The Panasonic FZ8 and the Canon S3 IS's are not small either Stu

second hand fuji s5000 for about 60 ish on e bay.


i love mine

Hi Hali

Lets see if I can help.

First the 2 cameras you quote are Compact cameras (point and shoot type ) but you also ask for one with more settings for later on

That being the case I am not sure if you know the difference between those and a DSLR camera. I see that you already have a compact so presumably its a DSLR your looking at

Don't get fooled into thinking the 2 you are looking at are DSLR as the lenses they quote are only add on to the exising lens not interchangable or so it looks like, my guess is they are compact but look like full DSLR.

For the amount you are thinking of spending then those two types you quote should have sufficient for your needs, but remember you are stuck with the range those cameras are capable of,(as you have found out with your existing camera) and will have limited amount of manual settings.

A Digital Single Lens Reflex (DSLR) will not have movie mode but will be able to have different lenses which can be attached and start with 6 meg pixel (10 meg now the norm).
If you also want built in image stablising then its only the higher priced DSLR,s have that and not many of them as most now accept stablising lenses.

So the question you have to ask yourself is " do I want a camera easy to use or do I want one that I can add lenses to at a later date with more settings?", DSLR cameras all have a basic setting of - the camera will do everything for you- type of thing, which is where we all start from. Then as you get familiar with that type of camera the settings are already there.

As Azz says the nikon D40 is a good place to start from for a Nikon DSLR for around £290 with lens being the basic (6 meg), or Canon eos400 (10 meg) with lens around £400 . The Canon eos350 no longer available new I think .For the price you are looking at you should get a fairly high end Compact but bottom of range DSLR. As regards damaging/ loosing the camera there are specialist camera insurers to protect so I wouldn't worry too much on that score.

Don't confuse optical zoom with meg pixel the two are totally different, first being distance and second number of pixels (dots) the camera is capable of on a picture. Optical zoom would be comparable with size of lens measured in mm.

I had some very good results with my nikon D70s 6 meg pix camera and produced some very good A4 size pictures



New every time if possible but second hand if you are TOTALLY sure of the use the camera has had, if not I would look at refurbished ones done by the manufacturer as there is so much that can go wrong with used cameras from unknown sources .

Hope this is of some help

Bazza

Thanks Bazza, particularly about 2nd hand - never had any problems with my (non-digital) old cameras) nor my existing digital, so assumed they were pretty reliable.

I'm pretty sure that I do want quite a good zoom lense - when taking photos of my dogs, if I move, they do too, so it is often easier to zoom in rather than trying to move closer to them. Similarly there is a lot of local wildlife that I would like to photograph.

I used the zoom on my existing camera (Canon PowerShot A530) a lot but was disappointed with the results - until my Mum told me to turn the digital zoom off and just use the optical zoom. This improved the quality, but of course now I can't zoom in so close.

Other than that, I'm not sure I would want a range of different lenses. My Mum was a very keen photographer in her earlier days and was always trying out different shots but I am much less arty.

You're right, neither of the two I was looking at are DSLRs, I did realise this, but as you say, I need to decide what I really want out of the camera.

In which case I would have a serious look at the D40 Nikon that comes with a lens as I have mentioned which is close to your budget. At a later date you can add a cheaper third party lens for the zoom factor.

Example Nikon 70-300mm lens without vibration reduction can be bought for around £80 or less which is the average range for telephoto work





There are other makes but as I have said on other threads do look at the range of lenses available for that make as well.
Bazza

If you can, get down to Jessops to handle some of the cameras... the D40 isn't that big

I think a nice in-betweeny sort of camera is the Fujifilm Finepix 6500fd

I wanted an improvement on my point and shoot, a better zoom and faster shutter speed, but I didn't think I was ready for a DSLR, so I got the 6500 and it really is fab. I think Fuji's are generally good for that sort of in between stage, if that's the sort of thing you're looking for.