brand name better? or not

[alex_s249]

are name brand digital cameras better then the ones that are no name and come from china?

 

[Lorand]

Brand name products are manufactured in China too, so that doesn't make much difference.
But there are lot of differences between brand cameras, depending what's in them (lens system, ccd, software, etc.) or for what consumer segment is produced for.

 

[alex_s249]

I dunno all i want the camera to have is optical zoom around 3 or 4 times. The camera will be for family photos and for taking photos to put on the net of items that i want to sell on ebay and like on site and jsut stuff like that.

 

[Praetor]

I dunno all I want the camera to have is optical zoom around 3 or 4 times.

Well unless you're interested in losing money, you'll want to find out more. Starting off with a budget would be nice otherwise you can just get an EOS1DS and be done with it

 

[alex_s249]

id say 200-300$ AUD

want something with 3x optical
over 2 mega pixel


i will buy memopry seperatly but you know them ones you see on ebay with like 12 mega pixel is that BS or is that for real cause it says it interapolated? or something

are they really worth getting theyt are pretty cheap but no optical

 

[Lorand]

For that budget this could be the best choice: http://www.digitalcamera-hq.com/canon-powershot-a75-reviews.html
I played around with a Powershot A75 and I liked it. The colours are very natural, the AI-focus is incredible, the 3x optical zoom is enough for most situations, it's easy to work with (even with advanced settings) and the batteries last pretty long time.
3.2 megapixels is enough for everyday applications. I printed a photo taken by this Powershot on a A3 paper and the result was an incredibly sharp picture.

it says it interapolated

The interpolated resolution is just for marketing purposes, just the effective pixel number counts.

 

[Praetor]

ones you see on ebay with like 12 mega pixel is that BS or is that for real cause it says it interapolated?

Well read it to be sure! The Canon Rebels arent that horribly unaffordable for their performance either

 

[Lorand]

In fact the "effective pixels" too require some interpolation. The CCD's pixels are monochrome ones, so of the total number of pixels 1/4 are senzitive only to red, 1/4 to blue and 1/2 to green (green is doubled because the human eye is also more sensitive to green than to other colours). So a 3.2 megapixel camera has 800,000 red, 800,000 blue and 1,600,000 green pixels. After taking the shot the camera's software interpolates the data and produces a 3.2 megapixel RGB image. Now imagine that the built-in program performs another interpolation and produces a 6.4 megapixel image from that. Weird, isn't it? But the "6.4 megapixel (interpolated)" specification looks better than the bare "3.2 megapixel".

Besides resolution there are a lot of specifications that worth comparing when buying a digital camera: auto and manual focus possibility, program and manual exposure, file format, ISO range, max and min exposure time, lens aperture, lens manufacturer, etc., etc.
I saw a 4 megapixel Fuji Finepix that produced worst images than my entry level 2.3 megapixel HP Photosmart, so resolution is not the main issue...