16x20 prints through Fotki.com at a minimum of $8.50 and 12x36 posters available at $12.00, I figured the prices are already reasonable to order large prints, and they may even come down. So I went with the new, kick-ass Canon SD500 7.1 megapixel model that I hope to be relevant as long as Derek Jeter is in pinstripes. And printing one's own poster-sized prints sounds pretty cool to me. Here's a tutorial on "Coming to Terms with DPI, PPI and Size."
As for finding the best price, definitely check out the price-comparison sites, especially if you live in New York City and are subject to an 8.75% tax that can be waived if ordering from out of state. An SD500 and 512MB card that would have cost $600 with the righteous folks at B&H Photo cost only $500 at PCRush.com.
Be wary of scam sellers like USA Photo Nation, a notorious bait-and-switch dealer that generates leads through Google's AdWords. Do your homework on anyone you give your credit card to. And give consideration to the rechargeable batteries and media cards you already own. Will they be compatible with a newer model? If so, there's some money saved. (For me, the answer was, unfortunately, no. So I'm kinda stuck with the stuff I have. Anyone wanna buy a 256MB Compact Flash card?)
In summary, know what you want, ask questions to understand price points (what you're paying for), and use the Internet's helpful tools to find the best price. My new toy arrives in a few days, but unless you plan on printing large-sized photos of my shots, you shouldn't see a difference. I'm hoping that in 2006 or 2007, my walls will be filled with posters I shot. Ansel Adams can choke on a fat one.
Great post, especially the discussion about how many megapixels you need for a particular print size.
If you ever become unhappy with commercial printing, you can now buy a dye sublimation printer for a few hundred bucks. They look like a bigger ink jet, but work very differently and give you control over the color in your prints. My husband got one because he was never happy with the color in commercial prints -- the pictures would look great on the computer screen, but colors would be different in the prints.
Posted by bhw at April 22, 2005 9:18 AM