Recommend: small budget camera with movie and audio prowess

September 18, 2008 12:25 AM

Hi all-- I'm jumping the gun and asking for a personal recommendation for a used camera purchase. My budget is $200-250 and I want to buy used. My priorities in order are: 1. As much manual control as possible -- so I'm leaning towards Canon for the CHKD firmware. 2. FAST to start up and take shots and switch modes. 3. 30FPS VGA movie ability that looks comparable to a cheap dedicated camcorder (but it doesn't need to record for a long time -- I'm fine with MJPEG). 4. Good quality audio pickup for the movies. 5. Smaller than SLR-size. ...Everything else is low priority. I hope these criteria and its answers will be useful to others.
posted by oneous to Computers & Internet (3 answers total)

CHDK is great, but word of warning: I ended up ditching a camera because you can't autoboot an 8 gig+ (FAT32) card. When you're using it to shoot RAW it can be a little grating to be forced to use 4gb and below.
posted by soma lkzx at 5:46 AM on September 18, 2008

Bought a new IXUS 90 (Powershot something in the USA) explicitly for use with CHDK. Oldish model, cost me 1500 SEK ($220) six months ago, and Sweden is generally expensive when it comes to electronics.

All-in-all awesome (scripting is neat) but your low-light video will be of poor quality.
posted by monocultured at 6:45 AM on September 18, 2008

I love my Cannon Powershot A550, and I've loved it even more since I put CHDK on it. Takes great shots in lots of different conditions, and has been really good for close-up shots. It fits in my pocket, starts up quickly, has a decent optical zoom, and is my everyday camera. Check my flickr if you like for some examples...it's a mix of shots from the Powershot & my Rebel, but everything from here on back is strictly Powershot. Happy camera hunting!
posted by ekstasis23 at 12:17 PM on September 18, 2008