Point and shoot pocket cam suitable for sports...

[shmee150]

Hi,

I've used as my pocket camera a Sony T30 for just off 2 years now and it's starting to bug me for a few reasons, but let me just say what I want from a new camera and then see what people can suggest:

I am a fairly serious skier and spend a large amount of my year in the mountains so take thousands of photos, and what I would really really like is a pocket camera that can take photos in rapid sucession to catch the action, like a couple a second, at a decent resolution. What I'd ideally like is something that can pump 4 5MP pics a sec or something but I don't even know this is possible from a point and shoot, that's for you to tell me I suppose.

My brief googling has revealed that the Sony T200 can do about 2 8MP photos a second, and the Casio Z1200 can manage 3 3MP per sec, but neither of these are really fast enough.

Anyway I look forward to hearing what people know of, and any other input.

Thanks,

Tim


EDIT: Slightly answering my own question; it would appear that the Panasonic FX55 can do 3 per second at 8MP (4 images max), which odds on would hit what I want. Does anybody know if at say 5MP you can take more??

[David Metsky]

I shoot a lot of skiing photos, 1000's every year. For most of the festivals I shoot with my Canon S3 but for the past several years I've used my SD300, now I have an SD800. You really want unlimited shooting, not a short buffer of 3 or 4 shots at a high rate of speed.

The two best choices would be a Canon SD with the smallest image size. Shooting at a reduced image size doesn't really help you much. I'd look for an SD700 or SD800, they get around 1.8 fps until your card fills up. The SD300 would shoot 2.3 fps, that was nice.

The Sony W80 takes up to 100 shots at 2.7 fps. I think that's the king of the pocket cameras. I didn't want to go the Sony route but it would be a good choice if burst mode is a high priority.

[shmee150]

I think I am going to go and play with the Panasonic and if I like it buy it.

Main reason being that the type of skiing I do is freestyle and big air so when you're "flying" for 2 seconds odd so about 4 photos in 1.33 secs is good enough to ensure getting the best pic from it and no risk of shooting too early or late...

I've just got to hope that it's white balance is good!

As to the Canons though, nothing personal I just don't really like the look of them for some reason :(