Friday, November 18, 2011

What I'm Considering as an Xmas Gift to myself...

...to replace my aging Canon A650 IS camera:

A650 IS specs at Canon

G12 specs at Canon

D10 specs at Canon

ABCDeals refurbished A650 $450

Refurbished A650 "from China" $290

A650 at Amazon, varied prices

G12 at Amazon $430

I really like my A650 IS, I have had it cleaned or fixed once (dust or spots internally on the lens or mirror, a glitch that somehow develops during airline flights). It's a great camera that has already survived one E18 or "Lens error, restart camera" event, which I fixed by carefully whacking the camera, as per the percussion advice on some forum (maybe this one; other options were send in for repair or take the camera apart and mess around). I'm now facing a growing spot of no pixels on the vari-angle LCD screen (vari-angle is a higher requirement for me than AA batts). I'm sure Canon can fix this, but I don't know at what cost (yet). In the meantime, before I send my camera off, I'll need another camera (though I could pull out my old A620, like I did in the spring of 2010 when I last had the A650 in for repair). eBay currently has A650's that generally sound no better than the one I already have.

A note: Xmas always comes early when I buy something like this for myself.

UPDATE 20Nov2011: Nikon Coolpix P7100 review

UPDATE 28Jan2012: Just ordered a Canon G12. This option retains the vari-angle LCD screen, adds slight weight and height, aperture drops from max 4.8 to 4.5, total zoom drops from about 210 mm to 140 mm, wide angle increases from about 35 mm to 28mm, megapixels drop from 12 to 10, have to use Canon battery packs, gain High Dynamic Range shooting.

4 comments:

cisko said...

I've been a Canon user for years, including an A80 and a G9. But when I wanted a new small camera last spring, I ended up with the Olympus XZ-1. Great camera! I've been quite happy with it. The Canon S100 is also a nice piece of gear. Worth a look, anyway!

Silver Fox said...

Thanks for the ideas! I'll probably end up going with something with a vari-angle LCD screen, as long as they make them.

Michael said...

Take a serious look at the Sony alpha 55 - it's an extraordinary camera (and with a vari-angle LCD screen).

Silver Fox said...

Ooh, built in GPS! I will indeed add that to list for consideration.