Help me choose a compact/bridge for my wife...

cuthbert

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Hello everyone,

My wife has a fairly old Sony Cybershot to mostly capture pictures of our little girl and days out with her friends etc... nothing too fancy, just something she has in her bag to carry around with her most of the time.

She's used my 5D2 a few times and is pretty amazed at it's responsiveness and now finds her current camera frustratingly slow (and mine very heavy!)

I've managed to really narrow down what she wants to these key points:

1) nothing too complicated - she likes taking pictures, but interchangeable lenses and full manual mode would be in her words "wasted" on her. she can play with my camera if she wants to experiment with these things after all.

2) something responsive. you press the shutter button, it takes the picture right then. no lag. this is probably the most important thing. kids move fast and by the time her compact has focused the child is usually long gone or looking the other way.

3) a good continuous shooting fps would be good too, but not as important as point 2.

4) a fairly versatile lens, she doesn't seem to mind too much the size of some superzooms. i had an sx10 a while ago... this would probably be as big/heavy as she would want to go. smaller if possible.

5) although she hasn't mentioned it, if it could do video in a half decent way she probably would use this from time to time, but this is no deal breaker.

6) megapixel count isn't that important, obviously we want to do prints from time to time (a4 max really) but as noise free and sharp as possible for a compact.

ideal world, budget no more than £200 but would stretch to £300 for the right camera.


any ideas and pointers greatly appreciated.
 
fuji s9600?
had one of these, they for for around £150 on ebay, and exellent for the money.. :D

i think the lens is 24-300 too, so a pretty good range.
 
Sounds like Panasonic tz8 or lx3 territoryto me. Not sure on the fps though.
 
I just got my wife a Panasonic Lumix after seeing many recommendations here and elsewhere and I have to say it lives up to expectations and my wife loves it
 
I've played with the TZ8, and I very nearly bought one. The TZ9 doesn't get such a good write up, but the TZ10 is similar, but more expensive as it has all the manual modes etc.

Steve
 
fuji s9600?
had one of these, they for for around £150 on ebay, and exellent for the money.. :D

i think the lens is 24-300 too, so a pretty good range.

I had a 6500 (9600's baby brother) and loved it to bits. Fantastic camera and lens. I got some great pictures out of it. Responsive it was not though.
 
Any of the Fuji range - s9600, s100fs, s200exr, HS10, although they are alrge, so she won't be able to just pop it in her bag. But you get everything else, reasonably responsive, FPS at decent level, reasonable (excellent on some) zoom, Video etc. And they take AA's.

A friend has the panny and it is a good camera.
 
thank you for taking the time to reply everyone. i've had a good look through all your suggestions and whilst the Fujifinepix s200exr is quite a bit bigger and heavier than perhaps she wanted, the image quality is really very impressive for a camera of that price.

even at a 100% crop, there is practically no noise at 100 iso - it seems to capture fine details really well.

i do appreciate the help - i find it surprisingly difficult to snap out of dslr mode - looking at images from compacts always looks a bit blurry and dull!

Thanks again.
 
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