Where to Find a Cheap Camera

Lynibis Iwas going to suggest exactly the same thing - forgive me if I'm wrong but I thought that was the primary purpose of this site.

Some advice: It's better to buy a digital camera on which the battery can be recharged, although usually a bit dearer- it saves a fortune eventually.

davidstockport Some people will only buy cameras that take standard batteries like AA because they can use their existing rechargable AA batteries and a fast charger and if they are caught with discharged batteries they can buy some standard AA batteries to get by. Personally I prefer rechargeable battery packs like you but I can see the benefits of both types.

I think s/hand is where its at for cameras. I don't think there has been huge progress in camera development at the bottom end of pricing. In fact some cameras seemed to have not progressed for still images but slowly improved for video. So you won't typically see deals for such cameras you need to hunt through the options on ebay, CEX, Cash Converters, Cash Generator etc.

BonzoBanana Very often rechargeable AA and AAA batteries are not suitable for cameras (and many other things) non-rechargeable batteries are 1.5 volts whereas rechargeable ones are only 1.2 volts.

Put another way a thing that requires 6 volts to power it (usually powered by 4 batteries) would require 5 rechargeables to work properly.

This is one of the reasons that when rechargeable batteries are used (even if they do work) a full charge does not last anywhere near as long as with 1.5 volt batteries

davidstockport I don't think that is such an issue nowadays as the capacity of AA rechargeables has increased hugely the older batteries just had low capacity. Normal batteries drop voltage as they become discharged which I think either nicad or nimh batteries didn't do so could output a voltage that didn't have to be as high but whatever with modern rechargeables there shouldn't be any device that won't be able to use them. I use an iriver mp3 player that takes a single AA battery and seems very old, probably 15 years old or more and in the past it would not work with rechargeables but works great with modern rechargeable batteries. I think it used to work for a short time like 45 minutes but you would get 15 hours with conventional batteries.

BonzoBanana I think you will have found that either will drop voltage as they discharge, but as non-rechargeables start with a higher voltage it takes much longer for them to become too under-powered.

I have one of those single battery MP3 players (somewhere) I would be frightened to use it in public, perchance someone thought I was a time traveler.

Incidentally I did have (might still have somewhere) a charger that would recharge 1.5 batteries a limited number of times. (it wasn't very good though).

davidstockport That iriver has been totally abused, I've used it in the rain infact the LCD display clearly had water vapour/droplets on the inside, even so damp that it distorts the sound, I dry it off and then use it again. Some of teh buttons need a firm push especially the right side of the central joystick type control. Yeah not much street cred to it though but its hard to see with me mounted up on my penny farthing wearing my hessian suit and deer stalker so hopefully no one will think I'm out of date for using it.

BonzoBanana I sometimes think things from back then are better made, the newer things can't withstand the elements... drop one of the new phones (that seem to have replaced mp3 players) down the lavatory even once and they're b.....red.

I agree this this is a really reliable little camera with adequate features - I didn't realise it was that old until your comment.

angemski It's old but it was designed to sell for about £150 or more so they could use reasonable component quality like lenses etc. Nowadays the very cheap Chinese designed cameras would use plastic or basic optics, basic image sensor and probably a slightly better processor but the end image is poor compared to high quality older cameras.

If you are comparing to a premium smartphone even some top end phones only have a 2x optical zoom where as this Canon has 5x optical that means at 5x zoom on the Canon you still have a 16 megapixel image but a smartphone with a 20 megapixel sensor and 5x digital zoom lets say you only have about 4 megapixels of actual real picture data. Then you have the fact the lens on the Canon takes in far more light so its light sensitivity is better and grain level is less so it can beat smartphones quite easily. Lastly the Canon has a lens mounted on a tray to stabilise the image, a bit like the laser on a cd player it moves up and down to stabilise the image as you move the camera. Many phones don't really stabilise still images they stabilise video more by digital processing. Obviously lots of smartphones have great camera features but there is huge variation in what they do and in some areas they are still quite poor often dictated by the very small sizes of the lens and sensor.

Mine is this;

https://www.dingdingmobile.com.my/product/ding-ding-guide-x9/

It's dual lens and has a 16MP sensor on the back but in reality results are far inferior the Canon. I think the actual sensor is more like 12MP and interpolated to 16MP and the dual lens just gives a small low resolution sensor for boken effects. The camera seems to struggle a bit with macro shots but that could be software related or to be honest operator error. It's a fine camera for standard sunny day images and general purpose use though.

BonzoBanana I do use my phone for shots but there's usually is a difference with what they promise and what the actual spec is. Nothing quite like a physical camera. I really love the Canon 3300 and it's travelled to many places and been worked hard. It's also been a relief to know that it's not high end enough to get snatched. Jeez, I hope I haven't jinxed the life of the thing now I've bragged about how good it is....

angemski That's weird we have the same cameras, i only mentioned the Canon 3300 as that is what I use, I don't think you mentioned you had the same camera in the thread before.