Camera advice, please.

[Faltorvo]

First off, I must warn all those that may try and help, I am a 100% camera newb. I know just a shade more then point and click. The last camera i owned was a $10 kodak disposable (hey don't laugh to hard) it's the perfect camera to sit in the bottom of ones tackle box for a summer.

I guess one could say i'm looking for photo album quality pictures from say 3 ft to 150 ft. Maybe 150ft is stretching it.

I like the though of it being a digi .

Anything out there in the $400 range that might cover this ?

[ichiro17]

Not really.  Not if you are looking for something to capture birds 100 ft away with good detail.

That combo will cost you upwards of $5000

Learn to use a Canon G10 and it will get you very good, presentable results that you can proudly put in an album.  Its also a great camera to carry around and is very good and keeping detail.

As well, become familiar with Photoshop and/or other editing programs because the editing is where you can save some of those potentially 'lost' shots

[Andreas Jonsson]

I'm not quite sure what you mean by "photo album quality". I'm using a super-zoom compact digital camera (in my case a Canon PowerShot S3 IS) which you can get in your price range. However, I don't make prints, but it is great for documentation. Certainly good enough for web publication. Have a look at some of my photos, all taken at 50-150 feet or so. Note that these are low resolution crops (although my camera has a 12x zoom one generally has to crop the photos down so that the birds aren't too small in the final picture).

There are loads of super-zoom cameras on the market (you need 12x zoom or more, I would say) and image stabilization of some kind is a must.

You wont get digital SLR quality, but a super-zoom compact may be a good start.

[Napper]

Camera for sale


http://www.naturesbestcreations.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=35&t=2887&p=13416&sid=d7c70bd69c1d903491712a6183e3bd18#p13416

 

Napper

[Kin Lau]

With a $400- budget, a "superzoom" is likely your best bet, and the good news is that there's quite a few models that are decent.

Check the following review in Dpreview on superzooms http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/q109superzoomgroup . The Canon SX10 IS and Panasonic FZ28 look pretty good.