I'm certainly not David Bailey but...

[allatsea]

I'm certainly not David Bailey, but would like to be able to take some decent photos of dd. We got a digital camera a few years ago, but the battery life is poor, there is a long wait between being able to take pictures (just long enough to miss whatever it is that dd was doing) and the colours are rather muted when printed. Can anyone recommend a digital camera, or let me know ones to avoid?

We recently got a fujifimm finepix A201 and are very happy with it. It was about £140 but I think you can get it cheaper online now. It did use up batteries( while downloading the pics onto computer )very quickly so we bought the plug in accessory which was another £30 or so.
It is fantastic to just click away with no thought about the cost of processing films. Any duff images can be easily discarded.

From my experience of digital cameras, most are a huge drain on the batteries - we splashed out on a large and speedy battery recharger and a big bag of rechargable batteries that we take with us in the camera bag. Not a great solution but works for us. If you want to avoid adaptors and plug ins, then I think that long life rechargeable ones are about your best bet.

On the battery front the batteries in my camera last for ages if all you are doing is taking pictures but are depleted quickly if you use the view facility on the camera a lot and are used up really fast if you download onto the computer without having an extension for the mains.
Good idea about rechargeable ones. What brand do you use Jaytree? I have never had a lot of success with any I have tried in the past but perhaps they are better nowadays.

we are also thinking of getting a digital camera, so will be reading this thread avidly. was wondering though if it would be better to get a digital camcorder type thing - you could always use stills as ordinary photos, but you also get to capture the laughing, clapping, first words etc..

any views on this? TIA

bossykate - problem with this is that a camcorder is (generally) more bulky that a straight camera so you may not want to carry it around with you much. Some digital cameras allow you to take short videos anyway.

My camcorder is wonderful (but was v. expensive) - can't remember exact model but will let you know later bossykate. It's not at all cumbersome, and has a great battery life. But it can't really take great still pictures. Quality is fine for viewing on pc, but if you try to print out (even proffesionally) at more than 6x4 inches you lose definition and colours are blurry.

Not sure how true this is but... I went to Selfridges last Xmas to buy a digital camera to take piccies of new DD. The sales guy said that if I wanted to print off any images and keep them that I should be aware that pictures from a digital camera do not last forever - maybe only 12 years. This put me off as I would obviously want to look at pictures of DD as a baby in the future.

I know that you can store images on a PC for future use but thought I would pass on info.

Does anyone know if this is true??

I think it's to do with the lasting qualities of the ink and paper you use. If a digital print deteriorates, you can just print a new one unlike with ordinary prints (which also deteriorate) where you have no guarantee that the negatives haven't deteriorated too or vanished altogether.

dh bought me a lovely digital camera last Christmas but after much thought (and worries he'd be offended) I took it back and bought a swanky SLR instead. Although I too am not David Bailey, I feel much more in control of it and will eventually master all the buttons and be a bit more creative. have already done some lovely black & white shots of dh & dd..make me melt!

You don't have to print them out on a printer - you can put them onto a cd and take them along to a photo shop for them to print on regular paper.

We get prints done of the best ones (cos I like to look at photos in an album), dh stores them on the pc cos he likes to look at them on the pc, and we have backups on cd for safety.

Re. batteries - definitely buy one that takes rechargable ones. We've got a SonyDSCP1 - ours in quite high resolution cos my dh is into all things techy... but they also do another one which a friend of ours has and they also say it's great.

I love our digital - bought the day after our dd was born by my dh on his way to the hospital. I'd always said I didn't want one, and guess he decided that I wouldn't argue on that particular day! But now we never use our normal camera and take loads of piccies all the time of dd. If we take 10 and only 1 is good we can delete the other 9 and if she is doing something v. cute, we can be sure we got at least one shot.

Ellasmum, all photographs will fade and the paper wil get brittle over time - just look at ones from your own childhood.

Colour photographs are one of the few things that fade even out of the light.

HOWEVER, digital inks/paper from ones you print out at home are much more fugitive (sensitive to light) than the inks and paper traditional processing uses, so ones you print out yourself will have a much shorter life (12 years is probably a fair estimate).

You can get special photos printed out at a processors from the digital file using the standard ink and paper - they will last as long as regular photos (30 years if in light, probably). For super super special ones, Fuji do an archival paper and ink which they say have a 100 year life span.

But, the digital original will not have deteriated (unless you leave it on a disk or CD too long - see below), so a new print will be the same as the original.

While I'm on my hobby horse here, if you want photos to last - get a copy made for the frame and keep originals in an album; use 'traditional' acid-free albums and photo corners not sleeves or sticky pages; take negatives out of the pockets the processor gives you and put in mylar or melinex sleeves; and make sure you make copies of polaroids - they fade really badly in just 10 years.

Finally, it's worth remembering that CDs don't have an indefinite life either - current thought is around 25 years before the plastic starts to break down and you can't access all the data.

If anyone wants one, I have a written a fact sheet on just this subject!

I would highly recommend the Pentax Optio 330 which we have - I think it was about £400. It's really excellent !

I get the best ones printed up professionally - you just e-mail them off and they come back in REAL photo format about 2-3 days later for 25p each (will post the address in a moment !).

Sorry - can't find the link - but it's Bonusprint Pix - should be able to find them on a search and you then have to download some software off the site. They are very very efficient and pretty cheap too !!

We splashed out and bought an Olympus C4040z - now discountinued unfortunately. But we've been very pleased with it- has 3x zoom, very easy menu to use and navigate, and overall picture quality good. We don't use our SLR at all anymore - bought a 128mb card and that's what we take on holiday. Advantage of this camera is that it take ordinary AA batteries, so if you do run out, you can easily buy some more - something to think about on holiday. There is meant to be a new type of technology coming out soon which will up the pixel count enormously, ours is a 4mp and can't say I notice the difference between this and my point and shoot. On the minus side, you can't really put a lens filter on so I'm terrified of DS wrecking the lens by putting his grubby fingers on it, and the flash is not fantastic - a separate one would be better.

This site looks like a very comprehensive list of reviews: dcviews

Phillipat - many gold (writeable) CDs don't last anything like 25 years - we've lost a lot of data already! (serves us right for buying cheap ones).

On the camera front, the big advantage of the digital revolution is that you can now get old manual SLRs for very little. We have a cannon A1 - used to be top of the range - and with effort it produces great pics that can be enlarged much more than any digital camera's pics. But if you get a digital camera, whatever you do, get one with a viewfinder, not one that you have to rely on the screen for. We've used an Olympus one like that and it's useless in poor light.

thanks for the info. we have rechargeable batteries for our current digital, but it's been a pain having to cart lots of spares around with us. Does anyone know whether the cameras with battery blocks last any better. What camera have you got sjs?
We currently send our best photos to colourmailer.com You choose the image you want and the size of the print and crop images too. It's the only way I can get the subject in the middle of the photo. I think that it's 22p per regular size photo and they come back within about 5 days.
Scatterbrain and florenceuk, are your cameras good for novices?`

Allatsea, the Olympus is very easy to use - just point and shoot, check out LCD, shoot again - that's what I do! But much more sophisticated options available if you want. The menu is very easy to use. Also takes small videos - not a substitute for a digicam but you can play them on the computer, send them to friends etc etc. Re time between photos, at the time, it was one of the quickest digital cameras around - I think the C4000z is still around, and you may be able to pick up a cheap one. There is of course now a c5050z available as well. Check out reviews esp re colour balance. I think the Sony DSC series is fairly highly regarded for nice colour.