Seeking experienced advice:

I am planning on purchasing my first digital camera, and since I am
neither a photography expert nor intend to become one, I thought I would
see what others thought I should buy. All comments are welcome:

I would hope to purchase the camera for less than $250. Any
suggested merchants?

I believe I want an optical resolution of 10 or 12 since I feel I would
be unhappy with only taking photos at close range.

I do not intend to do anything other than family type photos and
possibly some landscape shots. Based upon this, I don't THINK I need a
lot of mega pixels. Most would never be printed larger than 5x7.

I do not intend to print my own photos. If I wanted a print I would
probably have a service print them.

I have read some reviews about digital cameras and it appears some
cameras "eat batteries." If this is an issue, and one brand or model is
better than another, this would be helpful to know.

The majority of comments seem to suggest that rechargeable batteries are
the way to go. Any comments?

I see some models for sale that are refurbished. Is there a downside to
buying such a camera?

Are there other issues I should be considering such as image
stabilization? Or is that feature just for pros?

Brand reliability? Needed memory card size? Please feel free to
suggest anything I did not mention. I just don't want to buy a camera
and find out I should have asked more questions. Thanks.

 

A few items from my own experience:
The only refurbished digital camera I ever bought was from Kodak and it
never worked properly and completely died in two months.
If you get double A LITHIUM (not rechargeable) batteries you will do
very well. Built in rechargeable batteries are useless if you run out
in the field. Get a camera with double As and get the Lithiums.

I have no idea what you mean by optical resolution of 10 or 12. If you
are talking megapixels you don't need anything close to that for what
you are doing. 5 to 7 is plenty. You can get a very good camera for
your needs for well under $250. If you are talking zoom range then that
is not reasonable if you mean 10X or 12X. You won't likely find it.

I don't know what you mean by "merchants" but a good photo store would
be your best starting point.

Any of the name brands would do you well: Nikon, Fuji, Canon, Olympus etc.

I use mostly film, but I bought a Nikon point and shoot digital with
7.1 megapixels and a 3X zoom for about $100 at Bj's and it does a good
job for what digital does best: passible photography done quick.

 

Thanks, I shall keep that in mind.

I was talking about optical magnification. Sorry for the wrong
terminology. My thoughts were a 5-7 megapixel camera would be adequate
for my purpose as well.

My thought was buying the camera via the Internet, that is why I used
the term merchants. I like the ability to compare prices as well as
retrieve information on the net.

Thanks.

 

Actually, The Fuji S700 (S5700 outside the US or at Ritz Camera) has 10X
zoom, 7 Megapixel and sells for about $200. It is a good value for the
money. I recommend alkaline or NI-MH AA batteries however, since the
manual advises against using lithiums. Battery life is pretty good with
alkalines, unlike most cameras, and very good with decent NI-MH's.

 

Thanks, I shall check it out.

I have a question about the batteries: If I go to a sellers web site
on the web to view a camera, they have accessories such as the NI-MH
batteries. Many sell a charger and batteries for close to $90 as an
accessory. If I search for the batteries and charger by itself, they
can be had for a lot less.
http://thomas-distributing.com/sony-lcd-rechargeable-battery-charger.htm

Is there something wrong with the above charger and battery combo or is
this simply a case of the seller of the camera trying to get rich??

 

The Sony combo is a fine system. NIMH batteries come in various capacities.
Look for 2500mah or more, if you want maximum capacity. Sanyo eneloop
batteries offer lower capacity, but have a slower self-discharge rate. This
means they won't lose charge as quickly as others when not used.

Anybody trying to sell a set of AA rechargeables and charger for $90 is
definitely overcharging (no pun intended), and should be avoided at all
costs.

 

I used to use rechargeable AA batts with my Fuji S7000. I had absolutely
horrible luck with them. Various brands, no good luck. I could charge
them until the charger indicated a complete charge *and they checked out
at 1.6x volts with my voltmeter*, put them in the camera immediately, and
get a batt warning light. Sometimes I could get two or three shots;
sometimes it would just shut itself down. I wanted to recharge, but I
just couldn't.

