First Digital Camera. Need Your Help!

[nitroice0069]

Hi, I have been looking for a Digital Camera for about one month now; it will be my first Digital Camera. I have narrowed down my search to three different cameras: the Panasonic Lumix DMC-FZ3, the Olympus C-765 UZ, and the Konica Minolta DiMAGE Z2. I have read different reviews on all of these cameras. I have went to my local camera store and played around with all of them and I still can’t decide.

From pictures I have seen the Olympus has the best picture quality, but I may be mistaken or those may have just been good photographs and that is not what it really produces most of the time. While the Panasonics seem to be sharp but noisy. I have heard that this is not a big deal since there is free software to take away noise. Is this true? The Minolta seems to be in the middle quality wise. Image Stabilization is not a necessity for me. I will mostly be using it for landscapes and animal shots. Though I may have the occasional portrait.

I would like to know what camera of these three you think is the best and why? Pros and Cons would be very nice. If you have another suggestion that is around the price of those please feel free to say. Thank you in advance for you time and consideration.


JamEs

[Thon]

Hi James,

I've just upgraded to a Oly C-770UZ (C-765 with hotshoe and MPEG4 movie) and just received my new camera a couple of days ago. Very compact size and good weight in hand. Controls are a bit cramped for my hands but in general not too bad.

Have taken a few test shots (indoors) at 10x zoom with no obvious shake problem (no IS in this fellow). And the pictures are great and low noise even at higher ISO settings.

A possible shortcoming with the Oly would probably be the delay between shots (camera freezes for a second or so between shots), never tried the others so you may need other viewers' feedback. The lens do wobble a bit (about 1 mm), as commented by many other users, which doesn't seems to be a problem.

I got mine for about $488 from Japan through a friend with an extra Li-10B battery, original Olympus C-series camera case and USB xD-Card reader (no remote controller though, in the Japanese specs; I'll just use the one that comes with my year-old Stylus 400). The only downside I see for buying from Japan, is everything is in Japanese including the software (not a major issue for me).

Hope that helps.

Thon