I’ve got a Panasonic TZ19 that is very good but it suffers badly from dust ingress and I’m loathed to spend another wedge of cash getting it cleaned, again. We replaced it with an Olympus one that is a bit crap and really struggles when used indoors.

So, can anyone recommend a decent camera for about £150 that won’t pack up if it gets a bit dusty?

Ta.

I recommend the Panasonic Lumix DMC-FT25, which is kinda the little brother of the FT4, which I took down the Grand Canyon for 3 weeks last year. Stood up to the grime, sand and water and is still going strong, and it takes great looking photos. I regularly take it biking and never have to worry about being precious with it. I can’t see the FT25 being much different.

I had one of the TZ models and that let in bits of crap too.

I just got a Samsung Galaxy – I have been really impressed with it so far. Amazing digital zoom, great auto modes (multiple people, night etc) and it’s wifi/Android so it’s dead easy to upload images to Dropbox etc.

I haven’t ever experienced that with my TZ3 and a few TZ5s.

I did buy a TZ28 bridge camera though as I found the indoor performance of the TZ5 wasn’t steller.

I have a Lumix TZ10, before that TZ3, never had a prob with either but use a case all the time, saying that it does feel a little vulnerable, but surely any big zoom compact would? Quite like the look of the Ricoh GRD, although i’d lose the zoom which is essential for reference shots (being a painter) so will prob just stick with being careful of dust, grit etc.

I’m out of date but I’ve always been impressed with the reliability of Ixuses- on my third. One of them got dropped from a moving motorbike, left in a waterproof pocket that filled to the brim with rain, and left out on the west highland way for a week.

Last one I treated a little better then gave it to my brother, he took it twice round the world, it suffered a bit from sandstorms and got soaked again in a typhoon and, no shit, got stepped on by a baby elephant and had to be dug out of the ground, then soaked again when a diving camera bag leaked, he eventually dropped it in one of the great lakes. Though I imagine it’s still down there, taking photos of fish.

Not actually the best cameras I don’t think, always a little price-uncompetitive and the current one’s got some idiosncracies (the playback screen’s brightness is really inaccurate so you can think you’ve taken a good shot and it turns out to be over or under exposed, frinstance) But then again, I was afraid to use the TZ12 I had as it felt like it might just crumble into dust.

Coolpix AW110 armoured compact on Amazon reduced in that bracket right now 🙂

Although all black, not in the ‘where that foo camera’? camo livery like this one

STW, yesterday: http://singletrackworld.com/forum/topic/recommend-me-a-new-compact-camera-pls

The more upmarket Olympus tough ones – TG-1 etc are much much better than the older 820 etc

I don’t know if the other manufacturers have upped their games but when the early TZs came out their lenses distorted a lot less than the competitors.