Cheap camera for Mac?

[norman931]

Please pardon my near-complete ignorance on this subject!
I need a digital camera to use with my G3 iMac, for eBay photos and sell/trade forums. I would appreciate any pointers as to what works, and what doesn't. I
need something fairly cheap that takes pretty good shots and works with my old Mac! :confused:

Norm :boat:

[chrish]

If you have iPhoto and the correct card reader, any camera should work really well. If you dont have iPhoto but have the right card reader you can still just manually copy the pictures onto your computer.

[ClunkClunk]

What version of the Mac OS are you running? You can find it out by going to the Apple menu and choosing "About this Mac". Anything that's 10.2 or newer should be fine with the vast majority of cameras on the market. Below 10.2, there's still lots of options.

[norman931]

Thanks for replying, guys. I'm running 10.2.8. I notice that a lot of the cheaper cameras specify Windows, and do not say Mac compatible. I'm showing my ignorance again, but what is a card reader? Is it a separate purchase from the camera? And could anyone perhaps point out some ebay listings that might be close to what I'm looking for?

Norm :boat:

[ClunkClunk]

Most of the major camera manufacturers will list Mac compatibility, although it may be buried in the fine print. Canon, for example, says "Mac OS X 10.1 and newer come with Image Capture drivers that support most of Canon's digital cameras with USB interfaces. When a compatible camera is connected to a compatible Mac computer running OS X 10.1 and newer, the computer detects the camera and automatically launches Image Capture. This Apple program allows JPEG images in the camera to be downloaded to the Macintosh."

This is also why I asked what version of the Mac OS you're running :-)

A card reader is a device that hooks up via USB, and allows you to plug the memory card from the camera directly in to the card reader. It's generally a bit more convenient than hooking your camera directly to your computer, as it reads pictures faster, and it doesn't use up your camera's batteries while transferring. It also offers improved compatibility for cameras that have trouble working on certain machines (like a Mac, for example). It's certainly not a requirement, but it's a cheap (under $15) way to enhance your digital camera use.

As for pointing out some auctions, I certainly can, but let me get a few more details. What's your price range? Are you planning on printing these images or just simply displaying them on a computer screen (like for forum or ebay postings)?

[norman931]

Thanks Adam,
It will be for ebay and forum postings only, and I'd like to keep it under $100. Even so, I'd like to get the best possible device for my money. I own a manual SLR, so I appreciate the value of a good camera. I appreciate any advice, as I am a novice in this area. Thanks!

Norm :boat:

[farace]

We've got a Kodak EasyShare DX7590. It comes with a dock that plugs into the Mac. It works with either iPhoto or the Kodak software, and the dock charges the camera, too, so you don't have to worry about the batteries. I imagine that it's probably obsolete now, but the same system is probably used on a lot of Kodaks. We got this one at Overstock.com a couple of years ago.

[ClunkClunk]

For my money, I really like Canon's SD series (also called Digital Elph or IXUS). They're pocket sized, point & shoot cameras that have decent specs. Most models have a 3x optical zoom lens, and are anywhere from 3 megapixels and up. The other nice things about the SD series are that they've been pretty steadily produced since about late 2000, and a number of them share battery sizes and cases, so aftermarket accessories are readily available. Canon's Mac support has always been top notch, also. About the only bad thing, is that the LCD screen can get scratched or broken if it's kept in a pocket or purse without a case.

In the $100 range, you can probably score a used one on eBay which is 3 megapixels or more, which is much more than you'd need for any photos to be displayed on a computer screen, and even enough to start printing them, if you care to. 2 megapixels would also suffice, although won't leave you as much room to crop or scale the resulting images.

Here's the Wikipedia Entry (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canon_Digital_IXUS) on Canon's Digital Elph lineup.

And finally, here's an eBay search of all the various Elph models that are in the general range (http://search.ebay.com/search/search.dll?sofocus=so&sbrftog=1&catref=C6&from=R10&satitle=canon+%28s100%2Cs300%2Cs110%2Cs200%2Cs330% 2Cs230%2Cs400%2Cs410%2Csd110%2Cs500%2Csd100%2Csd20 0%2Csd300%2Csd400%2Csd450%2Csd500%2Csd550%29&sacat=29997%26catref%3DC6&a25563=-24&a14=-24&a25565=-24&a25564=-24&a10244=-24&alist=a25563%2Ca14%2Ca25565%2Ca25564%2Ca10244%2Ca2 4197%2Ca3801&pfmode=1&reqtype=1&gcs=1420&pfid=1721&pf_query=canon+%28s100%2Cs300%2Cs110%2Cs200%2Cs330 %2Cs230%2Cs400%2Cs410%2Csd110%2Cs500%2Csd100%2Csd2 00%2Csd300%2Csd400%2Csd450%2Csd500%2Csd550%29&sargn=-1%26saslc%3D2&sadis=200&fpos=93117&ftrt=1&ftrv=1&price=1&saprclo=&saprchi=100&sass=&so=Show+Items&fsop=1%26fsoo%3D1&coaction=compare&copagenum=1&coentrypage=search&fgtp=), cropping out any over $100. Make sure it comes with a battery, battery charger, USB cable, and a memory card (32MB or more should suffice for a handful of shots, larger cards are cheap at places like NewEgg.com).

