Digital cameras..

I just bought a Panasonic Digital camera from the mall a week or so ago and it really isn't what I was looking for. I'm thinking of selling it and buying a better quality one later on. I really love taking photos of my pets,family and scenery.

I also have an HP digital camera I got for free but it's kind of messed up.

Who has a digital camera here? What do you have? What do you take photos of?

The Panasonic is good for now. It takes better pictures than my camera phones do. LOL. I like it but I guess I don't quite know how to use the features.

I'm looking into Kodak, Sony, etc. What do you recommend? I know a lot of people use macro mode and my camera doesn't seem to have it.. Grr.

Sony are doing a very affordable Dslr.... It has manual and auto features, plus plenty of after market add ons... (Lenses, macro flash etc..)
It's a good camera to see if you like photography, before committing a shed load of cash....

I've always heard Nikon is great, but the good ones are expensive. My mom had a really old Nikon CoolPix that was awesome... Until my brother broke it.

Olympus is a good brand, too. The Olympus Stylus 1010 is a great camera. The macro settings are amazing when you can get the animal to hold still for it... The only other problem is the camera doesn't know how to focus on snake scales half the time, so you can't get an honest "close-up" shot. It's a good camera for people who aren't very photography-smart (like me!). It was in a Staples catalog recently, too, so they should have it...

Good luck in camera hunting, and I hope this helps. =)

The Pentax Optio line is a GREAT pocket-size digicam. And it comes in a waterproof version that allows under water video and photos, and the whole nine yards. If I ever decide to pick up anotehr little pocket cam, it woll most like be one of those. Great little camera.

If you're looking into getting a DSLR, I use an Olympus E-520 with reasonable results, and it wasn't expensive. Less than $800 out the door for the body and 2 lens kit. And it's a quality camera. I shoot pretty much everything from portraits to landscapes and road cruises with it. You can see some examples of my photos HERE.

I use a Fuji FinePix S800. It's a great camera for what I use it for. I'm not a professional photographer, but I can feel like I am with the macros I'm able to get. AND it was only $250, as opposed to having to buy the DSLR ($400) and then an additional $500+ or so per lens.

I'm using a Panasonic "Lumix" (10x Optical Zoom) camera these days. I do NOT take very good pictures. I'm one of those guys that takes 50 pictures knowing that three will come out fairly well. This camera has been very good to me. Nice digital. Plus I was looking for something that has a bit of macro ability and mechanical zoom. This was it. I don't remmeber what I paid for it. It's been a while. I think something like 250.00 at the time.

Remember, whatever you by digital will be 25 to 30 percent lower in six months (well...sort of). I get it's progress but I'm an IT guy and hate that. So, getting by that rant, if you can find a nice camera and wait a bit you'll get a great deal.

Either way, enjoy and like everyone else, I look forward to seeing some of your great pictures with whatever camera you get.

I have a sony cybershot. I dont know much about cameras and am not big into photography but it was under $300 a few years ago and it says 8.1 megapixels and extremelt easy to use (i need that). I use it to take short vids (street racing, stunt riding) and pics of items I might put on cl for sale. For my needs it works beautifull and when its time to buy another I will look for the same one.

