P&S Digitals with RAW Capability

[Karen Politte]

I am in the market for an upgrade out of the film industry for my old Olympus P&S film camera. This would partly be for chasing convenience and partly for home/family use.

Trouble is - I don't have the money to upgrade to a digital SLR. My maximum budget rates around $330 - and that's for the camera, memory card, and all accoutrements in order for me to be able to USE the thing. I am not at all opposed to buying online - and to be honest whatever I buy will likely come from Amazon.

I was wondering if anybody on here knows or can recommend a good P&S digital camera with RAW capability? As a chaser who would like to have the option of marketing her images - I am not too struck on the prospect of only having JPEGs on my memory card.

Megapixel-wise - I think that 7+ is not setting my sights too high from what I see on the market right now.

I'd love any input before I go buy!

KL

 

[Esa Tuunanen]

Availability of RAW mode has always been very rare in pocket P&S cameras and has gotten rarer in all non-SLR digicams because camera manufacturers want to push people to "cash cow" side of market.
Then options get even fewer if you require feature to be useful and camera capable to storing shots to buffer. (instead of locking up for 5 to 15 seconds after every shot)
If you're looking for small pocket camera then they practically belong to this "useless RAW"-category.

Also there's all this "ultra zoom" BS... For stormchasing you're going to need much more good wide angle than long tele so wide angle starting from 28mm is much more important than some 10x zoom which even doesn't tell anything concretic.

So add also some other requirements, like size and how much controls you want to be available.


Also newer cameras aren't always better than older models, I'm using "prosumer" which was released three years ago and in many aspects all current non-SLR digicams (and even many lower end dSLRs) would be step backwards.

 

[John Diel]

Karen,

I've been using an Olympus E-10 4 MP camera for several years now. It finally gave up the ghost a couple of weeks ago after almost 100,000 shots. It's going to cost me about $300 to get the shutter fixed, but given the quality of photo I get from it, it's well worth it.

The Olympus E20 can be had for the price range your looking at. It's a 5MP camera with a few updates to the E-10. It's worth looking at the possibility anyway and is an excellent starter DSLR type camera.

 

[Dan Cook]

Karen,

The Camera I'm currently selling, Fuji s5200, has RAW capability.

 

[B Ozanne]

I have a Canon Powershot S60 with RAW and full manual modes. Most of the phots on my website were taken with that camera.

It's not the latest model, but I bet you could find that one cheap.

 

[Esa Tuunanen]

The Camera I'm currently selling, Fuji s5200, has RAW capability.

But no buffering.
Things slow down quite a bit when shooting CCD-RAW images; Continuous shooting is disabled, and shot to shot time slows to between 5 and 6 seconds.
http://www.steves-digicams.com/2006_reviews/fuji_s5200_pg5.html
And 38mm ain't so wide angle.

I have a Canon Powershot S60 with RAW and full manual modes.

Little better: two RAW buffer and then shot about every fifth second:
http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/canons60/page4.asp
And at least wide angle is 28mm. (in whole Sx0 serie) But I've been spoiled by Minolta and don't count menus as manual controls.

As for meaning of different focal lengths in reality:
I took this pic with 28mm +0.8x converter meaning 22.4mm

For getting 38mm FOV cut away fair one third from both height and width. (over half of picture's area)
28mm again is about one sixth "narrower".


LOL...
Looks like price of camera I have is still near original price... I guess that's sign of classic considering general price trend of used/older model digicams.

 

[Cris Schroeder]

Karen,

That's a tough one. I poked around on the Canon website and was surprised at how few digicams have RAW output anymore. Instead of RAW capability, I'd consider looking for features such as optical image stabilization, good ISO capability, and an optical viewfinder (often overlooked, but something I've found to be very important). My first digicam was a PowerShot A40 with 2.1 MP. The resolution isn't great, but it takes great low-noise photos with excellent color and sharpness.

With Photoshop (full version or Elements) and a little extra work, you could get some great results starting with high quality JPEGs. Granted, it's not as ideal as shooting in RAW, but in your price range I'd look for features that help you get the best image quality regardless of file format. Stepping up to a RAW-capable digicam may cost you other features that outweigh the file format. If you are willing to stick with JPEG instead of RAW, you'll have a number of really good cameras in your price range to choose from.

 

[bvassmer]

There has been a related thread on here before, related to using dSLR, and that they were out of the price range.

Take a look at a used Canon D30 or D60 (not the 30D)... they are old model Canon dSLRs with the D30 being 3 mp and the D60 being 6 mp. They are great cameras with much better noise reduction and capabilites than any p&S. The D30 body can be found for around $200 last time I checked ebay, and add a 100$ lens (something cheaper, like a 28-80mm or so) and you have an awesome camera that you can expand on later - or get the D60 for about $300 and get those 6 mp, which is worth the extra money, IMHO.

AND... you'll have real, honest to goodness RAW, with an acceptable shoot rate and buffer...

 

[Esa Tuunanen]

With Photoshop (full version or Elements) and a little extra work, you could get some great results starting with high quality JPEGs.

That depends from many things, like how good demosaicing algorithm camera has, does it produce overprocessed Disneyland-shots etc.
Decreasing contrast, saturation and sharpening might correct last problem.
But I would keep even loosest JPEG compression setting as questionably tight in many cameras.

and add a 100$ lens (something cheaper, like a 28-80mm or so)

In case of dSLRs it's good to remember than most of them have "crop factor" (because of smaller than full frame sensor) which makes many older wide angle lenses not so wide. APS-sensor of Canon has crop factor of ~1.6 meaning 28mm lens becomes 44.8mm.
Actually older than couple years lower megapixel count dSLRs probably don't do much any noise removing because of much bigger physical size of pixels. (bigger pixels gather more light)

If eBay isn't out of question (Konica)Minolta A1/A2/A200 would be good options, all have buffered RAW and nice stabilized 28-200mm lens.
(well... prices of A2s are really near original price)