I would like to get a digital camera but I don't know how.

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First off, I've never owned a camera in my life. Just never felt the need for it. But lately I've been getting an urge to have one. Not that I'm going to be taking art shots or anything, I just think it'd be useful and interesting to have a camera right now.

So it'll be general use, nothing too fancy. I don't need any sort of funky add-ons, that I know of; point and click is all I have planned. Ease of use is important, I think, since I really have no idea what I'm doing with a camera in my hands. And video.

My main concerns are price and memory. I'd like to spend no more than $200 CDN for the camera, though I'm willing to go a little higher if I have to. And I have no idea what I'll be needing for memory. If I have a 9 megapixel camera and a 2 gig memory card how many pictures is that? Is there a way to figure this out? And how much for video? I'm not planning to film a documentary, but taking 5-10 minute video shots would be ideal. Is that possible?

So, any help or model recommendations would be wonderful.

TM2 Rampage

On the camera I have, you have the option of setting how big you want the photos to be. The minimum size is 1600x1200! Man, that was the maximum res on my old 4:3 CRT monitor, and I never dared run at such a high res (it'd make everything too tiny on my small CRT... plus it looked crappy... guess my CRT wasn't suited for such high res, even though it did support it).

My camera (well my family's camera) is a Canon Powershot SD1000. It might go by different names depending on the region. 7.1 Megapixels. Max res is some value close to 3600x2500 or something (not the exact number).

taliosfalcon

For that price range I would probably reccomend the powershot a590 IS, although for budget-mid range cameras pretty much everything from Canon is solid. An important thing to keep in mind is you don't necessarily wan't more megapixels, the more megapixels you have the more noise you'll get in low light photos, and most of your pictures will probably be low light.

There's a pretty good review of it here

as for size, with an 8 MP camera you're looking at roughly 3.5 MB per picture on the highest quality, and 1.2 MB per second for video.

JCRooks

Yup, I second the choice of a Canon PowerShot. That line of cameras has always been excellent. I have a PowerShot SD850 IS and love it. Simple to use, but great pictures and video.

For more information and reviews, I've always been a fan of C|Net's digital camera coverage. They have various buying guides and FAQs that hopefully answer any questions you may have.

powersurge

taliosfalcon wrote: »

For that price range I would probably reccomend the powershot a590 IS, although for budget-mid range cameras pretty much everything from Canon is solid. An important thing to keep in mind is you don't necessarily wan't more megapixels, the more megapixels you have the more noise you'll get in low light photos, and most of your pictures will probably be low light.

There's a pretty good review of it here

as for size, with an 8 MP camera you're looking at roughly 3.5 MB per picture on the highest quality, and 1.2 MB per second for video.

Thats the one I have and it seems to get the job done though I don't know jack about photography.

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Seems good. I'll start looking for one. Thanks.

contraband

I have the Powershot A530, and it's never let me down, a great camera. The newer model I can assume is only better.