The good: Excellent photo quality; lots of
useful features; very good dynamic range and high ISO performance in
EXR modes; takes SDHC and xD cards.
The bad: Basic Movie mode for its price; limited aperture settings; menu systems take some getting used to.
The bottom line:Don't
let its new sensor technology scare you off: the Fujifilm FinePix
F200EXR is an excellent compact camera with shooting features for just
about every type of user.
CNET rating: 7.8 The good: Very good photo quality; fast; video capture; articulated LCD; nice kit lens; built-in wireless flash controller.
The bad: Small, dim viewfinder; middling video quality; too easy to accidentally change focus points.
The bottom line:Though
it falls short in its design, the Nikon D5000 delivers a nice feature
set, speedy performance, and great photo quality for the money.
The good: Fast performance; very nice photo quality; HD video capture.
The bad: Annoying viewfinder; video capture is its only better-than-basic feature.
The bottom line:A
solid, slightly better-than-basic dSLR, the Canon EOS Rebel T1i
delivers photo quality and performance that adequately compensates for
most of its annoyances.
The good: Long and wide-angle zoom lens in a compact body; 720p movies; lens can zoom during movie capture.
The bad: Very few manual controls.
The bottom line:As
long as you don't want much in the way of manual features, the
Panasonic Lumix DMC-ZS3 is a very nice camera that can handle a variety
of shooting situations.
Oh, how I miss the Canon SD880 IS. It was a great sub-$300 compact camera that is long gone, but so popular that people try to sell them at more than double the original price. All through the 2008 holiday gift-giving season, if anyone asked what the best point-and-shoot to buy was, it was the answer.
Both the gold and the silver versions were viewed so much on CNET that they each ranked in the top 10; the gold at No. 2 and the silver at 6.
A wide-angle 20x megazoom camera, the SX10 IS ranked as the fifth-most-popular camera viewed on CNET in 2009. It has since been replaced by the SX20 IS. The key differences are a bump in resolution from 10 megapixels to 12 and 720p HD-quality movie support as well as HDMI output for easy connection to an HDTV.
It might not have been much to look at, but the A590 IS had a lot of fans. It was the last A-series PowerShot to have both an optical viewfinder and manual controls in addition to running on AA-size batteries. Though released in 2008, the A590 ranked as the eighth-most-popular camera viewed in 2009.
