Recommendation for a digital camera

[syo202]

Hi guys & gals!~ I would greatly appreciate some feedback regarding some digital cameras. I'm new to this technology and need some help in choosing a camera.

I am eye-ing the Canon Elph S300 and the Sony DSC-P1... any word on these beauties?

Thanks in advance...

[hapoo]

i'm not sure what the canon elph is like but one of my friends has the S100 and the pictures are amazing!!

[JPR]

I have the canon S100 and love it. Its so small and tiny but takes great pictures. What I really like to do is take panoramics and turn them into Quicktime VR. If I were to by one today though I would get a 3 MP like the S300 gives much higher quality picks at larger sizes. While love Sony products I'm not a big fan of the memory sticks

[syo202]

Which one is a better deal?
The Canon S300 at 2.11 Megapixels or the Sony DSC-P1 at 3+ Megapixels.

Thanks in advance guys.

[Jeffbx]

When it comes to digicams, your best bet will be either Olympus, Nikon, or Kodak (not Sony because of the proprietary memory).

Look over the reviews at http://www.steves-digicams.com/

Get the highest Mpixel rating you can afford - I've found that this is what makes digicams obsolete faster than anything else.

[syo202]

Thanks for the insight guys. I'm still sort of ambivalent when it comes to choosing the Megapixels. Can someone give me a detailed explanation to this? (i.e. what is necessary for what, etc..)

Also, i have heard from people who own the Canon s100 but is there also someone who owns the Canon s300?

Thanks so much =)

[Grimm]

Megapixel is marketspeak. The marketing people came up with it because they had a hard time understanding resolution. It can also be used to hide the fact that a camera has crappy resolution, but can store each pixel from the CCD 4 or more times. A CCD (charge coupled device) is what translates the light coming into the camera into an image storable electronicaly. Many cameras use a 640x480 CCD which would produce an image of 307,200 pixels. By interpolating extra pixels they artificialy increase the size to 1280x960 pixels or 1,228,800 pixels. That's 1.2 Megapixels.
Some of the cameras do have better CCDs and so have a true resolution, but watch out for the marketing terms. Look at the CCD resolution for a camera's true capabilities.

[syo202]

Do you feel that having a 2.1 megapixel resolution is suffice or is 3.3 necessary? Sorry, i'm still stuck on this pixel issue.
_________

Thanks in advance.

[Apex]

I've used the S20 for about a month and absolutely hated it. The picture quality was horrible. It has the same kind of Canon consumer lense as the S10, S100, S110, and S300. However, the G1 is a lot better, just ask Leon.