Digital Camera Advice

[Adam West]

Our digital camera is starting to flake out on us. It is a few years old, is a 6.5megapixel Kodak camera but I notice the pictures are not as crisp as they once were or other pictures.

I presume that my wife's lack of care is contributing to the problem. It is not unusual for her to leave it in her car on a sweltering day and doesn't bother occassionally downloading the pictures from the memory card onto the computer.

Rather than get angry over the situation, I think I am just going to buy a new computer for my use only. Any good suggestions on a 10-12 megapixel camera that is reasonably priced but can take good action shots when my kids are playing sports as well as good up close pictures for Ebay auctions.

Thanks

[Adam West]

Bumping up since no one has responded. I just took a look at the Nikon P80 today, which is just a step below the digital SLR's and at $350 or so is right about my price range. It has an 18x adjustable lens and 10 megapixels.

Anyone familiar with this camera? The person I spoke to at the camera store thought it was the best camera in its class and the online reviews seem to be fairly good.

Thanks for any expert advice anyone has in this area. I'm really not at the point of dumping $800+ for a high end camera. I just want a good point and shoot camera to take pictures of my kids playing sports and good quality pictures for Ebay.

[Megospidey]

I recently purchased a Sony Cybershot DSC-H10 with 8.1 megapixel capacity. It has the Carl Zeiss lens (AWESOME lens) and takes fantastic action shots. Shutter speed is .1 seconds, so it captures action quickly. You can also buy other lenses for it down the road.

Also takes crisp, clear pictures in zoom (15x max). It has a patented Super Steady Shot technology which pretty much garantees you won't take a blurry picture. It takes fantastic close ups as well. I used it with to take my Aquaman shots in VGA mode (the lowest resolution which I use for computer images). I've taken some nice 8 megapixels shots and had them developed at Walgreens. You would be amazed at the crisp, clear image I got - looks better than my wife's 35mm.

Retails for about $269 online at Best Buy; $299 in the store. But if you say they have it on their website for $269, they'll give it to you at that price - it is a higher end personal digital camera, not an SLR. It has a black case, not silver like most smaller personal digital cameras.

I've owned Nikon's before and have had nothing but trouble with them.

I'd either go with a Sony or a Canon personally.

[Hulk]

My best advice is to read up on them at dpreview.com and steves-digicams.com