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What about this one William?

http://www.walmart.com/catalog/product. ... long_descr

?

That seems to be pretty good. I have no experience with Minolta though. They are relatively new (in digital cameras). I would go for it. See if you can mess with one in a store and see how it's build quality is.

Minolta is a very good company. The dimage is very comparable to the Nikon Coolpix 5700 which I happen to own. Good camera, but bulky. I reccomend buying something a little more compact, in a year you will wish you had bought something smaller. It's just a point and shoot camera, but it has a lot of features. Point and shoot digital camera's don't do well with night pictures in my experience, that's something that every digital camera sucks at (besides digital SLR). I bought my mom the a Canon someting 300. It's a very good camera. My flight instructor has it, I played with it and liked it a lot. It's pretty small too. That Dimage and my Coolpix arent at all convenient when going somewhere where you dont want to take a lot of stuff, but overall good camera's.

I played with that Minolta and my Coolpix before I bought the coolpix, I narrowed it down to the two.....and just found a better deal on the Nikon. They are both good camera's, just big.

Ok went onto the mart last night. They didnt have/carry the Konica Z5 or the Z20.

They did have a Z10 that normally sells everywhere for $220-200 for $130 on clearance.

Now I have a few questions, the ones that really matter I guess.

1) Does anyone know of a chart breakdown for like pixels into printable area? Say like 3.2 MP= 13 1/2x10 1/2"

2) Going off the above example. If I print that 3.2 to an 8"x10" and then say compare to another camera with only difference a higher MP- say 8. Will they be the same quality overall? My understanding is that the MP is simply a size. The bigger the size, the more the MP. Now if you shrink a large size down (8 to 3.2) is there some quality retention or what?

3) Photo printing. I see something about 150 dpi photos and 300 dpi... Thinking of my printer at home 150/300 dpi isnt much. What do them ones at walmart/rite aid/walgreens print at?

I just want a decent camera I can do 8"x10"s with. Good zoom. I dont need to have giant poster size photos... Would be nice, but dont need it.

supposedly pixel ratings are like max power ratings...don't trust them. i am not much of a digi camera junkie, but my friend is and that's how he explained it. as far as printers go.....those printers print up to/around 5000 dpi. you can get smaller printers like them for home use now days, they arent too expensive either. a camera with 4-6MP will be fine for what you're looking to do. i know that most 6mp cameras can be blown up to like 24x24 or something like that. i do not believe there is a chart breakdown for pixels into printable area. like i said, it's inconsistant.

my 5MP Nikon could easily be blown up to 8x10. also realize when you take a picture with the highest image quuality setting, your pictures end up being several MB, so you use up whatever card you have VERY quickly. i have a 256mb flash card, on its highest image quality setting, i can only take 16 pictures...u do the math.

Ouch...

I seen the largest SD card at walmart was 512...

Hmmm...

Well I think im going to buy the Konica minolta Z10 and give it a try. Take a few pictures. Take it in and print them. If Im not happy with the quality then I will just return it. They have no sure fire way of knowing, so I guess trying is the only way

Hell yeah. I'd do the same thing when you're spending that much money.They make Compact Flash Cards up to 6gb or so I've heard, haven't seen one yet that big. The largest SD Flash Card I've seen is 1gb. I have a 1gb Compact Flash card for my handheld...I could always use that if I needed a lot of space. But just normal picture taking, I can get a good 100 or so pictures on my 256mb card.

Basstronics wrote: 1) Does anyone know of a chart breakdown for like pixels into printable area? Say like 3.2 MP= 13 1/2x10 1/2"

I don't know of a chart, but the resolution will give you an idea. If you have Photoshop, just make a new document and type in the pixels, then select inches. I'd do it right now, but I'm not in reach of Photoshop.

Basstronics wrote: 2) Going off the above example. If I print that 3.2 to an 8"x10" and then say compare to another camera with only difference a higher MP- say 8. Will they be the same quality overall? My understanding is that the MP is simply a size. The bigger the size, the more the MP. Now if you shrink a large size down (8 to 3.2) is there some quality retention or what?

Basically, the higher the resolution, the better the quality when it is shrunk down. So an 8 will look much better than a 3.2 if the 8 is shrunk to, say, the largest resolution a 3.2 can do.



I'm not a real fan of Compact Flash, I like SD's better. I recently got a 66x 512 meg for my 3.2 MP Canon. The speed difference is insane; Compact Flash doesn't have speeds as far as I know.

there are 3 speeds. not too much difference though.

look at megapixels as the amount of detail at any given size, and the max size.

dont think of it as a "max rating" but you probably wont notice a difference between 4, and 5.

from experience, a 3.2 puts out beautiful 6x4 pictures.