first camera Canon A510 or SD200?

[hihihoh]

Hello everybody!

I am a college student and I am looking for first camera

Budget
Under 250$ :) student budget

Size
I don't care

Features

Optical zoom 3x-4x

How important is “image quality” to you? (Rate using a scale of 1-10) 10

Do you care for manual controls? Not really> it would be helpful if there were some automatic modes, for portraits, night, or other special scenes

General Usage

* What will you generally use the camera for? Take pictures of college/ city; send them to my parents in Europe

* Will you be making big prints of your photos or not? I will not print my pictures

Will you be shooting a lot of indoor photos or low light photos? I guess..Ok

Will you be shooting sports and/or action photos? NO

Miscellaneous: I would like to make small movies

Are there particular brands you like or hate? I like Canon

Are there particular models you already have in mind? YES! I can't focus on my homework because I keep thinking Canon A501 or Canon SD200?

Canon SD200 has the new processor, the Digital2 thing, and a better movie quality. But it's too tiny and fragile and untrustworthy. The A501 seems more "serious" and I guess it makes better pictures. I am pretty concerned about Canon brand also, as there are some very disturbing reviews about errors and bad screens...

(If applicable) Do you need any of the following special features? (Wide Angle, Image Stabilization, Weatherproof, Hotshoe, Rotating LCD)

There are some wonderful landscapes here, so I would like to take panoramic pictures


Thank you

[rallison]

hihihoh,

I was trying to decide between those two also. I'd looked at a bunch, especially some with bigger zooms but my budget (also @ $250 for everything) wouldn't allow it. I eventually decided on the A510 because the image quality was quite a bit crisper than the SD200 edge-to-edge. And with landscapes, which I also wanted to photograph, edge-to-edge sharpness was important to me. The SD200 was a little soft on the edges although I don't know if I'd have known the difference except when comparing the photos side-by-side.

Like you, the movie mode was secondary. Anyone would love to have a great movie mode, but I was only going to be emailing short clips of my kids to my Mom in a different state and I have a camcorder so I didn't put it high on the list.

As luck would have it, I got the A520 because the store I bought it from was out of the A510 and sold me the A520 for the same price. While the 520 has a few more pixels, I believe the 510's picture is cleaner (less noise). A very helpful person on this forum recommended the extra pixels for light cropping over the slightly cleaner image. Now that I've used it a bit, I understand why.

I've not encountered any mechanical problems with the camera at all. Every manufacturer is going to have a few lemons go out the door; that's the nature of electronics. That's one of the reasons I bought it from a retail outlet specializing in cameras (Cord Camera); so that I could get help when I needed it. I don't expect any though. I'm sure any manufacturer, especially someone like Canon, would honor the warranty against defects as long as you bought it from a reputable dealer.

I'm still learning all the features as I've only had it for a little over a week. I didn't think I would really use any of the manual stuff as this was my first digital camera but even after just a week, there are instances when they're great to have. I realized quickly that there is only so much a point and shoot can do in automatic mode. :)

Anyway, good luck and let us know which one you get!

RAllison

[propwash]

Dell has a special this week on the 520, which is like the 510, except that it has 4 MP, and it's in the $165 range. You might want to check this out. Good luck.