Digicams - continuous burst?

[shmerham]

Looking for a new pocket sized digital camera. Either the canon sd300 or the sony t1 (the one in the commercial with aerosmith).

The sony has a continuous burst function; would that be optimal for action shots (skiing and wakeboarding)?

[Snow Dog]

Some things to watch for:
"continuous" usually means "until the camera memory (not the flash) is full. At higher resolutions that might not be much.

Some cameras, like my Canon A60, set the focus and exposure on the first frame and leave it there. If the subject is moving they might move out of focus.

GT40 uses this camera for his action shots. Check here and biglines.com (for Doc) for thousands of his pictures.

[Mit]

I just picked up a Cannon A75 the other day and I'm quite happy with the burst function from it. I took it skiing last weekend and managed to get a good 7-10 shots before it slowed down. If you want to see some samples of the pictures see the following thread.

http://tetongravity.com/forums/showthread.php?t=23359

I looked at both the Sony and the SD300 but decided on the A75 cause it was cheaper, more manual controls and had good speed. Although the camera is bulkier than the SD300 I can still fit it into my ski jacket pocket. I also found 3.2 MP is enough for 8x10 pics or 4x6's with some serious cropping /zooming.

Anyways I found the two links below quite helpful.

http://www.dcresource.com/
http://www.imaging-resource.com/MFR1.HTM (look in the picky details section for the speeds etc..)

hope that helps

[Raps]

I would highly highly recomend the Sony Cybershot 5.1MP camera. I had the same criteria you had and did a TON of research. It's got the burst thing you talk of and according to digital experts, it's the fastest camera for it's small size, great for sports action. I looked at the Sony in the Aerosmith photos and it's great for takin scenery/ people shots but not for skiing. First of all it ONLY has a LCD screen so if it is super bright out, you will not see it with the snow glare. The Sony i got is more durable as well. I looked at Canon and the others but i was told to go with the Sony and my first experiences with it have been amazing. I bought it at B&H photo which is out of NYC and they had some good prices. I actually went to the store and talked to a pro and he said i couldn't go wrong with it. Hope this helps....good luck

[Raps]

Oh and if you wanna see the first set o' pics i shot with the Sony, here was a TR i posted this week......

http://www.tetongravity.com/forums/s...light=whistler

[shmerham]

Raps, nice info. Thanks. Does your camera fit in your jeans pockets? I want something I don't think twice about carrying around.

[Raps]

Raps, nice info. Thanks. Does your camera fit in your jeans pockets? I want something I don't think twice about carrying around.

Funny you should ask.....it actually fits quite nicely in my jeans, and my jeans are diesels which aren't baggy, but not the lame tight ones. So yeah it's definately small enough and easy enough to bring around and not worry bout it. Those A75s and such are too big to carry in jeans pockets i believe and the little elphs and other tiny ones aren't as good as the sony for ski shots.

[backpack]

The SD300 is actually a pretty pimp camera, and though it doesn't include a lot of manual features (you can't set the aperture or shutter speed manually, for example), you can certainly take it anywhere with you.

In terms of the frame rate, this is what dpreview said after testing the continuous feature:

"Nothing to complain about here; not only does the SD300 manage to maintain a good 2.4 frames per second at all file sizes and quality settings, the buffering is so fast that you can shoot pretty much indefinitely, even at the top 4MP/Super Fine setting as long as you have a fast enough SD card. After a burst of 50 or so shots we did measure a slight fall-off in the frame rate from time to time, but to all intents and purposes it is impossible to fill the buffer, meaning you can keep shooting for as long as you have the battery power and card capacity to do so."

This is pretty nice... sure, you need a fast memory card, but the ability to not worry about buffer issues is worth it.

I had the Canon s400 with me for a semester in Ecuador, and it went everywhere. It's actually a bit bigger than the s300, but I could still put it in shirt or pants pockets no problem. (I hung it from my pants button with the wrist strap so it wouldn't get stolen in clubs... worked like a charm, though unzipping to pull out my camera got me some strange looks.)

Also of note from that semester is that there were 4 digital cameras among the students upon arrival. Mine was the only one that survived the whole trip despite my dropping it onto concrete/tile several times, and falling on it with the lens extended on a boardwalk. The last fall with the lens extended did damage the camera, but with a little light pull on the lens when turning it on, it popped into place and worked fine for the remainder of the trip. Canon fixed it upon my return to the US.

Of the other 3 cameras, they died in the following ways:

First to kick the can: kodak easyshare 4 megapixel. In the rainforest, it simply stopped working. After some fiddling and drybox time, it would turn on, but the LCD was washed out permanently and the photos taken were bright blue, with little red or green. Also corrupted memory cards on a regular basis for no particular reason.

Second in line was a Nikon 3 MP (split body). This one wasn't an electronic failure but was just as bad. The catch for the battery door broke off, which meant the camera would not power on without a lot of pressure on the door to make it trip the open-door sensor. Basically, this made the camera unusable.

and finally, the Sony died. similar to the one described above (the 3.1MP verson), it stopped working inexplicably while its owner was climbing cotopaxi. I tried everything I could think of to bring it around, but it was simply dead.

Overall, after going through my own series of four digital cameras in the past 6 years, and dealing with others' problems with their cameras, I wouldn't buy another kodak, ever, and will avoid sony like the plague. Plus, sony uses memory sticks, which won't work with any other brand of electronics. CF and SD cards are used by most camera brands (as well as in PDAs, etc). Though sony now has the memory stick pro line (which will not work with older cameras that use the original memory stick spec), the original memory sticks were limited to 128MB. The older CF standard was not limited like that, and SD cards today are similarly flexible. In general, I am not a big fan of proprietary formats (MS/MSPro/XD).

Also, IMHO you need at least 4 MP to get good prints up to 8x10, and enable some cropping on 4x6 prints.

Ok, that was probably too much info. I look to dpreview.com for good technical reviews, and luminous-landscape.com for more 'high-end' equipment info.