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Digital cameras?

 
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I've read lots of reviews, often contradictory! I'm looking for a compact digital camera (pocket size) with a 5x optical zoom. (I don't care about digital zooms, that feature seems like worthless hype to me.)

I think the most important things for me are picture quality and responsiveness. Digital cameras tend to be slow, so I know none of them are really fast, but some are better than others. Aperture priority would be nice, but I'm not holding my breath

Does anyone have experience with such a camera? Recommendations?

Thanks!
 
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I recently bought this camera from Panasonic. It has image stabilization and is supposedly fast. I say "supposedly" because, during vacation, I took a shot of a cliff diver. By the time I got the shot, the diver was already in the water. My wife, with her Nikon N90, had fired 4 shots all the way down.

As for the image stabilization feature, it is *really* cool -- and works well. However, for SLRs with large lenses, (like my wife's) this is generally not needed anyway, because the lense can gather enough light quick enough to not have blurring.

Henry
 
Henry Wong
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Oops... didn't completely answer the question.

I don't think it has a zoom up to 5x, but it does have a "Leica" lense -- which was a selling point for me. I also don't think that it has aperature priority either... sorry.

As for cost, I got it at Cosco for $299... and it also included a 256mb sd card. Got real lucky as I think the sale lasted only a week.

Henry
 
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I like Canon S80

http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/specs/Canon/canon_s80.asp
It has wide zoom and picture quality is superb

I don't know of any compact cameras with 5x optical zoom
 
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