I reverted to alkalines, and I *never* have problems like that with those.
Now, if I hadn't been checking those rechargeables with that voltmeter,
I'd just say that I got a bum charger, but I checked scores of recharged
batts only to have them then not work in that camera. Can anyone shed any
light on this?

I like the idea of conventional batteries, available at a reasonable price
everywhere. A couple months ago I bought a compact (Fuji A820), and using
AA's was a hard rule when I was shopping.

 

I'd query the accuracy of your voltmeter. NiCd and NiMH cells won't
deliver much more than 1.2v - but they do stay at that level until almost
completely discharged. Rechargeable alkalines have the wrong
characteristics for heavy-drain appliances and will discharge very
rapidly.

I don't know the Fuji S7000 but in general terms if an appliance has a
'battery state' indicator that is based on voltage readings and is
calibrated to work with disposable batteries (which start out at 1.5v or
slightly more and decline to 1v or less) then a NiMH or NiCd might be
below the voltage that triggers the 'low battery' warning. I've also
encountered a portable radio that refuses to run at all on NiMH or NiCd
cells because it uses six of them in series and actually needs more than
8v - but 6 1.2v cells only adds up to 7.2v. My 2xAA Mini Maglite torch
works with some NiMH cells and not with others; I think some makes are
shaped so that they don't actually make electrical contact inside the
torch - the casings on rechargeable cells tend to be bulkier than on
disposables, and the positive 'button' ends up less prominent on some.

Presumably you were using the right sort of charger for the batteries ...

Using AA sized batteries is certainly a useful feature, especially if you
carry lots of gadgets that all use the same size. But I'd be surprised if
alkaline cells (rechargeable or disposable) would work out more convenient
or economical than NiMH cells.

This site might be interesting
<http://www.greenbatteries.com/aa-battery-faqs.html>.

 

I'd query the accuracy of your voltmeter. NiCd and NiMH cells won't
deliver much more than 1.2v - but they do stay at that level until almost
completely discharged.[/QUOTE]

The open-circuit voltage of a NiCd or NiMH which has just come off of
a charger can be well above 1.2 voltl During the charge cycle it
will rise to above 1.5 volts (or more depending on the charge rate)
before it hits the zero-rise inflection point which indicates full
charge.

It'll drop quite rapidly when discharged - to 1.3 almost immediately
and to 1.2 once about 20% of the charge has been withdrawn. A normal
digital voltmeter has such a high input impedance that it wouldn't
load the battery down at all, and thus you'd probably read a rather
high open-circuit voltage for a cell that has just come off of a
charger.

I suspect that the original poster's camera has a low-battery detector
which is improperly calibrated or adjusted - most likely it's set for
alkaline cells rather than NiMH/NiCd. A detector set in this mode
would tend to interpret the normal (plateau) voltage of a rechargeable
battery as if it were an alkaline battery which is just about to die.

The Nikon point-and-shoot cameras I bought for my wife's use have a
three-way battery-type selector in the menu - standard alkaline,
rechargeable, and AA lithium non-rechargeable. As I understand the
manual, this setting controls the detection threshold for the
low-battery indicator.

From a quick look through the FinePix S7000 manual, it doesn't look as
if it has this degree of adjustability. Unfortunate!

I've had varying luck with NiMH batteries... there does seem to be a
fair bit of brand-to-brand variability. On the "poor" side, I had
disappointing results with Lenmar "NoMem" cells... even when freshly
charged they'd often "go flat" after about half of the expected use
(based on battery rating and the radio's known current draw during
operation).

The new generation of low-self-discharge NiMH (e.g. Uniross Hybrio,
Rayovac Hybrid, Sanyo Eneloop) seem to be much more consistent. My
wife took her L11 point-and-shoot on vacation a couple of weeks ago
with a fully-charged pair of Hybrio batteries in it - when she got
back, the low-battery indicator was on the screen, the camera still
worked, and she'd taken over 500 photos (many with flash).

True. As I read the data sheets, the internal resistance of a
standard alkaline is high enough that the high-current drain of a
digital camera is likely to result in almost half of the stored energy
being dissipated as heat in the battery. I don't imagine that the
rechargeable alkaline batteries are any better, and might well be worse.

