I am looking into buying a new digital camera for my up coming May hunt . I can afford to spend $1000-$1500 for the camera & lens I don't have a clue as to what to look for in a digital camera. Can anybody give me some recommendations as to what to look for. As you can tell I am not a pro but quality pictures are very important to me.

Robert



There is a thread some weeks back I think posted by Saeed. They had purchased a Cannon Powershot S1 if my memory serves me correct, it seemed to have the bells and whistles and at a very reasonable price. 10 X optical Zoom as well, you must have good Zoom in Africa as sometimes you cant always get up close to live DG



Peter

I bought a Canon EOS 300D digital camera with an extra 75-300 mm ultrasonic image stabilized lens and it performed fantasticaly on my NT hunt this month. 6.3 megapixels photos. Does not shoot video. It is a serious camera and takes magazine quality photos.

I believe it will fit in your budget in the USA.

I've not yet purchased one but Canon has a digital that will accept all regular 35mm lenses. I think it's the Rebel and runs a little under $1000. You would be able to attach any Canon 35mm lens and still take digital photos. I think it's over 5 megapixel in resolution.

That will be hard to beat!

Good luck!

JDS

Robert johnson,

I used the Canon Digital Rebel, Nikon 5700, and Canon Digital Elph on my last hunt. They all serve different purposes, but they all worked perfectly. The Rebel fills the same niche as a good quality 35mm interchangeable lens SLR (I used a 28-200 lens part of the time, and a 70-300 for other shots). Remember that the effective length of the lens will be 1.6 times the marked value when using these lenses on the Rebel, so 28-200 becomes 45-320, and 70-300 becomes 112-480, so it's great for shots of distant animals. On the other hand you also have to be very steady when using extreme telephoto to prevent blurriness due to camera movement (a tripod works great, but a rest against a handy tree, vehice, etc helps as well). This is a 6.3 megapixel camera.

The Nikon 5700 is a non-interchangeable lens camera with an effective lens range of 35-280. It is a 5 megapixel camera, but the newer 8700 is an 8 megapixel version. This camera offers great image quality, and is smaller and lighter than the Rebel, but definitely not a pocket size camera. This is a fine all around camera if you don't need the interchangeable lens feature of the Rebel, and want a smaller, lighter do-it-all camera.

The Elph is easily pocketable, so can always be there when you need it. I often found myself away from the vehicle, and wanting to take a photo of animals or scenery. At these times I used the Elph with good results. It is now available in 5 megapixels, but my older model was 4 megapixels. Effective lens length is 36-108.

Photo quality was outstanding with all. You have to decide what features are most important to you if you are only going to take one camera. Personally I would want to have at least a pocket size camera, and a larger camera with good telephoto capability. The good thing about these three cameras is that they all take the same type of memory card (compact flash), so if one camera gets damaged or lost, the cards can be used in the other.

In your price range you could get either the Rebel with a good zoom lens (28-200 or 70-300) or the Nikon, plus the Elph, and have money left over for some media cards and spare batteries.

If you want to see images shot with either of these cameras I will be glad to post some or email them.

Good luck with your choice,
Jim

Get yourself a little Canon Digital Ixus 430. That brilliant camera can always be in your pocket. It has a 3x zoom lens and 4.0 megapixels.

www.kapstadt.de/lemberg
Hunting one hour from Cape Town

Rubert,

Unless you really want to spend time learning to use your new camera stay away from some of the more computerized cameras with the many, many settings. I have had my Nikon D100 for over a year and I am still trying to figure everything out. Their are plenty of great idiot proof digital cameras out right now that take fantastic pictures. Buy all the pixels you can afford in an easy to learn and use camera.

Doug

We had several cameras on our hunt in Tanzania this year.

Nikon D1X with several lenses. A Tamron 28-300mm, a Nikon 80-400mm and a 50mm Macro lense. We also had a couple of converters. One is 1.4X and one is 2X.

A Nikon D70 with a 120-300 lense.
A Nikon 8700 - 8MB and 8X optical zoom.
A Canon Powershot S1 IS 3.2MB and 10X optical zoom, image stabilizer and full motion video at 640x480 at 30 fps. This is about the same quality as Hi8 cameras.
A Canon Pro1 8MB 7X optical zoom.
A Sony P100 5MB 3X optical zoom.
A Canon Ixus 500 5MB 3X optical zoom.

Qualitywise, nothing comes close to the Nikon D1X.
The D70 is a very good camera, but not in the same league as the D1X.

The Nikon 8700 and the Canon Pro 1 are very similar in performance, but I just preferred the Nikon. May be because I have used the earlier 5700 model.

The Sony is a great little camera, which I carried in my pockets while out hunging. It take vefy good quality photos in good light, but not so good when the light is not great.

The small Canon Ixus range is better.

For convenience, I preferred teh Canon S1 IS, despite the lower resolution.

My suggestion is to go to a good camera shop, and check several models yourself. You really cannot go wrong with any model from one of the well known names.

If your not taking a computer along, make sure you have enough memory cards to last you through teh hunt. Or, you can purchase one of the digital photo banks on the market. These are small battery operated units with a hard disk. You just tranfer your photos to it when you get back to camp.

Also, make sure you have enough spare batteries.

Robert,

You might want to think about what form you want the pictures to be in after you get them home. If all you want to do is email photos to the family or post them here, then pretty much any capable digital camera will do what you want.

If you want to have photo prints to put in the album, and have them last for years then you need to begin your search with a photo capable printer and work back to the camera. Sort of like choosing a computer by first considering what software it must support.

My favorite graphics guru is recommending the Epson 2200 for that printer now, and he says the inks Epson are using replicate colors well and are long-lasting. You can also use a printing service, and have Kodak or whomever make your prints. You have to trade image size and image quality versus resolution in your camera. If you want to equal or surpass the best color films and prints in large sizes, you need an 11.5 Mpixel camera according to the guru. If you have more modest requirements, you can get by with less. (For example the 6 Mpixel cameras are reported to equal film performance up to 5"X7" prints or so.)

If you want to use interchangeable lenses, you will be led to those cameras that have them such as the Nikon D-1 Saeed mentioned (I like it too).

The short of it: the camera is the tip of the digital photo iceburg.

jim