I was told Canon is the best?

[mwalessi22]

Hi, I'm new to this board and was hoping someone could offer some advice on which digital camera to buy. I need to buy one for myself and one for my parents. Basically we'll be using it for vacations, pictures of the kids etc. I was told at Best Buy that Canon is hands down the best digital camera made, followed closely by Olympus and Sony. Any suggestions??? thanks so much in advance. I looked at the Canon G6 and really liked it, but am not sure if I need that much camera.

[PhilR.]

Canon makes great stuff, but by no means would I consider it to be the best - mainly because I don't think there is a "best" camera or camera manufacturer. In fact, I think that if you gathered images from similar cameras from the major makers, that you wouldn't be able to tell which ones were produced by Canon's, and which were not.

If you aren't sure if the G6 might be too much camera, you might consider telling the readership here how much camera you do need. You might get some good suggestions. At this point, there must be 500 cameras that will allow you to photograph kids and vacations.....

PhilR.

[Thon]

Some points to consider before deciding if a camera is too much camera.

1. Type of prints you make/megapixels.
2. Price/budget/operating cost
3. Type of photography/lens type and zoom power
4. Other minor stuff like manual controls, body size, etc.

And on the best cameras issue, Canon makes some of the better cameras but can't say for sure that they are the best. Olympus are good too, but the designs are sometimes not that pleasing to the eye, but functional (they are improving in the looks department). Nikon, I like the dSLRs but the Coolpix are just not my cup of tea (can't tell you exactly why, the quality is pretty good actually). Panasonic FZs are the current big name in ultrazooms and they are good in this department, you should have a look at them too. The rest are ok but not really creating waves with new cutting edge cameras.

And 1 misconception that many people make, more sales/market share = best camera. More sales by any maker doesn't mean that it makes better cameras. I'd say the more popular cameras are just more suited for the masses, most probably by price vs features. And don't forget marketing too.

[ReF]

canon does make a lot of very nice cameras - good throughout pretty much their entire line, (which is more than I can say for many of the other manufacturers) many of which are better than the competition. but saying that they are "the best hands down" is over-generalizing. as mentioned, canon makes a pretty good ultra zoom but the panasonics rule in that area and the canon elph line has some tough competition from sony and casio. I hold the opinion that if you know nothing about cameras and have no idea what to get, you can't go wrong with a canon (not too sure about the SD20 though). Can anyone name a currently produced canon that just flat out sucks? probably not, unless you are a bitter owner of a canon with E18 or you are unfairly comparing apples with oranges.

getting a little off the subject but still sticking with "apples vs oranges" and over-generalizing, I heard someone the other day saying that digital cameras (pointing at the consumer fixed lens models) suck. then continued on to say how much better film SLR's are but never mentioned d-SLR's. pretty dumb thing for someone to say, huh? it's kinda like if I started telling everyone how much better d-SLR's are compared to point and shoot film cameras.