Why not buy the A95

[cosmicsoup]

DCR Friends,

Can anyone please give me a reason why I should not buy the Cannon A95? I have spent the last several weeks trying to find the "perfect" digital camera. I do not want to have to buy another digital camera for years. :)

What I need from a camera:
- 1-2 second, next picture (1 sec preferably)
- Ability to print qualy 8x10's
- Decent zoom capabilities, but not over the top.
- Small in size
- Reduced red-eye
- Great pictures in low light

This is a camera that will likely get thrown into a diaper bag (ha ha) or beach bag and be toted around to soccer games. I need it to be reliable but not clumsy. I have a nice Rebel 2000 SLR that works great, but its not easy to carry around with strollers, backpacks and diaper bags. :eek:

Consumer Reports rates the Cannon A95 as the top in the 5 MP. But the Cannon S60 seems like it would fit my purposes better. The Fuji E550 seems nice too. I've reviewed some of the Olympus cameras and they are nice, but the A95 seems to be the best. Is this right?

Please help me.

Cosmicsoup

[Newbie]

Gah, I had made a super long post but I lost it...

Basicly what it said is that sand and cameras does not go well together and I suggest having particular attention to that when going to the beach.

The A95 will make u wait for 2.4 seconds between shots without flash in normal mode and 4.5 with flash. Without flash in continuous mode it will be much faster, in continuous H(no image on LCD) it will take 8 pictures(at max resolution and lowest compression) at a rate of 2fps. In Continuous it will take 9 pictures(at max resolution and lowest compression) at a rate of 0.8fps. Keep in mind that lowering the resolution or increasing the compression will considerably increase the number of pictures you can take. Also, after the number of pictures are taken, it doesn't stop it simply slows down.
Generally speaking Canon cameras are slow to focus in low light situation, unfortunatly both the S60 and A95 fall into that category.

The red eyes is likely to be present with most compact cameras since the flash is so close to the lense. And since there is an integrated flash, the low light pictures taken with a flash won't be amazing... If by low light you meant long exposures, then both Canon cameras will be great at it. Both of them will give you great 8x10 prints. The A95 is not considered to be a small camera by many people... personally i find it of a very nice size.

What could be said about the S60 is very similar to the A95, the picture quality is slightly better and I think it would tolerate sand better, but I am really unsure.

As for the Fuji, I am no big fan of the Fuji cameras, because their jpeg pictures are too compressed. Their fine(lowest compression) mode is more compressed than the Canon's Fine(2nd lowest compression) mode. So artifacts are more likely to happen when printing larger pictures. Besides that, the E550 is very interesting for certain things, the most important one being the 32.5-130mm lense which is better than the A95's for both wide angle and telephoto, it beats the S60 only for telephoto. It also has some interesting picture capability at ISO800 taking 3mp pictures, but it really lacks for low light situations. It doesn't have an AF assist lamp so it should focus slower than the canon cameras, its slowest shutter speed is 3 seconds so it limits your ability to take long exposures without raising the ISO, thus raising the noise. As for shot to shot delays, its faster than both S60 and A95 without flash averaging 1.5seconds between shots and its also considerably slower with flash with a sluggish 7.1 seconds between shots. In continuous mode it takes 4 pictures independently of the size or resolution at a rate of 3.3 fps then it stops for 10.5 seconds in 2848 x 2136 JPEG resolution(its longer in 4048 x 3040 JPEG resolution and shorter with less resolution).

All these 3 cameras have 1 strong point in common, they offer lots of manual features and you don't mention that its important for you... so I will suggest you 2 other cameras...

The Sony cameras are quite fast to focus in low light situations, so i would think the W1 to be a good choice, it has a bit of manual controls, but not as many as the 3 other cameras. It takes very good quality images, some people complain about too much noise reduction from Sony, but I think its quite alright...

Also, the SD300 or even the SD200 from Canon are both using the new DIG!C II processor which is faster to focus in low light situations, so it could be worth the look. Those cameras are much smaller than the E550, A95 and S60... specially the SD200-300 which are roughly the size of credit card. They have an image quality which not as good as the A95, but which could very well be what you're looking for.

Having said all that, I own the A95 and I find its a great camera, just a little unsure if it would suit your needs...

[cosmicsoup]

Newbie,

Thank you for your detailed email. I truly appreciate all the insight you provided on all of the cameras.

By saying "low light", I actually mean taking pictures in the early evening at dusk. That seems to be a bad picture time for me. I normally do not take a lot of pictures at night.

Since this camera will be a family camera, I really want something that doesn't have a lot of moving parts. The A95's pivotable display concerns me. I'm afraid my 2 year old will have too much fun with it. But! The A95 seems to have the respect of many reputable places like Best Buy and Consumer Reports.

I like the fact that the S60/70 can be sealed closed by the sliding door.

I did look at the SD200/300 and I am afraid they maybe too small and I would like a slightly better zoom capabilities than the 3x.

Also, how do you feel about Sony? I have refused to consider Sony because of their proprietary memory stick. I would like to stick to a medium that's more of a standard.

Many Thanks!

CosmicSoup!

[Newbie]

Yes I agree that it was a very stupid move made by Sony to go with proprietary memory cards... There are people who don't care about it and they wouldn't care if it were something else... but those people who care are quite simply lost consumers...

If you don't want to go with Sony because of that it is perfectly understandable... Their main advantages over most Canon cameras is faster focus speed in low light and better movie mode.

With that being said, I agree with you, I own the A95 and wouldn't want my 2 years old child to play with the rotating LCD. Even in some cases I am afraid when an adult plays with it because it can't rotate 180° on both sides and I don't know what the person thinks, nor how easily it can break if forced the wrong side.

The S60 could be very interesting, its image quality is slightly above the A95's and I think its quite sturdy, don't remember what it felt like when I held it tho. As for your shots at dusk are they of people, if not then the camera should perform very well since I presume we're not talking about flash but long shutter... If not, well there is a little trick which can reduce the flash and that is to put a piece of Kleenex in front of it so that it acts like a(not sure of the proper term) compensating light and the scene looks like it was lit naturally, there would still be red eyes. Also having RAW can help you correct things after the picture was taken... Of course that is if you have the time and interest in doing so. Finally, the greatest thing about the S60 is that it has a 28mm lense at wide angle which is great IMHO.

There is 1 thing I don't understand, you say that you'd prefer slightly better zoom capabilities, but the A95 also has 3x and the S60 only goes to 100mm vs the 105 of the SD300.

Also, the Fuji cameras use proprietary memory that is shared with Olympus...

[Fred]

Well, as a relatively new A95 owner I was going to jump in and tell you how much I like this camera and why you should buy one. Then I read your comments about your two year old and the rotating LCD. I sure think that would be a dangerous combination, almost certainly leading to breakage.

If you can keep the two year old away from the camera, then I feel it would serve you well. Good luck with whatever you decide.