My first two digi-cams were Olympus. They were good enough for my purposes. But when a broad range of pinks, purples, and blues were present in the shot, the processor had difficulty accurately capturing them, due to the fact that 'perceived color is dependant upon the wavelength of light reflected off of/refracted through- the object being photographed.
When it was time for my third digi-cam, I asked around, bought the consumer reports magazine issue covering said subject, spoke with many people. Asked a wealthy friend what he thought was the best- he had a mess of digital cameras; for him it was more time efficient to get a new one every couple of weeks then to utilize his time bothering with returns. He mentioned he'd bought an amazing 10 megapixel camera he'd seen advertised in the NY Times, for just $200.00- Unfortunately, the cameras processor only had the ability to process 16 bits of color (as opposed to a ViewSonic monitor, which displays 42.5 million bits of color). So the pictures, while impressively the size of a billboard, looked like poorly rendered cartoon drawings. MegaPixels merely refers to the size of the pictures taken, not to image quality nor color quality.
So I went to Circuit City, bought a camera, took it home, installed the software, took 50 test pics, hated it, and returned it. I spent 6 days trying out different cameras, 8 from Circuit City (I would have tried 9, but they asked me to leave and never come back)-
and then 8 more from Best Buy.
For years prior, my Dad and I used Fuji Film, because in the day, Fuji made the best film. So my third digi-cam was a Fuji. The accuracy of color capture is perfect for all of my needs, and using the camera to computer port hookup for downloading pics means that the storage device does not get scratched up or degraded and have to be replaced, unlike several other makes/models (back then, anyways). One August day I was taking pics of hatchling turtles on the edge of a pond, and a droplet of sweat rolled off, into the microphone, made a fizzle sound, and it was history, too. So my 4th digital cam is is a Fuji, too, an S5700. The instruction manual is in correctly translated (English) language, which helps considerably, too.
My recommendation would be to try out a few and decide which is right for you.
I still take a few dozen shots of each subject in each pose; sometimes light is reflected off of something nearby, leading to a bad picture. For instance, a light bulb which is of the yellow, blue, or pink wavelength , when illiminating a Butter or Champagne Corn, will often cause the colors in the finished photo to be muddy, off, icky. Sunlight coming through a dirty skylight, reflected off of non-white painted interior walls, can have adverse affects as well. For general purposes, regardless what you are photographing, pictures taken in natural (sun) light generally come out the best. Try taking pics in full sun and indirect sun. Also try taking pics in the morning, noon, and evening. You Will Find that often the angle of wavelengths of light, from the sun to the subject, will affect your final results. To expand further on this, it has been my observation that photographs taken in the Winter are almost always better than photos taken in the Summer, due to the angle of the Sun in the sky.
Don't worry about taking 50 pics of the same thing, it is, after all, not like you're paying for film and processing and printing. That would eat a hole in your snake-keeping budget faster than you can say Anerythrystic Hypomelanistic with a potato in your mouth.

Keep in mind, if you have an excellent camera and an old, cheap, or poorly calibrated monitor, then you may not be seeing how beautiful the photographs actually are. Monitors degrade, as they, like all products manufactured, are designed to break, so the manufacturers can get your money over and over again. And with monitors, if you have a yellow wavelength light bulb on next to you, the color you are seeing on your monitor has been compromised.

So I suggest:
find a store with a lot of digital cameras, one which will let you return items for a full 100% money back policy-- and not charge you a "re-stocking fee". Find out all of the answers to questions concerning returns BEFORE you slap down the AmEx card. Try out a few, find the one which is right for you.
Hope this helps.
dave

A couple of addendums:
Do you really NEED a 10 pixel camera? Are you planning on printing 24X36 inch photographs? Do you need (or even want to) shoot movies? Do you NEED all the bells and whistles? The sales reps might convince you to purchase a lot of features you don't want, and/or will never use. (If you have PhotoShop, you can always increase the Image Resolution to make the photo larger).
My current camera is 7 MP. It is last year's top of the line, it was a store display (from a store where if you want to see it, you had to ask to see it in order to hold it, not a store with models out for every grubby handed person to get their DNA all over it). It was discounted 40% to $300.
On Return Policies, ask the store manager. Asking anyone else may incur inaccurate information, as a new sales rep, anxious to show the management their ability to create sales revenue, may not have all of correct answers committed to memory. It is not uncommon for a sales rep to do everything in their power to make sales. If a sales rep responds to a question with the pre-phrase "I think...", be aware, they might be using the word "think" interchangeably with "assume". Assumption is the mother of all mess-ups.
With regard to purchases of more expensive things, you may be wise to use a credit card for such purposes. Not a debit or check card. A credit card. Not a prepay card. A real credit card, one with a buyer protection plan. So if there ever is a problem, your card company will already have safe-guards to your benefit in place, to minimize your headaches and emotional distraught later.