Hello guys and gals.

I’m thinking of buying my wife a camera for Christmas, something for taking snaps of the kids, but can still do some nice landscape shots….something better than just using the Iphone.

I have absolutely no idea what to look for, a photographer friend recommended a Fuji x20 as his cheaper choice, which is still 400 quid.

I’m thinking more along the 2-300 mark.

The only thing I could really think of was the handiness of the Iphone being able to upload straight to Facebook and the web. Both our families are in other countries so we generally use FB to post pics of the kids etc…..Do they make cameras with Wireless, save having to boot up the laptop to download photos?…or can you connect them to Ipads?

What sort of things do you need to look out for with compact cameras now days?

Thanks,
GL

What about the Panasonic DMC-LF1 £279.99 at john Lewis.

“With Instant Transfer, photos are automatically backed up to a smartphone or tablet right after shooting. Photos and video can also be archived to computers automatically via your wireless network at home.”

One of the new(ish) generation of “Smart Cameras” is what you want. Samsung do some that range from a basic camera that can upload to Facebook to what are essentially smart phones without the phone bit (and more camera stuff).

Focus on addressing your main limitations of the iPhone, because for me it’s the best point and click I’ve ever owned, mainly because I nearly always have it on me. The lack of zoom and low light performance are the – relatively minor – downsides.

Be wary of some of the less smart cameras. I have a Panasonic Lumix TZ40. It’s a great camera but the built in wireless and accompanying mechanism to wirelessly transfer images to a smartphone/tablet is so badly implemented as to be not worth bothering with.

Hmmm, I started looking at some smart cameras….but the customer reviews didn’t set my world on fire…

although I came across this normal camera which seemed to get the thumbs up

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Panasonic-Lumix-Camera-LEICA-Summilux/dp/B008N8NZDK/ref=cm_cr_pr_product_top

Canon Powershot S120? I have the S100 and it’s a great point and shoot camera.

Bought a Panasonic Lumix TZ30 (I think it was the 30 anyway – the one below the 40 as we didn’t really need the wifi feature). Really, really impressed with the picture quality. Great camera.

Lumix here, too. It takes excellent photos, and the 20x zoom is very handy. There are two ways to get your photos onto your phone, or iPad if you get one, first, get the Apple Camera Kit, which just plugs straight into the dock, and the SD card goes into the slot so you can download your photos.
The other, whizzy option, is to buy a Transcend 16Gb WiFi SD card, and download the accompanying app from Transcend, which will allow you do download photos to your phone, or directly to social media.
7dayshop do them for about £16, I think. I’ll go and check, and get back in a sec.
They do a 32Gb wifi card, too.
7dayshop don’t appear to have them listed at the mo’, but Misco do:
http://www.misco.co.uk/Product/199163/Transcend-16GB-WIFI-SD-Card-SDHC-Class-10-
The 32Gb one is £45.
The camera kit option is probably cheapest, you can buy 8Gb cards for peanuts now, and carry several with you, which is what I do, and when they’re full, I just put them away, and start a new one; that way you still have all your photos as a back-up, should there be a disaster. It’s just not worth re-using the cards now, they’re so cheap.

The Canon S110 is currently selling for £199 in John Lewis. I got the S100 last year (and it cost £300…)

It’s got a heap of features (you can go full manual for instance) is very compact and will shoot in RAW if you want.

It has Wi-Fi but I don’t know what exactly that function is as I don’t own it myself….

It’s a pretty decent camera for the money I’d say.

Taken with my TZ30:

Billy Bragg at the Cheese and Grain, Frome by CountZero1, on Flickr

Paraglider, Milk Hill, Wiltshire. by CountZero1, on Flickr
I have one setting for colour on the selector switch, on the Smart Ai setting, and a B&W one on ‘P’, so I can just switch between them, without going into menu settings, particularly useful at gigs, where I take both.

Very happy with a tz 25 here so would go for the newer one

The thing with built in wifi, just like GPS, is they’re battery hogs, so it starts to become necessary to carry spare batteries around as well. I always do, along with spare cards, because I take lots of photos at gigs, or if I’m somewhere like at Milk Hill with the paragliders, where there’s lots going on. I often use Burst mode, too, so having wifi as an extra power drain would be unwelcome, so a passive system like a card reader on the phone/pad, works nicely, plus you can do a bit of editing, by selecting only the photos you want to copy across, leaving others on the card, just in case.
Just had a look on 7dayshop, and for the price of a wifi card, I can get three 16Gb Kingston cards for £21, or three 8Gb for £14.
http://www.7dayshop.com/kingston-sdhc-memory-card-16gb-class-4-3-pack-bundle?backUrl=L21lbW9yeS1jYXJkcy1hbmQtdXNiLWZsYXNoLWRyaXZlcz9jYXQ9MTY=
http://www.7dayshop.com/kingston-sdhc-memory-card-8gb-class-4-3-pack-bundle?backUrl=L21lbW9yeS1jYXJkcy1hbmQtdXNiLWZsYXNoLWRyaXZlcz9jYXQ9MTYjcD0x

My standard answer for this sort of nigh is the Sony RX100.

Brilliant camera. Highly rated, might be a bit dear though.

Olympus TG2 here,pretty robust when dropped & underwater too. Used it whilst snorkelling in the red sea this year.

I bought my wife a Lumix a couple of years back – she loves it and the quality of her photo’s has increased dramatically.

These days, once you get over a certain price point, it’s difficult to pick a camera that’s actually poor. I’m on my second TZ, first a 3, now a 30, and they’ve both taken thousands of photos. I guess a Canon, Fuji, Nikon, or others, would give similar results.
My first digital camera was a Nikon Coolpix 5700, 5Mp, 8x optical zoom, cost me £800, and a 1Gb CF card cost £200!
How times have changed…

thanks for all the posts….always extremely helpful to hear everyone’s views.

ps. the Lumix DMC-LF1 that I mentioned also has a viewfinder which is unusual/almost unheard of in a point and shoot camera.