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General discussion

camera buying advice

May 9, 2005 7:53AM PDT

I am looking for a camera to replace my old Olympus Camedia C-3040. I need a camera for two purposes: first, for work, and second for home/family pictures.

My work needs are somewhat unusual; I'm an academic radiologist, so I need a camera that can take good pictures of films--therefore a camera that functions well in low light and does a good job with small images, such as CT images (ie, macro function, focuses very close up). It would be nice to be able to set it to black and white images easily and to easily turn the flash off (with the old camera I had to go through a long menu, and if the camera timed off because I hadn't used it for a few minutes, I needed to reset those modes again).

Sharp images with fine detail would be ideal for the work images. Also, with the old camera, the images seemed to default to JPEGs, and for publication we are often required to use TIFs. I'm sure there was an easy way around that, but I never felt up to reading all the documentation to figure it out.

For home, I'm looking for something that takes pictures faster than the old one (agonizingly slow, and I often lost my shot), and perhaps a camera with a retractable lens; at any rate, I don't want to have the problem I've had with the old camera of the lens cover always getting knocked off. I'd like to have some kind of image stabilization, as I did with the old one (I don't have a particularly steady hand).

Thanks so much for any advice.

Discussion is locked

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Cameras
May 9, 2005 11:46AM PDT

The need for TIFF and Image Stabilization really narrows down the field.

There are only 5 cameras that fit that description:

Konica Minolta A2
Nikon 8800
Panasonic FZ20 or FZ4 or FZ5

All have lens caps.

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Your old Olympus C3040 had an unusually bright lens (f1.Cool, which Olympus no longer markets. It was too expensive to build for todays market.

All of the cameras listed above have f2.8 lenses.

All of the cameras have faster recording of images (low shutter lag).

The Nikon (3cm) and Panasonic cameras (5cm) will let you get closer to the target in macro mode. The Konica Minolta A2 closest macro setting is 13cm.

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thanks for the advice
May 10, 2005 3:22AM PDT

I do remember that the lens on the old Olympus seemed to be a good fit for my needs. I'm sorry to hear that that feature is no longer available. As far as you know, with the same lens type, would all of these cameras function about the same in low light conditions?

Other than that, it's probably a good thing to have a narrow field to choose from. Thank you so much for this advice. I will go read about the cameras you've mentioned right now.

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one more question
May 10, 2005 3:56AM PDT

If I were going to sacrifice the tiff capability, would there be a camera (in around the price range of $500) that might otherwise meet my needs? In particular, would there be one that was particularly good in low-light conditions?

Thanks again.

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What is advantage of having TIFF?
May 10, 2005 5:44AM PDT

Can you please let me know what advantage does having TIFF carry? I already have Panasonic FZ5 (camera with TIFF)

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tiff advantage
May 10, 2005 6:00AM PDT

Some of the radiology journals require that submitted images be in tiff format.

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TIFF
May 10, 2005 7:29AM PDT

You can use software to change any .jpg photo into a TIFF file.

An excellent free software program for changing the format of a photo is Irfanview.

http://www.irfanview.com


Bright lens digital cameras are scarce as hen's teeth.
There are only two that I know of that have a very nice F2.0 lens:

Canon G6
Sony F828

Neither of these cameras have image stabilization.

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