Ok, long story short, I lost the stupid charger to my stupid Sony Cybershot on our recent family trip to LA. The same Sony-manufactured charger is $70 — over half the price of the camera when I bought it. Aftermarket chargers are about $20 (or $42 if you go to Worst Buy), but I’m already kind of over this camera.
It was a total impulse buy from last year — my Casio Exilim had a dead pixel and eventually kicked out, and this Cybershot came in a nice bundle (with a case, proprietary Sony card which I kind of hate, and a card reader) for $130 at BJ’s at just the right time. There were no stand-out features (smile-detection almost never works), but the main selling point was that the camera and all of its accessories were pink. Yeah, I’m completely embarrassed about this now.
I still have my Pentax K100D and Papi has a more portable Exilim that’s about two years old, but in a few months I see myself being in the market for a new point and shoot, and preferably one that records HD video. Of note, we do have a dedicated HD camcorder for use on special occasions, but Papi geeks out with it and I never know where the hell it is when Hugga is just hanging out and dancing all cute. I was briefly toying with the idea of getting a Flip Mino HD, but being that HD recording seems to be the hot new feature on upcoming point-and-shoots, I figure the less devices I have on my person, the better.
I’ve been taking a hard look at what’s available and what will be coming out in the next few months and thought I’d share my notes. Keep in mind, I’m not terribly picky and savvy when it comes to features. I’m basically just looking for a point-and-shoot that takes great pictures and records decent video in HD. I carry so much shit in my bag, so I need the camera to be at least somewhat small and lightweight, but I’d prefer to have something I can hang onto for a few years as Hugga gets more grabby and rambunctious.
I know I said point-and-shoot, but I’d be remiss not to mention this beast. It’s beautiful, and it records HD video, but I’m not a dedicated enough photographer to even want to lug my current SLR out of the house. It’s really a tiny hobby of mine, and I’m not even into it enough to want to bring it with me on vacation. The whole point is to have something I can fit in my purse and set up without issue whenever Hugga is doing something awesome. Moving on…
This is the sweetheart of all the cameras I researched. I’ve seen a few people describe it as the camera they’d take with them if they wanted to leave the SLR at home, but it also has a wide selection of easy modes if you’re just trying to snap some pics at a birthday party or something. It seems to be the most compact of the higher end Powershots and has manual controls not offered by the Panasonic Lumix TZ5 (but the TZ5 also offers a wide angle Leica lens and is about $70 cheaper). That being said, it’s still somewhat bulky (from what I’ve read… I have yet to see this in person) and the images are a little noisy. Still, look at how sexy it is!
This is the update to the aforementioned TZ5, and supposedly the true competitor to the SX200. Stereo recording, Leica lens, optical zoom while recording a movie, and it’s slightly more compact than the SX200, but there are no manual controls. Less megapixels too, but I don’t do much printing so I’m not even sure that matters. At around $400, though, the price is a little steep.
One comes in a sexy black, the other comes in my favorite color. They are both true point-and-shoots that don’t really offer any manual controls, and the zoom is pretty average. In features, they seem to me relatively the same. The SD780 is smaller, has a 2.5″ LCD and viewfinder (whereas the SD960 has a 2.8″ LCD and no viewfinder) and is about $50+ cheaper, depending on where you look. Also, for some reason (possibly depending on the user), the sample shots I’ve seen from the SD780 are slightly nicer than the SD960. Both of these are significantly cheaper than the other options mentioned, but at the expense of manual control and some quality. Still deciding if that’s stuff I’d miss…
Canon has a few other offerings that record in Full HD and have optical zoom capabilities while in movie mode, but they’re bulky and expensive, and if I’m really trying to be in that kind of market, I’d probably rather go for the T1i (which likely won’t happen).
The thing is that this is a pretty new feature, and if I wait a year or two, I’m sure HD movie recording will come standard and the cameras will be a lot cheaper.
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