What Digital Camera Would You Buy, Nick Postagulous?
A while back, I was totally sold on getting the Minolta Dimage X20. It's a great digital camera and it's very small. It has a 3x zoom and uses AA batteries. But, I have one difference in needs as far as other people go. I'll be in China for about 3 weeks snapping pictures like crazy. I want to be able to take around 1000 pictures at one go. The X20 uses SD cards, which are more expensive than CF, or Compact Flash cards.

I also considered the Nikon Coolpix 2500. It had a 3x zoom and used CF cards, but also used a strange proprietary battery. But, it turned out that this strange rechargable was cheap as dirt. This picture isn't the coolpix 2500, a 2 megapixel camera, but the 3500, what I just bought for under $190, including shipping, off ebay.

The fellow selling it only had a rating of 3. I looked at his former transactions. He bought a watch for $700. People who buy watches, used, for $700 consider the Nikon Coolpix 3500 to be an outdated toy. I consider it to be one hella cool camera.

He is including a spare battery and 32mb and 128mb CF cards. I've been looking at the CF cards on ebay and I'm not sure why the Memorex brand 512 cards seem to sell for about 20% less than the other brands. I used google and found they are actually Toshiba cards rebadged as Memorex, but no problems with them at all except one dude trying to boot a linux machine off one (whatever).

3500 Links: Imaging Resource Review, Steve's Review, Review at Megapixel.net (there are six pages, you have to pick from a dropdown menu up top), Google finding a bazillion reviews, Pbase sample pictures.

I'm very happy. I was considering the 2500 out of my price range but the ideal camera. I was about to get the Canon A300, but it's lack of zoom got me down pretty quckly, especially since Zoe said that her X20 (baby blue, bought in HK) had a great zoom.

I know that Zelda and Jones want to know that I end up getting. For Jones's use, I'd suggest the A300 or the X20. For Zelda, I'd say this camera or the 2500 or the X20. (Jones mostly wants to document his carnival glass collection for insurance purposes.) Both the A300 and X20 are recognized as portable drives by Windows. I really would have gotten an X20, but the SD card cost too much. Plus, I got this sweet 3 megapixel camera off some American Psycho/Magnum PI type and a really low price.
- posted by Nick Postagulous @ 2:43 PM