Advice on a digital camera..

In misc.consumers.frugal-living Kevin & Tracy Stanley <
The problem with the Jam Cam is not the picture quality, which will
probably be about the same as any other digicam with a 640x480 CCD, but
the fact that it doesn't have an LCD preview display. Unless you keep a
computer handy to constantly download and evaluate your pics, such a
camera is next to worthless.

If you cannot afford $200, I strongly advise you to consider a
point-n-shoot 35mm or Advantix film camera. It will take much, much
better and more permanent pictures which don't require a computer to view,
at a much lower initial cost.

If you want a hard copy of a digital picture, you will need a printer
costing at least $300 (one with the Kodak photo enhancement software if
you expect it to really look like a photograph), and the consumables will
be almost as expensive as a film print. On the other hand if your main
purpose is to email pictures and put them on your website, I'd advise
saving up for at least a camera with a LCD preview display. It not only
helps when framing and makes it a lot easier to do macro work (I don't
even think the Jam Cam can take macro closeups, e.g. flowers or small
items you want to sell on eBay and so on), it allows you to
"instant-delete" pictures that don't come out and to browse your stored
images, deleting the poor ones to make room for new ones if you don't have
time to download.

The very cheap Polaroid PDC640 also has a removable memory "disk"
(actually a flash EPROM in a little floppy-disk shaped package) that can
be exchanged for a spare, supports multiple resolutions, and is generally
a pretty good piece of equipment except for its crappy resolution, which
doesn't matter if your main use for it is e-pics.

--Roger

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What will people of the future think of us? Will they say, as
Roger Williams said of some of the Massachusetts Indians, that
we were wolves with the minds of men? That we resigned our humanity?
They will have the right. -- C.P. Snow
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