[norman931]

Thanks for the help! I just went over to ebay and snagged this:
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&ih=006&sspagename=STRK%3AMEWN%3AIT&viewitem=&item=160116557070&rd=1&rd=1
Any comments on this particular camera?

Norm :boat:

[ClunkClunk]

Looks like it's in good shape. Has the battery, charger and cabling. No mention of memory card, but those are cheap if you need one. The SD100 is nice, because it has a metal body, so it's fairly solid in your hands, for a pocket sized camera. My mother-in-law had one of those for a number of years, and really liked it. She only replaced it with an SD700 about 6 months ago, because she wanted the extra zoom capabilities the newer ones have.

For a starter camera, I'm sure you'll enjoy it. You got a good price on it too. :-)

[norman931]

Okay, got my camera today, looks good, all I need is a memory card.
My newbie question for the day is: Is 16 mb big enough, or should I shell out for 32 mb? To rephrase, how many pictures can you get on a 16 mb card vs. 32mb? And where can I buy these besides WalMart?

I'm here to learn! :biggrin:

Norm :boat:

[ClunkClunk]

At the "Fine" setting, it will probably take up about a megabyte per shot. So depending on how many you want, you can figure out how big of a card to get. My guess is that you're going to be hard pressed to find anything smaller than 64MB out there, mostly because memory is so cheap lately.

Any store that sells electronics should carry SecureDigital cards, so Best Buy, Circuit City, Fry's, Radio Shack, Target, OfficeMax, Staples, Office Depot, etc. Your camera uses a format called SecureDigital, abbreviated as SD.

[norman931]

Adam, I really appreciate all the help! You are making short work of my learning curve! :thumbup1:

Norm :boat:

[ClunkClunk]

It's not a problem :-) You're very welcome.

[norman931]

I've been playing around with the camera today, and I'm quite impressed! This is a much nicer camera than I thought I could get for under $100! :w00t:

Norm :boat:

[JBHoren]

Okay, got my camera today, looks good, all I need is a memory card.
My newbie question for the day is: Is 16 mb big enough, or should I shell out for 32 mb? To rephrase, how many pictures can you get on a 16 mb card vs. 32mb? And where can I buy these besides WalMart?

First of all, congratulations on your "new" digital camera! The best (but maybe not the quickest) way to get where you want to go is via RTFM (Read The eFfing Manual) -- hopefully, yours will come with the manual; if not, there's always eBay...

As for "how many angels can dance on the head of a pin": The secret I learned, here on B&B (naturally), is that setting the image size to 640x480 is plenty big enough for Internet use. In fact, you can then set the resolution for "Superfine" and still have room for lots of photos.

I have a Canon PowerShot A70 (I bought it "refurbished" from an Internet camera store, back in July 2004). I purchased a memory-card (mine takes what's known as Compact Flash (CF)) from another online retailer -- a 256MB card (then, that was a lot of flash-storage space; today, they're up to 8GB!). On my CF card, using the 640x480 image size and Superfine resolution, I can store over 900 photos!

So, my advice would be to purchase the appropriate memory-card type with the largest storage capacity that your budget permits (and which your camera can handle, as well -- no sense buying a 256MB card, if yours can only use 32MB of it). If 32MB is the maximum for the Elph, then go for it; otherwise, go larger.

I use my camera almost exclusively for taking photos of my SOTD components, and the most photos I've ever taken for one of them was something like twenty (even though I ultimately used only one of them). At the 16MB vs 32MB level, the difference in price can't be more than a few dollars.

Enjoy your new camera, and smooth shaving!

[ClunkClunk]

The secret I learned, here on B&B (naturally), is that setting the image size to 640x480 is plenty big enough for Internet use. In fact, you can then set the resolution for "Superfine" and still have room for lots of photos.
I prefer to do the complete opposite. I like taking pictures with as much resolution as my camera lets me, then using my computer to cut down what I don't want, whether it be through cropping or resampling. At 640x480, you're not leaving much room for error, in case you're not dead centered on the subject, or you need to adjust for some other variable. Not to mention, with full resolution images, you're able to reduce the image size for using on the web, or keep it high in case someone wants detail shots, or a print. The general rule of thumb for digital imagery is you can always go down in resolution without losing quality, but you can't go up. That means you can always shrink a high resolution photo for the web, but you can't (cleanly) scale up a low resolution photo to be suitable for printing.

Then again, if you're just shooting photos of things like razors that you can always re-shoot easily, and never need to be printed, it may not be as big of a deal. Shooting your kid's sports game might be a completely different story. Computer speed also plays a big role in this. If you find your computer choking on full resolution files that you don't really need, it might be time to lower the original captured size inside the camera, just to save you some hassle.