A nice Point and Shoot??

[lint]

Personal preference, I prefer the extra few mms at the wide end vs having more zoom. Much more useful when using the camera indoors.

12mp will have more noise than 8mp, and you really won't notice much difference unless you're blowing up to poster size. The one advantage with 12mp is that you can crop an image smaller and still retain detail vs lower mp. But if you can frame for the shoot, then this shouldn't be a big issue either.

[bspot]

If you're going to Europe wide angle comes in handy so much trying to catch shots of buildings in narrow streets.

[Mitsu3000gt]

If you want a pocketable point and shoot, in my opinion Fuji makes some of the best stuff out there. The F40, F50, or new F100 will all do a fantastic job and have better ISO performance than any of the competition that I'm aware of, which to me at least is very important in a P&S camera. Doesn't matter so much for daylight shots but I find I use ISO 400-800 a lot with my P&S camera and its nice to have grain/noise-free images. I know I'm always going on and on about Fuji but there is a reason why the discontinued Fuji F30/31 sells for 2-3 times retail at $450-$600 USD on eBay and amazon.com. The F50 and F100 also have image stabilization. I know the F100 at least has 28mm on the wide end which is pretty good and a 5X zoom instead of the 3X the F40/50 have. I don't know if the other cameras have it as well but I find the customizable auto ISO feature on the Fuji's very useful. The Fuji's also all have full manual controls i.e. apeture/shutter priority modes, etc. if you are into that.

If I were you I'd get the Fuji F100 - plenty of MP's if you care about that, excellent ISO performance, wide angle lens for the landscapes, 5X zoom, excellent build and all the features/manual controls you would likely need. If for some reason you don't like it I'd get the Canon G9 as a second choice but its $200 more expensive. Head down to The Camera Store and check everything out.

[van]

I just picked up a Panasonic Lumix DMC-FS3 -- I love it!

[cityhunter2501]

Originally posted by Mitsu3000gt
If you want a pocketable point and shoot, in my opinion Fuji makes some of the best stuff out there. The F40, F50, or new F100 will all do a fantastic job and have better ISO performance than any of the competition that I'm aware of, which to me at least is very important in a P&S camera. Doesn't matter so much for daylight shots but I find I use ISO 400-800 a lot with my P&S camera and its nice to have grain/noise-free images. I know I'm always going on and on about Fuji but there is a reason why the discontinued Fuji F30/31 sells for 2-3 times retail at $450-$600 USD on eBay and amazon.com. The F50 and F100 also have image stabilization. I know the F100 at least has 28mm on the wide end which is pretty good and a 5X zoom instead of the 3X the F40/50 have. I don't know if the other cameras have it as well but I find the customizable auto ISO feature on the Fuji's very useful. The Fuji's also all have full manual controls i.e. apeture/shutter priority modes, etc. if you are into that.

If I were you I'd get the Fuji F100 - plenty of MP's if you care about that, excellent ISO performance, wide angle lens for the landscapes, 5X zoom, excellent build and all the features/manual controls you would likely need. If for some reason you don't like it I'd get the Canon G9 as a second choice but its $200 more expensive. Head down to The Camera Store and check everything out.

was looking at the F50..only 269$ at BB or FS..so tempted to grab one as my daily P&S
question...how does it fair with say F30 and the Canon SD series?

[Mitsu3000gt]

Originally posted by cityhunter2501


was looking at the F50..only 269$ at BB or FS..so tempted to grab one as my daily P&S
question...how does it fair with say F30 and the Canon SD series?

I don't know exactly what features you plan on comparing, but where it is most different is its ISO performance and customizable controls. The F30 has a bit better ISO performance than the F50 and both cameras will blow any of the Canon SD cameras out of the water at anything above ISO 100. I would take it over a Canon SD any day but thats just my opinion. I can't remember what the SD's have but the Fujis have full manual controls, have metal bodies, very good flashes, great out of camera JPEGs and a good LCD. For daylight pics and stuff they are going to look virtually identical. I have an F30 and what I use the most is programmable manual mode with auto ISO 400 or 1600 and fast focus mode. I bought an underwater housing for it and it worked awesome under water. The F50 has updated face detection, image stabilization, and a bunch more megapixels when compared to the F30. The F100 is out now too and I think thats worth a look if you can spend another $100. If you don't care about manual controls/options and are always taking pictures at the beach or whatever you aren't going to notice much of a difference between any point and shoot. If you want the best possible pictures in any situation from a camera that can fit in your pocket, I don't think anyone really can compete with Fuji until they start putting bigger sensors in their cameras. Anyways, this is all just my opinion but you will find the same things being said most places that you read. Oh yeah, I didn't charge my F30 for a year (never needed to), and I took it with me on holidays and took EASILY 600+ pics and several videos with it using plenty of flashes and fast focus mode before I got a low battery warning. It seems to last forever.

Neither are technically good pics at all but here are a couple samples I could find super quick. I attached some larger samples so you can actually see.

ISO 400:

» Click image for larger version

ISO 1600


» Click image for larger version

[cityhunter2501]

good stuff

if only the F30 was cheap I would get one as well, but looks like I'll have to go with a F50 or a F100 as my next P&S camera.

that 2nd pic really impressed me, what shutter speed was it at?

[ExtraSlow]

small point and shoot cmeras have vastly improved over the last few years. Nikon, Canon and the rest make some excellent models.

I'm a nikon guy myself.

[Mitsu3000gt]

Originally posted by cityhunter2501
good stuff

if only the F30 was cheap I would get one as well, but looks like I'll have to go with a F50 or a F100 as my next P&S camera.

that 2nd pic really impressed me, what shutter speed was it at?

Yeah considering its a very compact P&S camera ISO 1600 is pretty damn impressive and most certainly usable for a web photo or smaller print. I'll check on the exact shutter speed for you when I get home, I can't view my smugmug account from work. I know it was handheld, probably around 1/40 or 1/60, and the F30 does not have image stabilization (wasn't introduced until the F50).

EDIT: It was taken at 1/75 sec and f2.8

[Gibson]

Originally posted by ExtraSlow
small point and shoot cmeras have vastly improved over the last few years. Nikon, Canon and the rest make some excellent models.

I'm a nikon guy myself.

That's almost true, but Nikon's made some slip-ups in the past couple of years. The S210 has some major focusing problems, and the whole L-series is pretty um...lame.