This week I came to a reckoning while using my new Canon Elan 7 non-digital SLR. Shooting film is expensive and time consuming. I even went so far as to delete a previous, long-winded post I created about why you should shoot film instead of digital.
Once you go digital it’s hard to go back. So what I’ve got to figure out is how to get the same quality out of a “low cost” digital camera. I can just forget about the frames-per-second that an SLR can achieve. It’s not that important anyway. A hot shoe and a snyc terminal are a must for an off-camera flash and the maximum aperture has got to be at least 2.0 for those times when I don’t want to use a flash at all. It also has to be at least 5 megapixels.
And so the top contenders are: The Sony DSC-V3 (7.2 megapixel) and the The Olympus C-5050 (5 megapixel). The Sony is nice but really expensive. It requires a Sony memory stick or a Compact flash card – neither of which I own. I also don’t own a Compact flash card reader.
The Olympus is less expensive and can only be bought used. But it will accept xD, Smartmedia and Compact flash cards. I already own xD and Smartmedia cards plus the reader connected to my PC. So it seems like a no brainer. The editors of Digital Camera magazine have set the C-5050 as the comparison standard in high-end point and shoots for the past 2 years which gives me even more confidence that this is the camera I need to get – after I sell the Canon.