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they all seem to be made in the same factory anyway....
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The CCD will come from the same factory but what you pay for with a quality camera is the lens and the picture algorithms. You can have as many mega pixels as you like, but shove it through a naff glass and you might as well buy a pin hole camera. Just look at mobile telephone cameras for an example of how to destroy a 3MP image!
What you are saying is like going back 20 years and saying all film is the same so you might as well by a £20 point and shoot from argos than a decent camera. Cheap cameras are unfortunately just that, cheap.
Which I'm very pleased with,and pic quality seems to be good, and reading specification apart from pixies seems to have a better spec at a lower price. I find having a proper, albeit not stunning, view finder makes life a lot easier as I have to put my reading bins on to use screen.(I can e-mail some sample pics if you want,very difficult to assess quality on a P Bucket image.)
I wasted money buying a cheap tripod so I will be down at Aldi on Thursday giving their offering a rigidity test.
A friend bought the same make they were selling 2 years back..... a superb camera it is........I am putting my Nikon 4300 in the skip and replacing it with the 10 Meg Aldi....a superb deal.
My experience is that the Aldi & Lidl stuff is generally good value. Thay are one-off deals to get you into the shop and there is no real customer support with it - so margins are a fraction of what is necessary for survival at your local camera shop (or whatever equivalent gismo you choose).
[/ QUOTE ] Thats for the comments about that one. I find the range of cameras available rather overwhelming and all the technical specs bewildering. Ive been looking in local shops to get some feel of what is what.
I've been wondering about a view finder. My daughter recently got a Canon with a decent one but I find I have to take my specs off to use one whereas i can see a viewing screen Ok with my normal bifocals on. She choose one with a view finder because she found it much better in very bright light. One I was shown in one shop had such a tiny view finder that I needed a magnifier to see it let alone use it!
I have also been wondering about batteries. Daughter's Canon takes AA size, she has rechageables, but it struck me that ordinary alkaline AAs are so readily available and that they would make a sensible back up especially as they hold their charge for ages. On the otherhand the Li ion batteries have a higher capacity I believe.
I bought a waterproof Pentax last year and I've been generally very pleased with it but for one thing - no viewfinder. OK indoors, but in sunlight the screen is almost impossible to see. (I've the same issue with the mobile phone, but that's a different rant... ) Another, more subtle, effect is that holding a camera out at arms length to try to focus on the screen causes much more camera shake than bracing the camera against your face. I reckon that I lost about 25% of shots on my big summer trip last year through this. OK, with an umpty picture memory and the ability to instantly dump duds you tend to take extra pictures anyway, but it still meant a few disappointments.
I have since bought a gadget that solves the problem. It's a wee set of black rubber bellows that clips over the screen to keep the sun off, and fitted with a lens that brings the screen into focus close to the eye. Instant viewfinder! It was cheap too, about £12 IIRC from 7 day shop.
I'm coming to the conclusion that I want a viewfinder, even if I dont always use it. Through my bifocals i can avoid holding the camera at arms length I think but I notice image stabilisation is now used on many so that hopefully overcomes camera shake. I have noticed optical stabilisation and electronic stabilisation mentioned. I've still got to find out about that.
I haven't seen your "instant viewfinder" thingy anywhere....yet.
[/ QUOTE ] Thanks. I like that idea better than a hood but most of the screens are bigger than 2" now but I guess there will be a bigger one along soon.
I notice in todays newspaper Jessops are advertising a summer sale. £70 off the non waterproof Optio A30 and upto £110 off others.