Narrowed it down to these 3 cameras

skywalk · Oct 15, 2006

Hi folks, i currently own a sony W1 and i'm thinking of upgrading to one of the following:

Canon A640: very user friendly, made in taiwan, uses 4 AA, has good manual control. no anti shake. 10MP.

Canon 710: same as 640 but made in japan, uses 2 AA if i'm not mistaken. has anti shake. 8MP.

Oly C7070: expensive. full manual control but a tad user UN-friendly during initial testing.

I love macros. have a sunpak strobe. like the convenience of using disposable AA batteries. my biggest concern is blur pics with my W1.

final question, both canons f-stop go up to F8, whereas the oly goes to F11. is this a big deal to you experienced photographers out there?

thank you all in advance

kapula · Oct 16, 2006

I have c8080 which goes only up to f8. I don't have a strobe so I haven't been able to use it anyway

But what you migh want to check is the size of cameras ccd. The bigger the better. I'm not sure but I think oly has the biggest ccd of those three. Amount of pixels doesn't help if ccd is small. Oh and oly has this neat super macro mode. You can't use your sunpak in super macro mode as it's optically triggered. You can on the other hand attach a ttl strobe to 7070. My pick would be 7070 as it's the only semipro compact camera on your list. What about canons g-series? Those cameras have good optics aswell.

Hope that helped even a bit

Warren_L · Oct 16, 2006

skywalk:
final question, both canons f-stop go up to F8, whereas the oly goes to F11. is this a big deal to you experienced photographers out there?

thank you all in advance

I find this a little strange that the canon cameras will only stop down to f/8 - I would verify this. I would have thought almost all new cameras these days would at least go to f/22. Underwater, this may not be such a big limitation, but definitely on land, this will be a problem. I would re-confirm this as this seems wrong to me.

Scuba_Steve · Oct 16, 2006

Warren_L:
I find this a little strange that the canon cameras will only stop down to f/8 - I would verify this. I would have thought almost all new cameras these days would at least go to f/22. Underwater, this may not be such a big limitation, but definitely on land, this will be a problem. I would re-confirm this as this seems wrong to me.

Believe it or don't!

It's true.

Warren_L · Oct 16, 2006

Interesting. Maybe the lenses don't work quite the same as far as f/stops are concerned when comparing to SLR lenses.

jeraldjcook · Oct 16, 2006

I would vote for the A640. I like having 4AA as it allows for plenty of pictures or video. Add in a 2gb SD card and you can take pictures or shoot video all day without ever needing to open the housing. I'm not sure you could do that on 2AA. The less you need to open the housing the better, especially if your diving on a boat. Plus, the A640 has a larger CCD than the A710.

mjh · Oct 16, 2006

All great choices but to throw you a curve have you considered a used Nikon D100, 70 or any of the Canons? There are lots of people upgrading and you can buy a complete system for dimes on the dollar. Check the Classifieds here Wetpixel, Digital Diver etc...

jeraldjcook · Oct 16, 2006

mjh:
All great choices but to throw you a curve have you considered a used Nikon D100, 70 or any of the Canons? There are lots of people upgrading and you can buy a complete system for dimes on the dollar. Check the Classifieds here Wetpixel, Digital Diver etc...

Something to consider, but I doubt you are going to find anything for the amount of an A640 ($330) and Canon housing ($170). $500 for the setup is a pretty good deal. IF you can find a dslr and housing for $500, you had better buy it before I do!!!

skywalk · Oct 16, 2006

jeraldjcook:
Something to consider, but I doubt you are going to find anything for the amount of an A640 ($330) and Canon housing ($170). $500 for the setup is a pretty good deal. IF you can find a dslr and housing for $500, you had better buy it before I do!!!

my sentiments exactly!!! i am leaning towards the A640 but the image stab is still drawing me toward the 710. is IS all it's cut out to be? or is it just auto fast shutter speed and brighter flash setting? (that's the rumor i heard about IS)

thanks for all the replies so far.

jeraldjcook · Oct 16, 2006

There are two types of IS, optical and electronic, and both come at the expense of battery life. Optical usually uses gyroscopes to stabilize the image, although there are other methods as well. Very pricey and only found on very high end cameras. Electronic uses software to stabilize the images and doesn't work quite as well, but isn't as expensive. I believe the A710 has electronic IS. With the A710 having only 2AA batteries, if you turn on IS you are going to greatly decrease you battery life. If it had 4AAs I wouldn't worry about it as much, but like I said earlier you don't want to crack your housing open on a pitching boat to change the batteries and risk something getting on the o-ring. You can get great pictures without IS so I wouldn't worry about it.

Narrowed it down to these 3 cameras

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