Good, Cheap DigiCams

[Polizei]

Hello all. I'll be travelling to Europe for 19 days (leaving in early June). I'd like to see if you know of any good quality digital cameras that I can find for around $100-145 online. They need to be able to take 16MB memory cards at the least, and a zoom would be nice (but not necessary). I've had some good luck with Olympus models.

I'd appreciate any help.

Thanks!

EDIT: Thanks. So far I've pretty much narrowed it down to the Olympus D 340R, D-360L, and D-370 Models. I figure with a 64mb SmartMedia card I should be able to take about 600-800 pictures at pretty good quality. I'll need to get some rechargeable batteries and a charger, too


[ 05-20-2002: Message edited by: Polizei ]

[Stone]

I work for PC Connection, so I took a quick look in our list of products for you, here is what I found:

Nothing shipping with 16MB is less than $200

With any sort of zoom, I saw a Kodak DX3215 for $179.95

and I saw them as cheep as $20 (although I wouldn't suggest getting that sort of thing)

The cheepest Olympus was $199, the D-380.

Might want to browse out website (good tools for looking up items) and then you can buy where ever is easiest for you...pcconnection.com

[Sig220Man]

If you want good quality AND high capacity I'm afraid you're gonna have to spend a bit more.

A quick check of MySimon.com is already showing most online retailers to be asking around $130-150 for the Olympus D340/360, excluding shipping and tax. The absolute cheapest price was $120. Things aren't any better for the other famous brands, and for brands such as Nikon and Sony you'll be paying MUCH more.

With a high capacity card your $150 price ceiling is pretty much shot, as another check of MySimon shows prices of $35-50 for a 64MB SmartMedia card. The absolute cheapest one was $30, again minus shipping and tax.

I personally wouldn't bother with rechargeable batteries. The problem is that any charger you buy here will be for 110/120 volt, whereas Europe is 220/240 volt. You will then have to go through the hassle and additional expense of buying plug adapters (which will vary depending on what countries you will visit) and possibly a transformer (which may or may not be recommended by the manufacturer of the battery charger).

From my own personal experience, as long as you don't use the LCD viewfinder to compose your shots you should be able to get over 150 top quality pictures with each change of batteries. For the amount of time you'll be gone, I wouldn't carry more than two sets worth of batteries; an 8-pack should be sufficient. If you do happen to use up that many batteries, AA and AAA batteries are widely available.

[n567]

I have a Kodak DX3600 which has excellent quality, 16 megs of ram built in, and can take movies. for an additional 50 bucks I bought a 128 meg flash card, allowing me to hold about 867 pictures.

so for 450 I got the camera, a dock, and a digital picture frame that you can plug into your 'puter or network to cycle through pictures...

But for only 250 or so you can get just the camera, with no dock or picture frame.