A good bridge camera for around £150 new?

[mani]

My niece is looking for a good camera around the £150 mark.

any suggestions??

 

[rjbell]

Does it have to be a bridge?

 

[Gazamonk]

The fuji SL300 is a decent buy at around £140 and has an advantage over a lot of other bridge cameras because it can take an external dedicated flash. That may not be important initially but further down the experience road it could prove invaluable. It would certainly be a deal breaker for me.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Fujifilm-FinePix-SL300-Digital-Optical/dp/B006Q8V9YQ/ref=sr_1_25?s=photo&ie=UTF8&qid=1361739317&sr=1-25

 

[mani]

its for my niece - she doesnt want to spend too mcuh on a dslr but wants to use some for her fashion university work too. if a compact was just as good that would be fine too.

 

[Teflon-Mike]

O/H got the Nikon L310. Reviews said it was a real 'point & press' camera for you missus or your mum to snap away with. They were bang on! My aged compact has more manual control on it! It's a briliant bit of consumer kit. Pix-count is very high. Lens great, and zoom range fantastic. For the money; I think she paid £120ish, the only real gripe with it was it takes AA batteries not a lith-cell, though practically pro's & cons to that, & 2400Ah rechargeables last well, you just need to buy them and a charger seperate. But, absolutely no scope for taking manual control, beyond selecting auto-program, if you get a bit keen. But, for general out & about, photography, without having to do much more than turn it on; brilliant. Could probably fulfil 80-90% of my photo-needs, and for the money, its a lot of camera. Though, for the size, its not got the convenience of slip in your pocket portability of a compact, so you might as well cart a full SLR about.

 

[JonFM]

Would she consider a used DSLR? Something like a Canon 400D and kit 17-55 would run to budget, not sure of the Nikon equivalent cost wise, but either would give better results I would guess, especially if its for Uni work.

 

[Borsch]

Olympus PEN Mini EPM1- its got incredible IQ for a small camera, but also all the problems with handling that tend to come with many small but serious cameras. I saw it for £120 on HDUK some time ago.

Canon S95 is a point'n'shoot on steroids, but its sensor although big by p'n's standards is dwarfed by PEN Mini.

GF3 is also frequently discounted and can be had for around £150.

I consider all of these "bridges to DSLR", although its not in their name