 

The open-circuit voltage of a NiCd or NiMH which has just come off of
a charger can be well above 1.2 voltl During the charge cycle it
will rise to above 1.5 volts (or more depending on the charge rate)
before it hits the zero-rise inflection point which indicates full
charge.[/QUOTE]

I haven't been able to find any NiMH discharge curves peaking above 1.4v,
nor have I seen a reading higher than that on my own equipment. But I'm
prepared to believe that it might happen, if two people tell me they've
seen it.

[...]

 

They sure do when the others don't work.[/QUOTE]

My wife and I have settled on a sort of two-battery-type approach for
her point&shoot cameras.

For use around home - typical everyday shooting - I've loaded them up
with Hybrio or similar low-self-discharge-rate NiMH cells (2100 mAh or
so), bought a similar number of spare cells, and provided her with a
simple low-current plug-into-the-wall charger. Swapping battery pairs
and recharging happens when necessary, or when it seems like a good
idea (e.g. after an intensive photo-shooting session). This approach
drops the incremental battery cost of each photo taken to as close to
zero as matters.

She can also use these batteries, and take a two-cell charger, when
going on short trips.

For overseas vacations, where weight and space are of primary
importance (she prefers to pack everything in a carry-on bag, and not
check luggage at all) and where AC-plug and voltage compatibility is
in question, I'm going to remove the rechargeables and load up the
camera with lithium AA cells and include at least one set of spares
per camera. With two cameras, and two sets of these batteries, I
figure she should be able to take a couple of thousand photos before
having to buy new batteries, and could (if necessary) finish out the
trip with ordinary disposable alkalines. This approach is certainly
more expensive than using the NiMH batteries with a travel charger,
but she feels it'll be less hassle and worry, and thus worthwhile.

 

For the record, my rechargeables were all NiMH.

I got the same readings with two different voltmeters.

Re bulky casings: Side note: Those rechargeables - brand aside -
didn't fit in the battery caddies for my Vivitar 283 and 285 strobes. I
wish I'd slapped my dial calipers on 'em. I *could* get them into the
caddy, actually, but then the caddy woudn't fit into its bay in the strobe
body. The caddies were obviously engineered to be a very close fit; I
wouldn't have had that problem using them in a typical clock or Walkman or
something like that. And not only were the batteries from various
manufactureres, but I tried aftermarket caddies from two sources *and* the
original Vivitar caddies, while scratching my head and mumbling
obscenities.

Good presumption.

They sure do when the others don't work. Well, in terms of convenience;
as for economy, though, I suppose one could argue that since I couldn't
install the rechargeables in the strobes and they wouldn't work in the
camera, figuring their cost versus their *shelf life* would make them the
most economical -- they'd last for years.

Will check. Thanks!

 

The open-circuit voltage of a NiCd or NiMH which has just come off of a
charger can be well above 1.2 voltl During the charge cycle it will rise
to above 1.5 volts (or more depending on the charge rate) before it hits
the zero-rise inflection point which indicates full charge.[/QUOTE]

Good info. My 1.6x readings were taken with two different voltmeters.

I'm with you...

That's me.

Well, then it would be nice if they had a battery-type toggle for that in
software.

Hah! Yeah, like that. My camera is but a lowly Fuji.

Bingo.

But thanks a lot for the above information. That situation bugged the
snot out of me. Even more so than just having to revert to nonrecharble
batteries. It was the WTF aspects that got to me the most.

Wow.

Thanks again for the good info, Dave.

 

[...]

I believe there is an international standard for the dimensions of
[LR06|AA|HP7|MN1500|Mignon|...] batteries, but NiMH cells seem to err on
the large side of the tolerance - and there may be no specified dimension
for the amount by which the positive button extends beyond the top of the
casing, so battery makers and appliance makers can both claim to be working
to the same standard yet end up with products that don't work together.

 

You just reminded me that I *did* mic those batteries, and yes -- they
weren't out-of-standard but were at the high end of case diameter. And I
guess I didn't actually say, earlier, that it was case diameter that was
my fit problem with those strobes.