We Need a New Camera

We first entered the digital photography age three and a half years ago with the purchase of a Canon PowerShot A70. It has served us well. I selected this camera because it was a good balance between a small point-and-shoot camera and a large full-featured one. Being relatively small, it could fit in a pocket (with a bit of a bulge) and had the automatic features typically used when taking snapshots. At the same time, it provided a good deal of manual control for those times when you feel like doing something artistic or take a tricky shot.

Unfortunately, after a tumble on our Japan trip, it has been in steady decline. The battery compartment does not latch closed completely and we have recently noticed that pictures will occasionally have a pink hue or look like they are melting (some of the most severe examples shown here). On our trip to Windsor, these occurences were more frequent. There is no question now that we need a replacement.

Now the big question is, which camera do we get? In addition to the camera, we have invested in some infrastructure such as memory cards, rechargeable batteries and a zoom lens. Do we replace our current camera with an updated model? Or consider other makes and reinvest in these accessories?

Here are some factors of the decision…

– More Zoom. You can never have enough. We have the tele-converter lens which adds 2.4x to the camera’s normal 3x zoom and works well when the flash isn’t needed. I have seen some of the newer models now have up to 10x zoom — of course there is a trade off with size.

– Standard Batteries. This was an important factor the last time around. Using AA batteries means that we can always get batteries on the road if all of our rechargeables are drained.

– Larger LCD. When taking pictures with other people’s cameras, I have really liked the larger LCD screens that are typical on Sony cameras. I am sure there is a trade off on battery life though.

– Better Low Light Auto-Focus. This is one area that our camera has struggled in at times. Hopefully the technology has improved over the last 3 years to eliminate this problem.

– Size. While our current camera is balanced between features and size, we typically carry it in a camera bag. Should we just get a larger model with more features (i.e. zoom)? K’s new phone includes a 3 megapixel camera with (rudimentary) flash and has a 1 gb memory card — perhaps we can just use that for the pocket-toting snapshots?

We’d like to know what you think. What are your experiences with digital camera? What do you recommend or avoid?